An exploration of virtual experiences and environments in and about China.
A small shack, primitively built, on the corner of a road in Shanghai, surrounded by high-rise development. Owned by a strong old woman, patronized by night-time drivers.
update: ding zi hu (lit. "nail house"): person or household who refuses to move and bargains for unreasonably high compensation when the land is requisitioned for a construction project.
[Update: For more on the ongoing nailhouse incident in Chongqing see here and here.]
Via PostShow via HoopChina forums.
语录中国, Quotable China (or to be precise,Recording the Quotes of China), is a website that collects interesting quotes by various peoples, including 鲁迅 LuXun, keso, and 老白 (random old guy). Here’s what 老白 (random old guy) had to say about GFW:
"’The future is unknown.’ Technorati’s death, Google’s ‘continuous resets’, all reveal to me the confidence of being a Chinese IT worker."
Link to site, link to source of quote (thanks zhwj!).
Via PostShow.
Spring Festival is a month away, but apparently the whole issue of getting home for the festival is a big one for QQ readers–and lots of students are traveling home soon. QQ BBS editors put out a request about a week ago asking people to send in their Spring Festival travel (Chunyun) 春运 stories from now until 1/25–and since a lot of the actual travel won’t have taken place by then, what they really are talking about is stories of what it takes to arrange for transport home. As Wikipedia notes:
The high traffic load usually begins 15 days before the Lunar New Year,
and lasts for around 40 days. This period is also called Spring Festival travel season, or Chunyun period. The number of passengers during the Chunyun period has exceeded the population of China, hitting the 2-billion mark in 2006.
The best posts will be placed on the QQ BBS news page.
A few responses from readers:
Spring Festival travel is a worry for poor people–what is there to share here? Have you been to the train stations and had a look?
I’m a student, and our school didn’t manage to get tickets for us. I went and lined up myself for over 2 hours, and then all I could get was a standing-room ticket! For a more than 20 hour trip! Tomorrow I’ll be going home–I don’t dare think of it!
I wasn’t able to get a ticket, at any rate.
I don’t know how to go home, I don’t have enough money?
A Molive/Moobol story (which, incidentally, was in the top 3 photo-sharing sites in 2006 in China–I prefer it to Tudou and Yoqoo, actually). Even as poor people (mostly from the countryside) are discriminated against in the cities, as the gap between rich and poor widens to an extent not seen since before the Chinese Communist Party took power in 1949, there is a widespread, deep sentimental affection for the poor in China.
These kinds of stories show up often in online stories from the mainland, much more than I see them on American sites, and are also a common feature of Chinese television. One nurse I interviewed in Sichuan last year said that farmers without money to take care of sickness, and with no support coming from the government, could as a last resort go to the media and appeal to the public.
The Hard Life of a Father and Son, Taken on the Side of the Road (Molive tags: father, beggar, on-the-spot photos, moving, disabled, street, lower-class, son, pitiable)
I came upon a father and son one day on the street. Normally I might not pay attention to this kind of roadside beggar because I always felt that most of them were frauds…But today I was having a smoke and waiting for a friend, and I observed them for quite a while. At last I felt moved, and took some photos. I don’t know why, but the father’s hands were disabled. I think the child was sick, and even though Dad had no hands, he used his arms quite proficiently to mix medicine for the boy and feed it to him. Then he organized the child’s clothes. A well meaning passerby gave the boy 2 yuan and the child took it shyly. The father called from the side, "Hurry, thank the uncle!" After taking the money the child was still uncomfortable, while his father stood to one aside with a simple and honest smile. Then, even though he had no hands, the father washed his son’s face. After I took the pictures I felt bad, put out my cigarette, and gave the little boy 10 yuan before leaving.
Tuangou teambuying website China NetCrowd 中国网众 has a special "NetCrowd Oscars" page, which allows users to vote (of course…everything does today, doesn’t it?) on the best tuangou experiences of 2006, that were organized by NetCrowd. If you are interested in getting a sense of what a tuangou trip actually looks like, even if you don’t speak Chinese, go to the page and click on one of the photos that form a column in the middle of the page. Some of the crowd shots start to give a sense of the group shopping experience–kind of like a shopping tour really, complete with activities and prizes.
