:: this week’s Friday 5 takes a second look at Chinese journalists who blog. The individuals profiled here are all quite popular on the Chinese Internet, some because of the reporting they’ve done in the line of work, and others because of their online activities. Their blogs involve journalism and media to varying degrees; it’s interesting to see how much of their own lives and outside interests they bring to the massive online readership they command. Journalists also take advantage of the more open (yet still censored) online environment to post things that might not be able to make it into print.
sports ::
Dong Lu (董路) was once the host of Beijing TV sports programs and remains an extremely prolific and well-known soccer journalist. His blog posts on Sina get page views in the tens of thousands. He comments on international and domestic football but often strays into other sports, as in a popular post titled “Yao Ming, China is calling you home for dinner!” (a play on the Jia Junpeng Chinese Internet meme mentioned in a previous Friday 5) that has been viewed 70,567 times. Dong Lu is a fan of posting videos to his blog: sometimes entertainment news, such as this discussion of Pan Changjiang (潘长江), a TV actor famous for his peasant roles, his unusually beautiful daughter, and the TV program they have together. There are also some more personal, moving posts about his daughter starting school, and a video of his daughter dancing in front of a KFC. Popular CCTV sports journalist Zhang Bin (张斌) started his career in soccer. Now the deputy director of the CCTV Sports department as well as producer for some of their primary soccer shows, Zhang achieved fame after graduating from Renmin University in 1991, going on to host Soccer Night (足球之夜) on CCTV as well as special sport shows during EURO 2000, also on CCTV. Zhang Bin keeps a blog on Sohu called CCTV-ZhangBin, with page views in the tens of thousands. A recent post on Liu Xiang (刘翔) in which he argued that China’s star hurdler should keep running if he is passionate about sport, received 30,000 page views. Zhang Bin keeps mostly to sports-related topics on his blog. In another recent post, he pondered on whether Caster Semenya, the South African 800-meter gold medalist, was male or female. Zhang Bin is often perceived as a model Sports anchor: friendly and kind. This is reinforced by a public announcement on his blog about drinking up all the contents of a mineral water bottle rather than wasting water by throwing it away half-finished. However, Zhang is also somewhat notorious for a public marital spat in which his wife. Hu Ziwei, another well-known television personality, crashed a live CCTV broadcast to accuse him of having an affair.
arts / Entertainment ::
Meng Jing (孟静) is a senior reporter for the news weekly Sanlian Life Week (三联生活周刊) who is well-known for her celebrity profiles and interviews. Her blog, which she updates in periodic bursts, follows her work fairly closely. She writes about the practice of journalism (as in one recent post on the uncomfortable necessity of flattering an interview subject), and posts intriguing snippets of interviews that didn’t make it to print. However, her interests range widely, from feminism to groan-worthy jokes. Yuan Lei (袁蕾), who blogs under the name Milk Pig (奶猪), is often called the southern counterpart of Meng Jing. Yuan, who writes for the culture section of Southern Weekly (南方周末), is a keen-eyed interviewer in her day job. Her blog is considerably less formal, and employs a curious writing style that approximates a sort of girlish tone through the use of character substitutions and odd vocabulary choices. Ahead of the publication of major interviews, she’ll often present pull-quotes or teasers, and she also puts up interesting observations and anecdotes that may not amount to proper news stories (such as an account of a telephone scam). Other posts are devoted to media and policy rumors and wry comments on spiked stories, but the cutesy language distances her from other journalists who trade cynical comments about media and politics. Lately there have been quite a few photos of her dog.
columnist ::
Chang Ping (长平 real name Zhang Ping 张平) is a journalist who has served as director of the news department of the prestigious Southern Weekly and as the deputy editor of Southern Metropolis Weekly (南都周刊) but was forced out from his editorial position after publishing “sensitive” editorials around the time of the Lhasa riots last March. Chang Ping has abandoned blogs on Tianya, Sina, and iFeng because of frequent deletions by blog administrators, and opened a blog on an independent domain. Most recently, Chang Ping blogged about the Kunming prostitution case, before “technical problems” took the blog down for three months before August. Thanks to Isaac Mao and Zuola (Chinese Internet insider and citizen blogger respectively; see theseinterviews from the CNBloggercon), it is active once again. Chang Ping has an active Twitter account as well as a column on the FT Chinese website where he writes about issues such as civic society. Xiong Peiyun (熊培云) is a European correspondent for the newsweekly Window of the South (南风窗) and a senior commentator at The Beijing News (新京报). This year he launched a new group commentary blog, 21Pinglun to replace his personal blog la république d’esprits which is blocked on the Chinese mainland. Posts concern a wide range of subjects, with a particular emphasis on rural issues (which Xiong occasionally writes about for the magazine and other media outlets). Xiong recently wrote about Internet Addictive Disorder and shock treatment, referencing the Ludovico Treatment from A Clockwork Orange. Much of the content consists of reposts of op-eds originally published elsewhere, with deleted portions restored in many cases, a common practice on blogs kept by print media columnists.
