Monthly Archive for August, 2007

So what’s Baidu been up to?

Published
by
Jason Li
on August 10, 2007
in Education, Portals and Search
. 5 Comments

This caught my eye when I was writing that Google post the other day, and I couldn’t resist:

Baidukids

Baidu 少儿, or Baidu Kids, is beautifully done and reflects Baidu’s understanding of the Chinese market. When I was doing fieldwork in Beijing last summer, one of the teachers we interviewed said that some Grade 1 homework assignments involved running internet searches and bringing some results to class. And there is nothing better than a safe search engine for that end. (The only problem would be convincing kids to goto the Kids site.)

The first row of links (the golden paw buttons above) are: Study English, Play Games, Science Knowledge, Child Songs, Cartoons, Parents’ Links. The first link on the top left being "Study English" again reflects an understanding, this time of the parents’ wishes.

I may be reading too much into this though, since it’s only a beta section, and their "understanding" might have come out of luck rather than strategic planning.

Go see the site for yourself.

P.S. Baidu’s also been up to other things, mainly in the converging mobile and web realms. See China Web 2.0 Review’s post about their new call-in search service (powered by real human operators).

What Google’s China HQ has been up to…

Published
by
Jason Li
on August 8, 2007
in Commerce, Portals, Translation and Web 2.0c
. 1 Comment

A gander at the China version of Google Labs reveals several "new" projects:

  • Google’s Windows app for pinyin input:

    Pinyin_demo

  • A Life (生活) search, which includes categories such as train tickets, food, work, and housing.

  • A Navigation (导航) portal, which serves a giant page of text links. Nothing new by any means.

  • A "Hot Charts" (热榜) section, which categorizes top search results the same way Baidu does in its "Wind Cloud Charts" (风云榜).

  • Within the charts section though, is a banner for a Google-CCTV co-production: "Google and CCTV-2 co-planned "Qing Guo Qing Cheng, A program to present China’s most popular cities to the world".

    Googlecctv

    The Google part of the site seems to be devoted to search results on certain cities and various related photos, charts and graphs.

    Note the prominence of Google next to CCTV in the above banner.

    Over on the CCTV site for the show (it seems like the city promotion is a TV show), the main banner focuses on CCTV & TsingTao:

    Cctvtsingtao

    With Google + CCTV on a small banner below. And it seems to suggest Google is responsible for its global outreach efforts. Doesn’t seem that impressive after all, huh?

More importantly though, stay tuned this week, for what Baidu’s been up to recently, and you can decide who’s coming out on top :)

Prison Break, Chinese fan art

Published
by
Lyn Jeffery
on August 3, 2007
in BBS, Television, Translation and Video Clips
. 1 Comment

Prison_break

I can’t say much about other countries, but young people in China’s and India’s cities loooove the Fox TV show Prison Break.  On the advice of a friendly DVD shop salesman in Beijing (who, incidentally, hated 24 and loved the Sopranos), we bought the first two seasons this summer in China and began watching.  We were hooked.  Who knew that Fox was enlisting the young urban elites of India and China in a giant conspiracy theory about the U.S. government that lots of them now half-believe…

You may have read about the amateur translation collectives who can translate and subtitle a new Prison Break episode within 4 hours of its broadcast in the U.S..  The Chinese PB fansite is here, and it has all kinds of fan art and miscellania such as Prison Break t-shirts for 55 RMB; video clip of Wentworth Miller’s appearance on Ellen DeGeneres’ talk show, with Chinese subtitles, for your cellphone; photo of a Chinese student abroad who met the actor who played Mr. Kim.

The site of course has a discussion forum with a special section on original works 原创剧场. There you can find a short story imagining Michael Scofield’s first experience of Sona in the first episode of Season 3 (which begins in the fall), as well as an MV, or music video, done by a Chinese fan, which puts scenes from Prison Break against music.  There are tons of these on Youtube made by viewers from all over the world, but if you’ve watched the show you’ll appreciate the utter bizarreness of the words to this sugary sweet English-language ballad (original version by SuperGirl 3rd place winner Zhang Liangying), set to pictures of mortal enemies, scenes of sadism and torture, murder, and the occasional romantic moment of conjugal visits in prison and kisses between long lost lovers. Link.

what’s on Sina BBS photos: girls, goofs, and social injustice

Published
by
Lyn Jeffery
on August 2, 2007
in Uncategorized
. 3 Comments

I like to check in every now and then at Sina’s best photo posts to see what’s "hot."  You can often find stories here that end up being circulated around the web, such as the video of the students abusing the teacher.  Most of the popular photo posts are about girls, such as this game that begins with a picture of a topless woman, and funny pictures, such as these photos of post-flood waterskiing in Moscow or "after we cut the watermelon open we felt like crying."

Watermelon

For me the most interesting posts are those which discuss some kind of tension or problem or issue in Chinese society, where you can get a good sense of a wide range of opinions that are allowed to be posted in comments.  Some of them seem to be put on the best-of list even though they might not actually be the most popular, but because they highlight some kind of social issue that Sina’s censors think is important. But you can also see how Chinese are using the Internet to give voice to strong, strong feelings on inequalities and corruption, especially when it comes to the poor, weak, or old.  Today there’s a photo post that raises the issue of maternal sacrifice, a topic that has a long history in China, dating back at least to Confucian notions of filial piety and womanly virtue. 

Great Mother! Great Son! Bow to This If You’re Chinese! was posted on Feb. 16, 2007, and has 269 comments and over 46,000 pageviews.  Not that much, really, for being posted so long ago, but it’s still flagged as "hot."  I guess it still continues to get new comments. 

This is a picture of a mother who has lost her only son and is returning to visit his grave!  Her son was sacrificed while carrying out his duties for the country. He is classified as a martyr!!  A real Chinese soldier. We are your sons!!!

Great_mother_bbs

Selected comments from readers:

She gave her son to the country, but is the country taking care of his mother for the son??

China is not like the U.S..  After your death you get called a "martyr" but aside from that there’s nothing else.

It’s true.  I hope the elderly woman is doing well.

On behalf of all of those Chinese who have served in the military, I offer my respects to her.

My great country, what have you done for this great mother?

Mother, you are our mother!  Don’t be sad!

If it were possible to contact this mother I would do my best to use practical actions to help her, and it wouldn’t end by just expressing my respects.