Monthly Archive for May, 2006Page 2 of 4

Chinese blogging beauty contest: 美女博客大赛

Published
by
Lyn Jeffery
on May 22, 2006
in Blogs, Gender and Virtual China
. 2 Comments

Bokeemm_2

The confluence of girls and blogs, a kind of Chinese Idol/blogger beauty pageant, took place April 13- May 13th in Beijing.  Sponsored by China’s largest blogsite, Bokee 博客网, the girls were judged on number of votes they received online, the quality (creativity, originality) of their blog posts, blog traffic and blog comments.  Sounds reasonable.  The top 20 contestants were then brought to Beijing to receive two days of make-overs, photos shoots, and etiquette classes.  In the final staged, live competition they were somehow scored on appearance, body (evening wear, swimwear? I don’t know) and talent. 

The overall winner, a student at Beijing University’s eMBA program, took home 20,000 RMB (~ US $2500); Most Sexy, Most Popular, Most Fashionable, and Most Talented (click on the blue links to see their blogs) got 10,000 RMB each.

Update: I couldn’t resist: photos of the live competition itself can be found on Miss Most Fashionable, Zhou Yuxing’s blog, here (can’t find a permalink; click on the 5/17 post).
Bokeemm3

According to 中国文化网 Chinaculture.org, the contest garnered over 3 million votes. 

Via a BBS post on Chinaren.com, where you can find even more photos of the lovelies on the day of the contest. 

Olympics watch on Virtual China

Published
by
Lyn Jeffery
on May 22, 2006
in Government, News, Politics, Sports and Virtual China
. 2 Comments

808_days_to_go

link to the English-language official Chinese 2008 Olympics website

The 2008 Olympics watch on Virtual-China.org officially begins now.  Yes, we’re a bit late to the game (see more on years of efforts here), but our focus will, of course, be how 2008 plays out in virtual China, both in Chinese and in English.

A few things we can already say for sure: There will be an explosion of blog posts written by foreign journalists and tourists, adding to the virtual view of China in non-Chinese languages; there will be an explosion of Chinese chatter on the BBS, much of it proud much of it even nationalistic; there will be photo ops and tours and carefully manicured experiences manufactured for the press and tourists; there will be plenty of unscripted encounters between first-time visitors to China and genuinely welcoming Chinese residents which will be blogged and posted and captured on film; and of course, there will be the athletes and competitions themselves, partly experienced via online access of both foreign and Chinese TV broadcasts by audiences around the world. [related update: see recent news on Chinese p2p tech company Mysee and Shanghai Media Group providing streaming feeds of the 2006 World Cup.]

What would be new and possibly groundbreaking: Chinese blogging and BBS posting in English and Chinese on their encounters with foreign media and visitors, a kind of citizen diplomacy that could feed new voices back into the whole heavily mediated extravaganza.   

In the meantime: George Lessard on the Chinese Internet Research listserv points out a Guardian article (caveat: there’s a horrendous registration process to view) on what will sure to be a major part of the story and experience of the 2008 Beijing Olympics: the press and the Chinese government. 

The Committee to Protect Journalists encouraged the International Olympic Committee to raise the issue of how "free" the foreign press will be in reporting during the games.  The IOC did raise the issue, apparently, receiving the standard bland answer from Liu Qi, Beijing’s chief organizer, followed by the take-it-all-back statement: "…just as everywhere else reporters would have to abide by local law."

Even Pigs Laugh at…

Published
by
Jason Li
on May 19, 2006
in Meme
. 5 Comments

《猪都笑了》, "Even Pigs Laugh", is a Flash MTV that at first pokes light fun at the peoples of various Chinese provinces. For example:

060519_beijing

"Beijing people say they have a lot of sand & dust, the Mongol people laugh at them."

060519_hk

"Hong Kong people say they have many wives, the Taiwan people laugh at them."

And it ends with…

060519_japan

"The Japanese say they are 人 (man, person, "Asian", or Chinese depending on context), the world’s pigs laugh at them."

The music video maintains a jovial tone, which makes the mockery of Japan less grating and hateful as it may seem. Additionally, it’s rendered in traditional Chinese (with the song sung in Mandarin) which suggests Taiwanese origins reader Qiang Li points out is not suggestive of Taiwanese origins (as I’d previously thought) but may be a reference to an artistic convention in Chinese calligraphy of writing in traditional form.

Link to video, link to Cantonese version
Via IceBin’s Blog.

BBS for breaking news and commentary: an explosion

Published
by
Lyn Jeffery
on May 18, 2006
in BBS, News and Virtual China
. 8 Comments

Changsha_blast

As we’ve noted before, Chinese BBS forums are probably the best way to a) track current news in China; b) get a sense of which breaking news items people want to discuss; and c) collect a wide range of commentary on very current events. 