business :: Apart from his day job as a host and anchor for various TV programs on CCTV’s international and business channels, Rui Chenggang (芮成钢) is also a blogger who keeps a high-traffic, influential blog where he regularly posts photographs in which he stands shoulder-to-shoulder with his world leader interviewees who usually have his book in their hands (former British prime minister Tony Blair, for example). With his established career in the media, his young, energetic screen image and good looks, Rui is idolized by numerous young students, who see him as a mentor and role model. His international outlook and rare fluency in English among his state media colleagues earns him the title of best qualified candidate for China’s ambassador to the world among some Westerners. However, Rui has no shortage of critics. He has been called an egotistic self-promoter, an unprofessional journalist who has overstepped the boundaries of his field by playing economist, a dyed-in-the-wool nationalist for his crusade to drive Starbucks out of the Forbidden City in 2007, and a propaganda mouthpiece for the government. Recently, Rui stoked controversy again with his questions to American president Obama at the G20 summit in London. After writer, car racer and blogger Han Han posted Rui’s questions and Obama’s answers in both English and Chinese on his blog below characteristically sarcastic comments, the topic was picked up by other netizens and heatedly discussed in various forums. Most netizens found Rui’s wording “on behalf of China” and “on behalf of the World” an inappropriate expression of a typically condescending attitude of the Chinese government toward the Chinese people. Rui’s upbeat blog post about his performance at the Summit only exacerbated netizen ire and heaped more ridicule upon him.
society :: Chai Jing (柴静), a television journalist with CCTV’s News Investigation program, resumed blogging this year after a lengthy hiatus. Chai is conscious of the possibilities of her blog as an interactive platform, typically using videos of her programs as a prompt for readers to discuss the key issues at hand. She then responds to netizen questions. In two recent posts, she explained her view of the comments section and her moderation practices. Other posts address the practice of journalism in general, like a recent selection of excerpts from a Walter Cronkite book. Chai’s high profile, accentuated in the past month by her involvement in the exposé of shock therapy clinics for Internet addiction, means that she’s sometimes the target of nasty rumors. She recently had to fight back at online rumors that she had been arrested for accepting bribes in return for providing CCTV advertising spots to a Chongqing textile mill. Chai also occasionally contributes to Xiong Peiyun’s 21Pinglun (as in this anecdote about gentrification and cultural heritage). Wang Keqin (王克勤), a journalist with the China Economic Times (中国经济时报), has been called China’s chief anti-corruption journalist for exposing “the dark side of society.” Wang is unique in working up to a story to post on his blog, probably with the knowledge that the full version will not be published in print. For example, he tried to visit Deng Yujiao in June, when she was released from a trial centering on the murder of two officials in Hubei province. She was acquitted on self-defense grounds (she had stabbed the two after they tried to sexually harass her), but Chinese and Western media were prevented from visiting her at home. Wang’s record of his futile efforts to get there has since been taken down by Sohu, but is available in a reposted version. Wang’s accounts of his journalistic activities end up widely reposted: another account of violent attempted visit, this time to to the family of blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng (陈光城), was cross-posted to liberal blog service my1510 by Zhai Minglei (翟明磊), who is also a well-known muckracker (See this interview from the CNBloggercon). Wang is sometimes called China’s Lincoln Steffens as a salute to his muckraking tendencies. A list of his articles up to 2006 is collated at the China Elections and Governance Chinese website.
// AjS
[Friday 5 is the product of my work for Edelman Digital (China). Link here for the full Friday 5 archive. If you'd like to be added to the bilingual (English & Chinese) Friday 5 email distribution list, please send me an email at: adam DOT schokora AT edelman DOT com.]