Looks like the big news is that Sohu is no longer in the top 3 portals in China, but has been knocked out by Tencent. 55% of Chinese Internet users used Sina last year; 51% hit Netease; 48% used Tencent, according to the Internet Guide 2007 China Internet Survey Report (in Chinese), put out by the Data Center of the Chinese Internet. The rest of the top three rankings as follows:
blog sites: Sina 33%; Qzone 19%; MSN 16%
IM: QQ 79%; MSN 34%; Sina UC 11%
search: Baidu 81%; Google 36%; Yahoo 26%
car sites: Sina Auto 17%; Sohu Auto 12%; Pacific Auto 11%
games: QQ 37%; Lianqun/Ourgame 20%; Shanda 20%
podcast/video sharing: Toodou 10%; Yoqoo 9%; Mofile 9%
C2C auctions: Taobao 55%; eBay 37%; Paipai 20%
mapping services: Baidu 33%; China e-Map 中国电子地图网 19%; Go2Map 图行天下 11%
Link to Chinese BBS post (via TOPChinaLabs).
Check out Baidu Zhidao/Baidu Knows Knowledge’s 2006 top ten questions list. They’ve divided it into four different kinds of questions and provided access to the most commonly asked questions as well as their answers. If you care to browse in Chinese, all the answers are rated by readers and commented upon. Here is a very rough translation of the top 10 questions, and some of the text around them on Baidu. Kind of hard to translate, for some reason.
Each year’s Zeitgeist ranking contains questions about the unknown. The individual seems so tiny when compared with the huge, complicated world. All that is unsolvable and confusing can be turned into a series of questions that many people would rather bring to a search engine than communicate with a real person…
As for the 4 different kinds of questions asked here, "why" is looking for reasons, "how" is searching for a method to do something, "what" is looking for definitions, "should I" is looking for the answer to a choice.
What is search? One word: looking for “找”. Looking for the answer to questions, is search. Getting on a search engine to search the answer to questions is also looking for. But one can always try Baidu Knowledge Zhidao/Baidu Knows 百度知道. These common questions show up with great frequency and have all sorts of answers. The way to look for them is simple: type out your question, hit Enter.
Top 10 "Why" 为什么 questions:
1. Why did they go on the Long March?
2. Why are we alive?
3. Why do we need to drink water?
4. Why can’t I open this page/link?
5. Why does my hair fall out?
6. Why can’t I get online?
7. Why do we love? (misleading: it’s part of a song title, "Why can’t lovers be together?")
8. Why study?
9. Why take part in exams?
10. Why get married?
Top Ten "How" 如何 questions:
1. How to lose weight?
2. How to reset a system?
3. How to make money?
4. How to get pregnant?
5. How to build a harmonious society?
6. How to innovate start a business 创业?
7. How to put on make-up?
8. How to kiss?
9. How to trade stocks?
10. How to get plastic surgery?
Top 10 "What Is" 什么是 Questions:
1. What is love?
2. What is the Long March spirit?
3. What is a blog?
4. What is dual-core?
5. What is 3G?
6. What is harmonious society?
7. What are futures? (stocks)
8. What is a trojan horse? (software)
9. What is happiness?
10. What is an ecosystem?
Top 10 "Should I" 要不要 Questions:
1. Should I read the classics?
2. Should I continue living? (title to a song)
3. Should a computer write? (?) Should people with computers keep writing characters by hand?
4. Should I take part in exams?
5. Should I join the Party?
6. Should I have a child?
7. Should we abolish the death penalty?
8. Should I see an Internet friend in person?
9. Should I get married?
10. Should I buy a house?
Big news from the Chinese hardware developer community: the release of several hundred Loongson boxes, Fulong mini-PCs produced by the Chinese company Lemote Technology Corporation, which are powered by the Chinese-developed Loongson 2E processor. The Loongson boxes are now in the hands of several hundred die-hard programmers in Guiyang, Chengdu, Shanghai, and other big cities, according to an article tagged at Donews. The happy new users are talking up a storm at Lemote’s BBS (in Chinese).
According to Wikipedia, what’s especially notable is that the Loongson
chip is relatively powerful and uses relatively little energy. [Update: Glyn Moody at the Open blog says what's important about this is: [First], the chip was designed and made entirely in China, making
the country independent of Western chipmakers; and [secondly], as
a non-standard chip architecture, the new chip can’t run Windows.
Which, means, almost inevitably, that it runs GNU/Linux. If China wants
to be truly independent, free software is the quickest and easiest way
to do it.]