Case in point: Yesterday, May 17, there was a massive explosion at a port in Changsha city–it was a container of fireworks.  According to a short piece in Shanghai Daily, "the blast was so violent that houses 2 kilometers away from the explosion were damaged."  A search on Google News revealed only 2 short reports in English, one noted above in Shanghai Daily, the other at Xinhuanet.com.

A few hours after the blast, an experienced XinhuaNet.com BBS poster (he’s posted over 800 topics) appears to be passing on pretty direct information of the scene, showing photos of buildings with their windows blasted out and warehouses whose metal doors are uniformly bubbled out from the force of the explosion.  There’s discussion of how dangerous fireworks are, how they can be transported more safely, and even one mainland Chinese slamming a comment from another user who posted with the complicated Chinese characters used outside of the mainland: "it’s obvious from the characters you use that you’re not mainland Chinese…coming with your fake sympathy…"

Approximately 60,000 people have viewed the post, but only 56 had posted comments.  There’s really not that much to say about this kind of an accident I guess…but in the absence of unfettered 24 TV news services, BBS forums are the fastest way to get breaking local news from around China.   

link to Changsha fireworks blast photos

China’s podcasting: a bite of current stats

Published
by
Lyn Jeffery
on May 17, 2006
in Blogs, Podcasts, Statistics and Video Clips
. 1 Comment

Podlook_hanzi

Podlook

China Web2.0 Review points to recent statistics (originally translated by cwr, edited by me) from Jack Gu’s blog (Gu Shaofeng), founder of Chinese podcast aggregator Podlook. Gu notes that, despite the numbers below, he and other Chinese experts are seeing a plateau in terms of quality of content and number of listeners. "On the one hand," he writes, "there’s too little good, ongoing content.  And on the other, the mass audience doesn’t have enough of an attention span."

CWR adds context: Podlook is the largest podcasting directory in China.
Though a Podlook-based data analysis may not reflect the exact whole
picture of Chinese podosphere, and the development of Podlook’s
platform itself in [the last six] months also influences its findings and
conclusion, the report and data is still very useful and important for
us to understand Chinese podosphere.

1. In May 2006 there were over 33,000 podcasters [on Podlook], a 70%
growth compared with January 2006. The number of podcasts was nearly 145,000, nearly tripling during the same time period.

2.  Education and criticism genres are most popular, but most podcast content focuses on entertainment and personal life. 

2. 15.6% of podcasters produced at least 5 episodes, compared with less than 8% four months ago.

3. 22% of podcasts were video, up from 17% four months ago; 1% were Flash; 77% were audio.

4. About 23% of Podlook podcasts were aired at least 10 times, up 15% from four months ago; nearly 80% were aired less than 10 times.

5. Many new podcast hosting sites emerged in the period from January to May –
especially those which provide audio and/or video services.

6.  It’s unclear what the author means exactly, but it is said that "independent" podcasts are very popular, but very rare: less than 2% of the total. 

Get the stats (in Chinese) here.

Song Zude’s 宋祖德 nasty gossip blog: big on Sohu

Published
by
Lyn Jeffery
on May 16, 2006
in Blogs, Film, Portals, Statistics and Virtual China
. 1 Comment

Song_zude

While we are busy writing about Xu Jinglei’s blog knocking BoingBoing off the top spot at Technorati, bloghoo.Sohu.com puts Xu well below China’s really popular blogs–at least on Sohu, one of China’s top portals. Nydia Chen, who’s working with us at Virtual China this summer, will be doing a comparison of the top portals’ blogging ranks, so watch and wait!

Song Zude 宋祖德 is a wealthy mainland Chinese TV and film producer/director. He’s also the writer of Sohu’s No. 1 blog, which has received over 8 million hits since he started writing it in February of this year (as in, 4 months ago).  He describes himself as 18 years old "at heart," and loves nothing more than composing vicious critiques of popular Chinese stars (including Taiwan and Hong Kong). His posts are funny, mean, and full of juicy opinionated gossip.

For instance, in the last week alone he asks Zhang Ziyi if she isn’t ashamed for taking the mantle of "China’s first female star," when her English is probably worse than his own.  And he slams Taiwanese singer Zhang Huimei and singer/actress Yang Chenglin for being unpatriotic, stupid, and slutty. 