经济 :: 芮成刚是央视的国际频道和经济频道的主播，同时他有着很大流量的博客在互联网上也很有影响力。芮经常在自己的博客上发表自己与世界各国领导人比肩而立的合影，而这些领导人的手里往往会拿一本芮自己新出版的著作（例如与英国前首相托尼.布莱尔的合影）。年纪轻轻就在媒体界获得如此成功，又兼具英俊潇洒的气质的芮成刚是无数少男少女的偶像；在不少年轻学子眼中，芮是他们的导师兼榜样。他流利的英文在自己同行中更是凤毛麟角，因此被一些国外人士认为是中国形象大使的最佳人选。然而，对芮成刚的鄙夷之声也不绝于耳：他被视作一个自我炒作的作秀高手，一个跨越界限试图扮演一个经济学家的不称职记者，一个在领导了07年从故宫驱逐星巴克的极端民族主义者。最近，芮又因自己在伦敦G20上对美国总统奥巴马的提问而再惹争议。作家/赛车手/博客韩寒首先发难，在自己的博客上中英文双语全文刊发了芮成刚与奥巴马的问答，并用他一贯的反讽语气对芮进行了一番挖苦。其它网友也随后展开讨论，纷纷指责芮在提问中所用的“on behalf of China”（代表中国）和“on behalf of the world”（代表世界）不恰当，并体现了政府以民意代表自居的高高在上。与此形成鲜明对比，芮本人在博客中对自己的表现十分得意，而这更激起网民都反感，和更多都讥讽。
:: my weekly Friday 5 briefs on the Chinese Internet are (hopefully) a useful resource and (fingers crossed) an excellent way to keep up with online trends / culture, local web communities, and social media engagement on the Chinese Internet. However, you are still left six days out of the week in which you can’t expect a Friday 5. Fortunately, there are a wealth of other respectable online sources focused on social media, online marketing, and digital trends in China. The selection below represents English language content of such sources, ranging from websites put out by ad / marketing / communications agencies and consultancies, to personal blogs by individuals and groups captivated by China’s Internet culture.
personal :: In2Marcom describes itself as “a weblog all about INnovative and INsightful marketing communication, around Digital and Social Media in China.” It’s run by Jason Zhan Jia (ZJ), who started it up just this past March after working in digital and social media for several years. One interesting recent post looked at the development of a “test paper” meme, in which netizens repost exam questions answered with sarcasm, dirty jokes, or non-sequiturs, and its use as a marketing tool by Peugeot, Cadillac, and finally BYD. Dutch entrepreneur and social media practitioner Marc van der Chijs is an online personality based in Shanghai. The co-founder of Tudou.com and CEO of The Netherlands Spil Games Asia (”the world’s ultimate online game destination”), he keeps an English-language blog with a pretty good following. He’s an enthusiastic Twitterer, and many of his posts are about Twitter, for example, when his “Tweet” appeared in a Dutch newspaper from June 2009, which was about a frustrated attempt to book a flight on KLM, the Royal Dutch Airlines. Another notable post was “Talking and Talking”, from July, in which he spoke about Spil Games in Holland and Internet entrepreneurship in China. Included at the end of the blog post is an embedded video interview with an online TV station.
group :: 88 Bar (八八吧) is maintained by Jason Li and Lyn Jeffery and is the successor to Virtual China, the blog they ran for the Institute for the Future. They launched 88 Bar when their focus on Virtual China expanded from purely virtual culture to include offline culture and interactions between the two. They still blog regularly about Chinese social media, trends, and viral memes, although more as pointers to in-depth treatments on other sites. Recent posts include a look at steampunk animations and coverage of the World of Warcraft protests at this year’s China Joy. Danwei, a group blog that covers Chinese media as a whole, also dips into social media from time to time. It recently interviewed Dan Brody of 360quan and covered the shakeup of China’s microblogging platforms in the wake of the Urumqi riots.
tech :: TechBlog86 (the number refers to China’s IDD prefix) is kept by David Feng, whose gossipy, insiderish writing style assumes that readers are familiar with the larger context behind the latest developments in China’s digital sector. The blog, which relaunched in May following an unfortunate hiatus, covers a wide and (sometimes random) variety of topics, from the most interesting MSN signatures to conference writeups (CHINICT 2009) to speculation about impeding changes in the local Web 2.0 industry: will Xiaonei get shut down? No, it’s just changing its name to RenRen. MOBINODE (动点博客) is a group blog focused on the Asia tech industry, with an emphasis on China. It’s maintained by Gang Lu (see this interview on 56minus1). Recent notable posts include advice to Facebook to forget about its prospects in the China market, and a look at Tencent’s rebate program. MOBINODE is associated with Mobinode.tv (动点博视), a series of Chinese-language interviews with Asia tech professionals. It has plans to develop an English-language counterpart, but has only done one subtitled interview, with Yeeyan co-founder Jiamin zhao, so far.
