From a
strip entitled 仔仔龍 (ZaiZai Long, or, Little Dragon).
As always, translations in maroon:
Link to original comic on sina.
Monthly Archive for July, 2006
In case you haven’t seen it yet, Roland Soong of ESWN has posted the paper he recently presented at the Fourth Chinese Internet Research Conference: China’s Internet and Chinese Culture, July 21-22, 2006, in Singapore. The paper is a crystallization of the thinking and practices behind his blog–one of the most effective Chinese/English sensemaking spaces on the web. As Soong notes, beyond the specific content of the blog, what’s potentially transformative is the ESWN model of translating and contextualizing popular issues that would otherwise remain "invisible" to the non-Chinese speaking world.
As for the larger goal of re-dressing the overall imbalance between Chinese-language
and English-language news on China, it is beyond the capability of a single citizen. However, this blog seemed to have raised the awareness for this particular model. If there are dozens or even hundreds similar blogs run by individual citizens like this one, there will be a social transformation, both in
transnational understanding and media culture.
The scale and scope of the ESWN model is one that that many can aspire to but few can truly emulate, however, due to lack of skills and time. Soong is a professional media analyst, and a skilled translator, with a prodigious daily reading schedule:
In Hong Kong, I wake up in the morning and I have eight online newspapers to read, covering the entire political spectrum. Every week, I read Next Magazine, Eastweek Magazine and Ming Pao Weekly. That is just for Hong Kong alone. For mainland China and Taiwan, I use the news aggregators such as Yahoo!
because there are thousands of online news sources. Then I check the Chinese forums such as Tianya Club, MOP, KDNet and Xici Hutong to pick up the happenings that do not make it onto the mainstream media. Finally, I check the overseas Chinese websites such as Boxun and
ChineseNewsNet for stories that are censored inside China.
Headline reads:
"SHUANG-A!
The most shuang* video recomendations every day.
Ensuring that after a hard day’s work, you will still have a beautiful smile."
* shuang = happy, cheerful; refreshing
And today’s recommendation, a MTV trailer from the newly acclaimed (Mainland) Chinese film, 疯狂的石头!
Tropical Storm Bilis hit southern China over the weekend, killing over 200 people, flooding major
cities, sweeping away houses and cutting railways, power and water supplies. The BBS forums are full of first person reports and comments on the effects of the storm, as well as evaluations of offical responses. You can clearly see how the BBS is acting as a space to trade concrete news about the status of specific areas, as well as about how to help those in need.
A few examples:
Daqi BBS reposted a Xilu BBS post titled "Bilis casualties not seen in the domestic media", which shows 3 photos from Getty Images Editorial, complete with watermarks. Interesting that some Chinese are using services like Getty Images to find out about breaking news through photos that might not appear in the Chinese media.
An earlier July 17 Daqi post has many photos of the flooding in Guangdong’s Shaoguan and Lechang including this one from Phoenix TV:
Excerpts from the comments:
This happens once every four years, which means four years’ time to prepare. That’s proof that the water management engineering is incomplete. A big flood is great–the officials can not only express great love for the people but also spend lots of government funds, they can not only receive people’s gratitude but also make lots of false accident reports…
[July 18] Several continuous days of storming, I went back and checked the text messages I’ve gotten during this time: 1) July 15 noon, from Shaoguan Electricity Bureau; 2) July 16 noon, from Shaoguan Third Defense; 3)July 17 10 a.m., from Shaoguan Tourism Association; 4) July 17 7 p.m., from Shaoguan Public Security Bureau; 5) July 17 7 p.m., from Municipal Party Committee. Don’t tell me that there wasn’t any news before the water invaded? This is a serious dereliction of duty on the part of the city government! What are the leaders doing? Resting over the weekend? This time we’ve clearly seen the level of Shaoguan city leaders–they’re good at talking on paper but when they knew that the flood was coming they did not make the necessary preparations. They didn’t even protect important places like the water works. And they didn’t appear beforehand to announce the truth to the people. Most of the news this time came from the Internet.
What are you making noise about? Lechang isn’t Indonesia! [this is a rare negative comment]
[July 19] The first thing I’m going to do to take action against the tragedy is to repair and clean my and my friends and neighbors’ homes. You have to rely on yourself for these kinds of things. Others help has its limits.
[July 19] It’s not cold outside now–is there enough food and water?
Everyone can go here for more news about Lechang.
Reporting from Beijing. A CNC street ad, featuring their tech support:
Stock market analysis site Seeking Alpha’s China section has a summary of research on Chinese blogs done by China Market Research, a group in Shanghai. CMR estimates that 80% of Chinese online urban youth 18-25 (50 million people) are actively blogging OR participating in BBS. Add in another 25 million between the ages of 25-35 and you’ve got 75 million creating a vibrant — and expanding — online public sphere.
Note that of the major blog portals, only two (blogcn and bokee) are blogging-specific sites. The CMR article points out that Sina and Sohu only launched blog applications late last year but have quickly leveled with more established blog portals. The existence of multiple blogging and BBS portals with different economic and political positioning allows room for a variety of editorial decisions about what will be published online. In other words, Virtual China is an unprecedented domain for the creation and dissemination of diverse voices.
(via Helen Wang’s Across the Pacific)
It’s not surprising that one of the easiest and most interesting ways for most non-Chinese speaking people to experience Virtual China is through images. We’ve talked about ziboy, one of the oldest and best known Chinese photoblogs, here before. Today I came across Photoblog China, an aggregator site with links to over 800 photoblogs. They are all searchable (in Chinese) by popularity, city, province, and keyword. Fantastic stuff if you have some time to poke around.
The most popular on the list belongs to ToughSpoon and 22, a Beijing couple (I’m guessing) who enjoy photography and have some beautiful shots. Looks like they recently took a trip to one of the most magical places in the world — the lesser known tombs in the Ming Tomb area outside of Beijing. The photos bring you right there.
Most of the blogs are from Beijing (178), Shanghai (55) and Guangzhou (42); but there are also entries from all over China, such as northwestern Lanzhou (7), northeastern Changchun (5), and Hainan Island’s Haikou (3). Here’s a shot from Ye Fei’s blog, one of 9 from Inner Mongolia.
What I predict will be the next video-meme in virtual china: 中国队勇夺世界杯冠军 (China Wins the World Cup), uploaded to Toodou by digitalput@. This great video montage of movies and World Cup scenes sarcastically recounts the fictional victory of China in the 2006 World Cup.
Link to full 19-minute video on Toudou.
SPOILER: Video montage includes a victory over Japan, a mockery of their inadmission of defeat, and an innovative use of a 10-0-0 lineup.
Link from: The Lost City–Atlantis City 亚特兰蒂斯之城.
The phenomenon is known as "小胖" (Little Fatty). Forum posts about it go
as far back as 2003, but it still manages to pop up here and there.
First there was a photograph from an unknown source:
Then came the photoshop spoofs! For example:
And:
For more great photoshop glory, check out this article on Sina.
Speaking of long-lasting net-memes (the "meme" term being loosely employed here), 芙蓉姐姐 (Ms. FuRong) is still second in Baidu’s most popular people searched for list, with famous football commentator (Mr. Huang, blogged about here) coming in first.
Thanks to Le Monde’s Quand la Chine déblogue for reminding me to blog about it.
From a strip entitled 傻妹子日記 (Diary of a Silly Little Girl). I’ve only translated the first panel, which I feel is pretty representative of the entire strip.
As always, translations in maroon:
Link to original comic on sina.
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