See a bit more about Song Zude’s "poison pen" here, at Danwei.

c2c

Published
by
Lyn Jeffery
on May 15, 2006
in Auctions, Commerce and Statistics
. 0 Comments

Cnnic_1

China Tech Stories alerts us to a new report from CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center 中国互联网络信息中心, and no, it doesn’t match the acronym): 2006 Chinese C2C Online Sales Survey. In other words, a snapshot of what’s going on with person-to-person direct sales over the Internet, through online auctions, in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou.  Highlights from press release (partly borrowing from Mao Xianjia’s translation at China Tech Stories):

  • by the end of March 2006 there were 2 million C2C online customers in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. Shanghai had the highest penetration rate of 18.5%, followed by Beijing with 17.5%, and Guangzhou with 11.5%.
  • Market share for the different auction sites in 2005 in the three cities, as calculated by number of purchasers and shopping frequency: Taobao is way ahead at 67.3%, eBay at 29.1%, Paipai 2.2% and Yipai 1.4%.
  • In 2005 there were about 7.4 million reported online transactions across Taobao, eBay, Paipai and Yipai, with about 4.25 transactions/person on Taobao and just over 3 transactions/person on eBay.
  • most frequently purchased items are apparel, cosmetics and jewelry,
    computers, mobile phones, appliances, and electronic card/virtual money, with fashion and IT products the frontrunners. [We'll have to track this to see if we can get more specific data on virtual money transactions.] 
  • In contrast to B2C stats, women buyers and sellers outnumbered men in buying apparel, cosmetics and jewelry, food and health products, daily supplies,
    toys and baby supplies, pets and pet supplies.

link to CNNIC report (in Chinese)
link to press release (in Chinese)

Cultural Artifact: An everlasting brand

Published
by
Jason Li
on May 14, 2006
in Meme
. 2 Comments

From a blog post on 霂 (drizzle):

060513_whiterabbit

"An everlasting brand: who hasn’t had one, who doesn’t love one?"

New route for publishing?

Published
by
Jason Li
on May 12, 2006
in Commerce
. 0 Comments

060512_jiaowo

EastSouthWestNorth reports on the publication of How Can I Not Slaughter You (叫我如何不宰你), a book about Shenzhen tour guides "slaughtering" tourists:

"This is an example of a business model in the Internet age.  First, one develops a concept for a book.  Under normal circumstances, it would be hard to find a publisher for a controversial proposal from an unknown writer.  So Wu Jingmin published the 90,000-word "How Can I Not Slaughter You" on his blog, and this was subsequently cross-posted in many forums and bulletin board systems.  By now, this lengthy book has received the hype (including a CCTV interview) and gotten the interests from the publishers.  Even though many people have read the book on the Internet, it is not easy to read a 90,000-word book on a computer monitor.  Thus, the printed book still has a market.  Besides, the mainstream media attention has also gotten him a previously unknown audience."

As was the case with the wuxia novel by the high school droput (blogged here), the internet’s being used to publicize and test the waters for a book that would otherwise be ignored.

Source: EastSouthWestNorth

Hong Kong is tougher: arrest of another file-sharer

Published
by
Lyn Jeffery
on May 11, 2006
in Government, Music and News
. 0 Comments

Customs_1Photo: The Standard, Friday May 12, 2006
link to article

It looks like Hong Kong is taking a different approach to filesharing than the rest of the mainland.

A 16 year old Hong Kong student was arrested yesterday by the Hong Kong Customs Anti-Internet Piracy Team for hosting and sharing 600 pirated songs and about 20 movies.  The maximum penalty is 4 years in prison. This, six months after what the Standard calls "the world’s first criminal
conviction of a movie uploader," when a Hong Kong man went to prison for 3 months for using BitTorrent.  Officials were tipped off by a complaint from the International
Federation of the Phonographic Industry, which represents the worldwide
recording industry.

The Standard reports he used "a high-speed data line and special software to convert his computer into a server." Xinhua says this was done "by means of a
"Dynamic IP Re-direction Service" provided by a U.S. website." The Standard goes on to report:

The Web site, which Tam said had been online for
about three months, asked other users to upload music onto the server
so that the Web master could organize the files and make them available
for download.

The offender used a data line that carried a
bandwidth of up to 100 megabytes per second - far stronger than a
standard home connection of about six or 10 megabytes per second.

After
discovering the Web site, investigators managed to successfully upload
and download copyrighted the material, mainly songs by local Cantopop
artists such as Justin, Janice Vidal and Eason Chan. They also found a
few local and Hollywood movies, including Brokeback Mountain.

According to the Shanghai Daily,
Hong Kong’s music and movie industries - among Asia’s most vibrant - have also stepped up their fight against pirates.
Companies in both industries have tracked down Internet addresses
where illegal file sharing is suspected of taking place and sought
court orders demanding Internet companies provide personal details
about the alleged offenders.

The Hong Kong record industry has reached legal settlements with at
least 16 people who allegedly uploaded music for illegal sharing.

(via p2p net)