agencies / consultancies / professional entities :: CNReviews, which hosts active discussions on hot-button issues in Chinese politics and culture, also features content from Blogger Insight that looks at the Chinese SNS / social media scene. Recent highlights include a look at the four distinguishing characteristics of Chinese SNS websites and a hilarious examination of opaque 3G advertisements. One of the things that makes CNReviews such a fun read is that it stakes out a firm position on issues – no wishy-washiness here – which generates energetic comment threads. Little Red Book looks at advertising and marketing in China, with a particular focus on the Internet and social media. It’s run by BA360, a “boutique marketing firm” (from its about page), and the major contributors to the site are strategy director Rand Han and media director Sherry Xie. Posts introduce viral marketing campaigns, quirky print ads, and SNS strategy as well as general Chinese Internet and youth culture issues. Little Red Book also provides a forum for further discussion of ad and marketing issues that haven’t made it to the front page yet. Many of the social media marketing / SNS case studies excerpted on Little Red Book come from ZeroDegrees, a project launched by BA360 in association with postcard design firm Mailman. ZeroDegrees has a fairly active comments section, and it also features discussions of more abstract issues, such as this recent post on the actual significance of Shanghai’s Expo 2010. Recent highlights include a look at micropayments in QQ, an unimpressed examination of Pepsi’s SNS campaign, and a look at how L’oreal celebrated its centenary on Chinese SNS. Ogilvy Digital Watch, although gathering dust now, has an great archive of posts about social media in China and the local tech / web industry. It unfortunately has not been updated since December 2008, about the time the agency’s key digital ninja Kaiser Kuo departed. The China IWOM Blog at CIC Data should already be on your RSS reader. The blog covers IWOM trends / culture, social media marketing case studies, and strategies for monitoring / measuring online public opinion and Internet word of mouth conversation. Mostly teasers for the company’s full-length reports and white papers, but even the excerpts are fairly interesting, and the linked PDFs invite careful perusal. An archive of past CIC slideshow presentations is available even if the latest installments, such as “Social Media Getting Closer to Real Life”, are unavailable to the casual user. Similarly, for the non-subscriber, Ad Age China has promising headlines (”Watch Out Ebay! Here Comes Alibaba” and “Can Baidu Keep its Crown as King of China’s Search Market?”) that tantalize from behind a pay-wall.
updates :: Two other notable sites that look regularly at Chinese SNS and local social media in general are China Web2.0 Review and China Youth Watch, which were covered in a previous Friday 5 brief on Chinese bridge bloggers. China Youth Watch recently featured an article titled SNS and the Changing Chinese Youth, as well as an interview with 360quan.com editor Hui Wang. 56minus1 interviewed CYW co-founder Zafka Zhang back in November of last year. China Web2.0 Review recently covered the Xiaonei / RenRen changeover. (Incidentally, if you’re a fan of cheesy soaps and boom-era product placement, check out the TV show Heart-Net (心网), the story of a group of friends who start an Internet cafe in Shanghai. The old RenRen.com, which was huge back in 2000, is all over the show). Also mentioned in the Friday 5 brief linked above were ChinaSMACK and Youku Buzz, two blogs that regularly feature the latest hot memes and viral videos to hit the Chinese Internet.
// AjS
[Friday 5 is the product of my work at Edelman Digital (China). Link here for the full Friday 5 archive. If you'd like to be added to the bilingual (English & Chinese) Friday 5 email distribution list, please send me an email at: adam DOT schokora AT edelman DOT com.]
:: I stumbled on this interesting graphic while checking out Rou Bo’s (肉博) photo blog, which pointed me to E E E E E E E E’s photo blog, who is one of the creative forces behind Perk Art Studio. There is more on Perk Art Studio at their official (single page!) website. Also, check out their Taobao shop. Perk Art Studio is a Shanghai-based Chinese indie brand that designs clothing and accessories. // AjS
:: a fun animation short / MV titled Road from Chinese photo-bloggerWang Chengzhi (王承之, A.K.A. Photobluer) about an upset child running away from his bickering parents and an overbearing teacher. The clip ends with “我们一直奔跑, 但找不到尽头,” meaning: “We are always running, but we can’t escape.” Background music by Beijing-based band The Gar (嘎调), a song titled Quan (圈). The Gar is also on Douban. // AjS
:: the Chinese government’s pet dissident and well-known conceptual artist / designer / all-around decent guy Ai Weiwei (艾未未) is now on Twitter and Fanfou (a China-market Twitter clone), and has just launched a new blog. In order to verify his identity to the netizen community, Ai Weiwei posted the below semi-nude / grotesque photographs of himself. Hmm…I’m still not convinced. Mr. Ai’s grand entrance into the China Twitter-sphere is likely a tipping point: Twitter will be blocked in China soon enough. // AjS
:: below is a screenshot of the tell-all Chinese Internet tabloid blog chinaSMACK.com’s homepage at the time of writing. Hacked? Blocked? Your thoughts? From the ChinaSMACK Twitter feed: “chinaSMACK cannot be access right now. Denial of Service (DoS) attack since this afternoon. Do not know why. Cannot stop it. Only wait / hope.” H/T Joel. // AjS
:: from this month’s Mr. Modern (摩登绅士) magazine, an interview with Danwei.org founder and editor Jeremy Goldkorn. And yes, Jeremy is holding a stuffed Caonima doll in the photo.