"ubuntpku", from Beijing University, has a couple of blogs called "My CPU is Loongson (Godson)!!!" here and here on the whole thing, where he writes:
On Dec 8, 2006, Lemote has decided who will be owners of the first 100 Fulong mini-PC. I am one of the lucky users. Fulong
Mini-PC is also generally called "Lemote Box" or Loongson Box.
"Lemote", meaning "the dream of Loong", is the manufacturer and "Box"
is refered to its size, 18 x 14 x 3.7cm.
The
CPU of Lemote Box is China-made Loongson (originally called "Godson")
2E 666MHz. Although the frequency is low but it actually performs
better than PentiumIII. The Loongson CPU is a 64-bit MIPS III RISC
processor. Unlike x86 CPUs, it works under only 5-7W power(4.07W in
recent test), a small fraction of AMD or Intel products which generally
need several dozens of Watts.
Main
memory and HDD for Lemote Box are those formerly designed for laptops,
so the total power consumption is very small. Lemote Boxes may be the
best choice for citizens who would like to protect environment of our
Earth.
The first
batch released includes 1000 Lemote Boxes in all, 400 of which for
co-operative enterprises and 600 for Loongson fans. All of them are
used mainly for a testing purpose. Lemote said that they hope every
user who get a Lemote box help in developing Loongson products.
and here:
Actual performance of the China-made
CPU, Loongson, is still in question. Many(maybe a majority of) Chinese
themselves don’t think Loongson can catch up or just somehow
competitive with Intel or AMD one day in the future. Rationality is not
flooded by patriotism in this case. "Too slow! Pentium III 667 came out
many years ago!" A customer said when a reporter ask him if he would
choose Loongson.
Ubuntpku has also posted a series of fairly detailed video demonstrations of the box on Youtube–thanks ubuntpku! Clearly the Loongson CPU/Lemote box have an enthusiastic fan base on the mainland. Folks like ubuntpku have been documenting the progress of the little box. (I couldn’t resist the blog post and photo below — doesn’t it look like something from the TV show Lost?)
Caption: According to the Official BBS of
Lemote, software developers finished transplantation of RV decoding on
Loongson CPU on Dec 15, 2006. Now MPlayer can play video in RMVB format.
Wikipedia introduces, "Huang Shan (黄山; literally Yellow Mountain) is a mountain range in southern Anhui province in eastern China. The area is very famous for its scenic beauty…"
First up, on the outskirts of the 古村 （Old/Ancient Village)，宏村 (HongCun)：
Inside: computers and desks and kids. The usual.
Next up, in a more urban 老街 (Old Street) in 黄山:
(Didn’t have a chance to check this one out.)5
Not a conclusive guide or anything, but I was pleasantly surprised to find one in a 古村.
I’ve been trying to follow the development of China’s IPv6 network, dubbed China Next Generation Internet (CNGI). Background can be found in this earlier post. Basically, the CNGI is a bold 5 year plan by Chinese leaders (specifically, the National Development and
Reform Commission (NDRC)) to leapfrog Chinese researchers, businesses, and technologies ahead of current Internet standards and infrastructure by 2009. Recent news from the IPv6 Portal Newsroom:
In early November one of the fastest links in the world was established between Beijing and Tianjin, as part of the CERNET2 (China Education and Research Network), an infrastructure linking China’s top universities and research institutions. The link delivers 40 Gigabits per second.
For more detailed info, read this Asian Internet.com article, which reports that Juniper Networks routers are being deployed. According to a Juniper spokesperson,
"40G is currently the fastest generally available networking interface, so
it would be safe to say this is the fastest link in China," Hayes said.
"While it is of course always possible that there may be other 40G Links
that nobody is talking about, neither we nor CERNET know of any others in
production in China, and we have searched and asked.
"In the world, there are likely a small number of others (but not many) as
fast, but there would not be anything faster."
Additionally, CERNET is piloting a Wi-Fi initiative with the IPv6 network on 3 Chinese campuses and will be using Motorola’s HotZone Duo. It will be very interesting to see how wireless access to such a highspeed network will change study, research, and communication practices. As a Motorola press release says:
CERNET's deployment of HotZone Duo will allow teachers, studentsand researchers ubiquitous wireless access to online courses, research,educational tools and a breadth of communication possibilities fromanywhere on campus.
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