Monthly Archive for November, 2006

A Day in the Life of a Second Life Millinonaire & MORE!

Published
by
Jason Li
on November 30, 2006
in Commerce and Games
. 0 Comments

Lyn pointed me to a BusinessWeek interview of Anshe Chung. (She’s based in Germany.) Here’s an excerpt I found particularly interesting:

"What do you do on a typical day?
I usually get up very early in morning, then get in touch with the sales team to finish transactions they prepared. After this is done and information is passed on to the billing department, I have to deal with many quality-control issues with the development teams. Then I also get in touch with Guni (my husband), who is managing our development team, discuss projects and the market situation of the day. I also spend a little too much time with media."

And something that’s dear to many of our hearts:

"To what do you attribute your success?
One reason for my success here, I strongly believe, is that I am not only here for business. I am very deeply rooted in this world, like a real native person. Most people who just come here for money fail miserably. They are foreigners, act like foreigners, and lack deep understanding of this virtual country. Many of them are also lazybones who think you just need money to make more money. The truly successful people I know here all are deeply involved in life and society here too."

Also, I did some digging around on the Anshe Chung Studios website and found this:

20061130_slqipao

ACS - Xian Reloaded QiPao - Design by June.

Update: check out the recent Q&A between Anshe and Stephen Hutcheon at the Sydney Morning Herald’s smh.com.  Of particular interest is how her studio in China will evolve given her ambitious scope:

The teacher
who is flipping virtual land in her spare time is two- year-old
news. Together with my husband I have built a business with more
than 30 employees that not only offers realtor services, but
literally grows the Second Life world from within. Anshe Chung
Studios has become a full-scale development company that creates
new land, content, communities and experiences for both private and
corporate customers on virtual platform worlds :-)

Since
I like teaching, one of these favourites is hiring and training
more and more people to do amazing things with us. There is still
much to do in the Metaverse, that Second Life is such an exciting
part of. We have barely begun yet :-)

Second Life’s First Millionaire based in Wuhan?

Published
by
Jason Li
on November 29, 2006
in Commerce and Games
. 3 Comments

20061129_chung

ESWN links to the Red Herring’s article on "Second Life’s First Millionaire." Bullet-point summary:

  • Anshe Chung has declared herself a "virtual millionaire," which I assume means she’s made a million US dollars on Second Life.
  • Anshe Chung, real name Ailin Graef runs Anshe Chung Studios with her husband.
  • Anshe was born & raised in Hubei.
  • The studio manages virtual real estate.
  • It has offices in Wuhan, and currently has less than 50 staff members.

So perhaps the title of this post is wrong. The surname Graef doesn’t exactly sound Chinese, so they may be headed elsewhere and merely have an office in China. However, the studio’s website design suggests otherwise, and the jobs section is a Hubei-based website.

43 places + food + China

Published
by
Jason Li
on November 28, 2006
in Food and Drink
. 2 Comments

20061128_dianping

大众点评网 ("The Masses Rates Web") allows viewers to vote on their favorite restaurants.

For example, pictured above is Hong Kong’s 许留山. It got 25 points for its food, 12 for environment, 15 for service and is priced at ￥32. You can bookmark requests, send them to friends, or rate them. And of course, you can add to the pages of comments already there!

Restaurants are categorized by food type as well as city, and if you’re a loyal user, you might make it onto the 食神榜 (God of Food Listing).

(The website seems to be expanding this restaurants sharing service to shopping, entertainment, etc as well, but right now, it defaults to restaurants.)

Thanks Ben Chen. Link here.

Chinese Surnames as Totems

Published
by
Jason Li
on November 27, 2006
in Art
. 0 Comments

20061118_totemnames

Drawing Chinese surnames as "totems."

Via PostShow, original post on 18摸 here.

Sunday Strip: 阿狸的故事

Published
by
Jason Li
on November 26, 2006
in Art
. 0 Comments

From a strip entitled 阿狸的故事 (Ali’s Story).

As always subtitles in red.

20061126_comicahli

Link to strip on Sina.
Link to author’s blog (where there are color, painted works of Ali).