As I just don’t have time right now, if there is anyone that would like to translate this into English, I would greatly appreciate it and happily post here with credit / linkback, etc. Drop me a line at 56minus1 AT gmail DOT com. // AjS
:: bridge bloggers, who cross linguistic and cultural divides to further cross-cultural communication, play an important role in the Chinese Internet. There are quite a number of major projects that translate English-language content in Chinese, and countless other individual bloggers doing the same thing on their own. Below, we take a look at the other direction: Chinese bloggers who are writing in English about a wide variety of topics.
Although a number of these bloggers mention improving their English skills as one of their goals in running an English-language blog, that’s not the focus of bridge bloggers (pure English-for-English’s-sake blogging can be found on niche SNS Web sites like Dio English and on isolated blogs that people seem to be keeping just for fun). Bridge blogs are being written for an audience unable to read Chinese, one that’s possibly unfamiliar with Chinese culture, both online and off, with the goal of mutual understanding and information exchange between countries and cultures. Here are five categories of bridge blogs that range from straight-up translation, to original writing, to corporate tie-in blogging.
journalism ::
Some bridge bloggers work in a familiar format reminiscent of the mainstream media. Josie Liu’s China in Transition blog presents well-crafted articles about various contemporary issues in China. Liu has worked as a journalist for a number of news outlets, and brings a journalist’s perspective to the blog format. She’s also guest blogged at China Digital Times. Seagull Reference, a blog run by a “government IT employee working in Beijing” who calls himself Big Brother Chang, also focuses on newsy topics. He often mixes his own viewpoint into his summaries of the news. In a practice widespread across the Chinese-language Internet, Seagull Reference is spotty when it comes to providing source links, so while Big Brother Chang is pretty quick off the mark, readers have to do a little digging to find the original Chinese articles. The author keeps another infrequently updated blog, Rotten Intellectuals in China, which features short profiles of professors caught in academic dishonesty scandals, or who have made public statements that are particularly galling, such as Sun Dongdong’s suggestion that 99% of China’s petitioners are mentally unstable.
filters ::
Many of the most constantly fascinating bridge blogs translate Chinese netizen voices into English. Global Voices Online aggregates and translates blog posts from all over the world, and China is one of their biggest areas of coverage. GVO authors are a mix of nationals and foreign observers of the countries covered; for China, translators are drawn from Hong Kong, the mainland, and other parts of the world. Currently, Bob Chen, whose bio says he’s a Chinese student, posts quite frequently on hot topics of conversation among China’s netizens. Topic selection leans toward social issues and online reactions to corruption. ChinaSMACK is run by Fauna, a resident of Shanghai, with other contributors based in China as well as overseas. The site’s stated mission is to translate daily content from China’s Internet forums. ChinaSMACK pulls and translates a high volume of comments from a variety of different BBS portals (Tianya, KDNet, PCHome, etc), and captures a side of online public opinion that is not as weighty or angrily nationalistic as may be implied in other English-language outlets. The treatment is typically “tabloidy,” even when ChinaSMACK addresses the same themes as GVO and other bridge blogs. There’s an extensive glossary of Chinese web-speak which helps new readers get up to speed quickly. At the Youku BUZZ blog, Steven Lin (a former journalist) and Kaiser Kuo (a Chinese-American writer and musician) distill the most popular videos from one of China’s top video hosts.
life observations ::
Other bloggers present their own ideas directly, without a translator serving as an intermediary. Ifgogo, subtitled “Chinese in English,” is a collaborative blog for ethnic Chinese writing in English, the vast majority of whom live on the mainland, with a few other members in Singapore, Canada, and the US. There’s no grand mission here; the blog’s about page reads “It’s just a blog in English. It’s about everything.” Topic range from discussions of cultural differences, to reports on excursions, to relationships, to tech and Internet topics. Other individual bloggers sometimes start out consciously to be bridge bloggers. Monica Cai, an undergrad studying international trade in Beijing, launched her own bridge blog after hearing a presentation by Rebecca MacKinnon. It’s a fairly new effort, which the author says will focus mainly on the lives of Chinese students. Wang Jianshuo, a Shanghai IT professional who’s been blogging since 2002, also falls into this category. His posts deal with life in Shanghai, travel, his various hobbies, and general China issues. He tends to stay away from sensitive issues, and his posts and comments sections seem designed to foster mutual understanding rather than heated debate.
specialty ::
There are also specialty bridge blogs devoted to a particular topic. China Web2.0 Review covers developments in the world of China-produced and China-oriented new technology Web sites. Current authors are Luyi Chen, an information systems PhD at Shanghai Jiaotong University, and Tangos Chan, VP of China Growth Capital. (Link here for a 56minus1 interview with Tangos Chan.) China Web2.0 Review reports on the latest moves by established Web2.0 sites and the implications those moves may have for the mainland’s Internet. It also introduces new Internet startups. The blog of the Shao Foundation covers the foundation’s various cultural and social events and exhibitions. It features video, slideshows, and summaries in English of Chinese-language content. It’s arty, sometimes cutting-edge, and tastefully laid out.
corporate ::
Bridge blogs may also be useful for companies that are themselves engaged in cross-cultural businesses. China Travel 2.0 the “official blog of www.SinoHotelReservation.com,” is kept by Winser Zhao, who writes of the blog’s motivation on the about page: The debates are interesting. The difference is quite huge. I thought I should tell more about China to Foreigners.” Posts introduce various scenic attractions in China, discuss aspects of Chinese culture, and from time to time touch on current events. Winser is joined by Seasky, who is based in Shanghai, and Katie Yao, a student at Xi’an International Studies University. The “travel 2.0″ concept promoted by the blog and Web site refers to guideless travel, where all arrangements are made through a network of friends, similar to an online social network. The China Youth Watch blog, run by consulting company China Youthology, pulls back the curtain on Chinese youth culture and profiles young creative and trendsetting types. It’s kept by Lisa Li and Zafka Zhang (who are also in a band together), with ethnographers Helen Yu, Summer Xia, and Candy Yang. There’s quite a bit of depth in the posts, if you’re looking for a window on Chinese youth today. Link here for a 56minus1 interview with Zafka Zhang.)
// AjS
[Friday 5 is the product of my work at Edelman Digital (China). Link here for the full Friday 5 archive. If you'd like to be added to the bilingual (English & Chinese) Friday 5 email distribution list, please send me an email at: adam DOT schokora AT edelman DOT com.]
:: sharing information on the Chinese Internet is no more complicated than simple cut-and-paste. Netizens who come across something that appeals to them often full-scale copy-and-paste it into a blog or BBS forum post (most of the time without attribution) and share it directly. And of course, friends / colleagues frequently just resort to sharing links / content via instant messaging or email. Yet more sophisticated and useful tools do exist to help Chinese netizens organize and share articles, Web pages, and all sorts of other online content on a larger / public scale. Known by the names “bookmarking” (书签) or “social bookmarking” (网摘, literally “web digest”), these systems provide netizens with a handy link or button that will submit the current page / piece of content to a personal or public index, and allow users to add tags to classify information in what’s known as a “folksonomy” (分众分类法). Although still occasionally standalone Web sites (like the well-known Delicious.com), these services are more commonly folded into other social networking Web sites, or have additional community-oriented functionality, as the list below demonstrates.
Digg clones ::
The Chinese Internet has given birth to a slew of Digg clones: Web sites whose users submit short descriptions of interesting Web content and then collectively vote the submissions up (”dig”) or down (”bury”). These have found varying degrees of success — it takes a critical mass of users to make the voting process interesting / valuable for the community, and many sites die off after failing to build up a viable community. A number of special-interest Digg clones have survived. Leitie (雷贴网) and Zkaoo are geared toward wacky, funny videos, and links. Netizens’ constant thirst for new ways to be amused have generated votes and comments on both these sites. Another problem faced by sites with user-generated content is spam: unscrupulous marketers can exploit the system to swamp genuinely interesting content with their crass advertising. Some sites are better at self-moderating than others. Digg-style voting has been put to more successful use in news sites, where votes determine how stories are ranked / placed on the page. Tech site CNBeta, for example, offers a “Dig view” on its front page that ranks and displays stories by popularity, and user comments are promoted to featured status through a similar voting process.