From the BBS: 50 photos, 50 years of peasant life

Published
by
Lyn Jeffery
on November 25, 2006
in BBS, Blogs, History and Photos
. 3 Comments

A tour of 50 photos that "testify to the real life of the peasants over the last 50 years" has been put together by a blogger and reposted on Tianya BBS.  It’s got many great pictures, though unfortunately there are no specific dates or origins on them.  For instance:

Members of a people’s commune put on Mao buttons together

Mao_pins

Families in a people’s commune eating in communal dining hall

Great_leap_forward

Pool tables in a field: "I used to play when I was little," writes the author.  "It was 50 cents a game."

Pool_tables

peasant webs 2

Published
by
Lyn Jeffery
on November 22, 2006
in Commerce, Food and Drink, Government and Virtual China
. 1 Comment

Number two on a Baidu search for 农民网 is Jiangsu’s Modern Peasant 现代农民, a site run by the provincial committee for implementing a policy called "万名科技专家兴农富民工程" — can’t quite understand it, but something like "Scientific Experts Promoting Rural Wealth and Rural Projects."  It’s a government site listing current policies, meetings, and projects.  Not much human interest here.

The next is more interesting: Jintan Peasant is a site run by the city of Jintan, also in Jiangsu province.  Apparently the Jiangsu governmental apparatus has a strong web presence.  This is state internet at its most typical: articles lauding such-and-such a township for its enthusiastic work in doing the latest survey of rural incomes; the progress in implementing "modernized model villages"; the establishment of a committee on fruit varieties; work reports on the progress of establishing new villages and new rural education.  There are also analyses of production and consumption numbers for various agricultural products, such as mushrooms and edible fungi. Interesting for those trying to understand rural reforms, implementation of central government policies, on-the-ground agricultural data, and those with a general interest in Chinese political slogans.  The site had 365 visitors today.

Featured Ad from SPCA Hong Kong

Published
by
Jason Li
on November 22, 2006
in Art and Commerce
. 2 Comments

20061118_spcaad

"Does practical mean worth keeping?
Last year, 5,318 pets were abandoned.
Think twice before you get one."

Created for the SPCA (HK) by 香港奧美廣告, via Longyin Review.

get it while you can: Chinese website for downloading free, legal movies

Published
by
Lyn Jeffery
on November 21, 2006
in Film and Virtual China
. 2 Comments

Quacor_logo

(Via ChineseInternetResearch)       Quacor.com — "The world first website for copyright movie absolutely free!" launched last weekend in Beijing.  You can download everything from Minority Report to Pepsi commercials with Chinese basketball player Yao Ming, to a treasure of Chinese films. Since I can’t download yet (the old Mac problem, I suspect), I don’t know anything about the quality.  English-language films are likely to be sub-titled; Chinese language films are likely not to be, is my guess.

The top downloaded film so far is a Spanish porn flick, English title
"Depraved," [update: ok, maybe it's a soft porn horror film, with lesbians...I can't quite tell] which has been downloaded over 33,000 times since in the
last few days. 

Films are searchable (in Chinese) by actor, director, and genre (including something called "Internet movies," which in this context is a bit hard to parse). The site also has an array of Web2.0 features, such as a forum for sharing self-generated film and audio content, photos, even creating one’s own blog. 

You can download all of Jia Zhangke’s films, for instance, including the latest Still Life/《三峡好人》, about the submersion of an ancient Yangtze riverside town due to the Three Gorges Dam. The website provides reviews of the film, a timeline of Three Gorges construction, and more.  Still Life received the best film award at the Venice Film Festival this year. Now if they had subtitled English versions as well, this would be a great boost for Chinese film.

Quacor

I tried to download Still Life and got an error message: 

[IndexOutOfRangeException: 索引超出了数组界限。]   UIP.Web.web3.show.clip_play.Bind()   UIP.Web.web3.show.clip_play.Page_Load(Object sender, EventArgs e)   System.Web.UI.Control.OnLoad(EventArgs e) +67   System.Web.UI.Control.LoadRecursive() +35   System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain() +750

Blog influence on international media survey

Published
by
Jason Li
on November 20, 2006
in Blogs
. 0 Comments

From RConversation, referring to blogs influencing mainstream international media:

"So. It’s time to gather some comprehensive data about just how journalistically influential the Sino-blogosphere has become. 

Want to help me out?"

She wants:

  • to survey how much journalists use blogs for story research.
  • for blogger’s "concrete examples you might have of how specific blogs appear to have
    influenced foreign (i.e. non-PRC) media coverage on specific
    China-related stories."

Go help out now!
Via ESWN.