365key ::
365key was one of the earliest bookmarking and tagging systems in mainland China. The site is associated with the tech Web site Donews, and at the bottom of every Donews article (and on other sites that use the 365key system) users can click a link that says “Save this page on 365key” (收藏此页到365Key) to bookmark the page. For pages that aren’t 365key-enabled, users have the option of using a browser plug-in or a Javascript bookmarklet, or they can manually add the link. The site also provides a Digg-like system for voting up articles; the most “dug” links are featured on the front page of the site. 365key’s navigation bar has special categories for major online communities such as IT168, Mop, VeryCD, and CSDN Tech, which feature the latest and most popular links from those sites that have been bookmarked on 365key. A lot of other independent bookmarkers, such as Leshou, Quzhai (formerly at http://www.quzhai.com), and Shouker followed in 365key’s wake, but few made much of a long-term impression on the Chinese internet.
RSS oriented systems ::
Just as how Google Reader offers a “shared items” feature, many Chinese RSS readers allow their users to summarize, tag, share, and vote on items in their feeds. Zhuaxia, a popular feed reader, supports both bookmarking and recommending, and provides a variety of views for checking out what other users are interested in. The “popular articles” view (热文) lists the highest-ranked recent posts (there’s also a separate chart for popular videos), and users can also look at the most popular articles from the past month or year (note: this is all done through Javascript, so it’s impossible to provide direct links). Xianguo, another web-based RSS reader, emphasizes the voting even more: its front page is dominated by a ranking of the current most popular articles, with a sidebar that features posts shared by popular users. Additional functions of these and other RSS applications were shared in an earlier 56minus1 post. Top-rated articles on both Zhuaxia and Xianguo have far more votes than standalone Digg-like sites, probably because their RSS functionality attracts more users than voting on its own.
social network sharing ::
One of the most popular applications on Chinese SNS Web sites is a function that allows users to syndicate jokes, photos, popular posts, videos, and other Web content to their friends. This functionality is known by various names. Xiaonei calls it “sharing.” A chain of shares from friend to friend will often give an interesting topic a huge amount of attention within a short period of time and spur conversation other places on the Internet. Some Xiaonei users have gained minor celebrity status by finding and distributing interesting content that captures the attention of tens of thousands of other Xiaonei users. Huluwa is an example: this user has 847 friends on Xiaonei itself, plus a group of fans on Douban. Kaixin001 provides a similar functionality through its “repost” function (转帖), which allows friends to share links and content within the Kaixin001 domain. Douban, an SNS based around culture and the arts, uses the term “recommend” for this functionality, and provides a handy bookmarklet allowing site members to add links to their personal Douban feed for sharing with friends.
in-house systems ::
Portals and search engines have their own bookmarking tools. QQ’s bookmark service (QQ书签) integrates the standard link+description+tags format with its social network, including its wildly-popular instant message platform. Bookmarks can be collected through the QQ browser toolbar, other browser plugins and scripts, or through code users insert into the HTML of their own Web sites, and then they can be uploaded into the QQ IM application for use outside the Web browser. The front page of QQ’s bookmarks Web site lists popular links, many of which have been bookmarked by thousands of people. Baidu’s “search saver” tool (搜藏) allows users to build up their own index of bookmarked, tagged pages. Bookmarks can be either public or private; public bookmarks are aggregated into a tagged archive and shared among other Baidu users. Links to Sina’s Vivi still shows up on lots of pages, but that bookmarking system appears to have given up the ghost in 2006 or so — tags no longer work and groups have long since gone dormant. In its place is a system integrated with Sina’s blog service; Sina bloggers can click on a “save” (收藏) link at the bottom of a blog post to put them into a “favorites” list that is viewable to any visitor to their own blog.
// AjS
[Friday 5 is the product of my work at Edelman Digital (China). Link here for the full Friday 5 archive. If you'd like to be added to the bilingual (English & Chinese) Friday 5 email distribution list, please send me an email at: adam DOT schokora AT edelman DOT com.]
:: born in early nineties on e-mailing lists and newsgroups frequented by overseas Chinese, online Chinese literature has been around for nearly two decades. But it was only in 1998, when Cai Zhiheng posted his breakout novel First Intimate Contact on the Web, that online literature really took off on the Chinese mainland. The field has exploded in the past decade, and online tastes are increasingly driving the print publishing marketplace. See Baidu Baike for the major events and players in the history of online literature.
Online literature is a huge topic on the Chinese Internet, and I am only able to capture a small fraction of the wealth of material that’s out there. However, the below categories is a fairly representative snapshot of a very interesting and evolving subculture that those who are interested in understanding local Chinese Web culture should be aware of.
From a online brand engagement point of view, there is a world of opportunity in this space if done correctly.
fantasy ::
Chinese Online gaming giant Shanda has a “net-lit” arm consisting of three distinct sites. Qidian (起点中文网) is primarily focused on fantasy and is one of the largest online literature Web sites in China. It was founded in 2003 out of the Chinese Magic Fantasy Union (玄幻文学协会), an earlier site formed in 2001 by fantasy enthusiasts, and was acquired by Shanda in 2004. The hit pulp adventure series Ghost Blows Out the Light (鬼吹灯) was serialized on Qidian in 2006. Qidian remains focused on original fantasy, martial arts, and military adventure fiction. Fantasy is the top-listed category on many general literature portals, including Sina’s original book channel (新浪读书:原创文学). The hit adventure series of 2008, The Tibet Code (藏地密码), was a Sina books serialization. Online games, which tend to be fantasy-themed, are extended by fans who write their own original stories using characters and settings from the same universe. There’s a large section devoted to game fiction online literature portal 17k (一起看), which has the backing of ebook company ChineseAll (中文在线). Sometimes things go in reverse: online fantasy writer Xiao Ding serialized his epic Exterminating the Immortals (诛仙) on the Fantasy Sword literary portal, since acquired by Tom.com. It was subsequently published in print, and then adapted by gaming company Perfect World into a popular fantasy game whose character classes and setting are based on Xiao Ding’s world.
time travel romance ::
A popular genre of online literature is the “time travel love story,” and many net-literature Web sites feature a category called “time travel” or “time travel romance” (Sina’s). These stories typically take the form of a modern person being thrown back in time to experience romance and intrigue in some grander, more exciting setting, usually somewhere in China’s dynastic history, like the the Tang Dynasty court, but often a fictional setting, such as the Grand View Garden as depicted in Dream of the Red Chamber. The BBS forum Across the Ocean of Stars (穿越星海), which receives several thousand posts a day, is devoted to time travel romances (motto: “I fell in love with you across time”). Love99 (爱久久) hosts romantic net-literature, and as of this writing the two featured stories are both time-travel pieces, “Pursuing you across time” (穿越时空追到你) and “Time Travel Bodyguard” (超时空保镖). International time travel is possible as well; see below.
women’s literature ::
Another large Shanda property is Jinjiang (晋江原创网), a site for original writing by women started in 2003 out of a BBS hosted in a small city in Fujian Province. Shanda bought into it in 2007, and the site currently has long-term contracts with around 2,000 original writers. Breakout hits from Jinjiang include A Dream Back to the Qing Empire (梦回大清) by Jinzi and The Pharaoh’s Favorite (法老的宠妃), by You Shi, both time-travel romances. You Shi also hosts her work on her popular blog, and runs her own literature BBS. Jinjiang is massive net-literature portal; at the other end of the spectrum are Web sites like 9jjz (九界网), which is devoted to women’s writing on a smaller, less-commercialized scale. It has an annual writing contest and entices writers to post work on the Web site by offering editing services.
pure literature ::
Non-genre fiction is a harder sell. The Chinese Internet is littered with abandoned Web sites set up by groups of writers whose output was too insular to sustain a community, or who moved on to other interests. Heilan, an online forum founded in 2002 for more serious-minded literature and criticism, grew out of an underground literary magazine of the same name shut down in the mid-90s, and has managed to stay afloat. It has even seen several of its books move to print. The site publishes a monthly e-magazine with a rotating editorship that collects recent works by site members. Youth-oriented Rongshuxia (榕树下) is still around after a complicated odyssey of acquisition and failed takeovers. The site was red-hot early in the decade and gave birth to best-selling young authors such as Murong Xuecun, Annie Baobei, and Lin Changzhi. It was acquired by Bertelsmann in 2002 for USD 10 million and sold off again in 2006 for USD 5 million, and just this year, founder Zhu Weilian announced that he had abandoned plans to re-acquire the company, in favor of building a competitor from the ground up. Rongshuxia may not have the same visibility it once had, but members continue to post original literature to the site.
other literary forms ::
Net-literature in China takes other forms in addition to novels and short stories, and two of the most popular are “short-shorts” and “relay fiction.” Short Short Authors (小小说作家网) is a Web site devoted to the form, which generally demands stories of around one-thousand characters that describe a single event during a single time in a single setting (the so-called “law of four ones”). Short Short Authors has sub-boards for original writing, critiquing, foreign translations, and even more limited “micro-fiction” (蚂蚁小说), known as “ant stories.” Relay fiction, in which multiple authors take turns writing successive chapters of a longer story, is a game often played on literary forums and Web sites. Endd.cn (嗯等等, meaning “Oh, wait a minute”) is a niche social networking site designed to facilitate this form of collaborative fiction writing. Members post original writing and, if they so choose, allow other members to take the reins and contribute a chapter or two. Any story with a “Let me take over” (我来接龙) button is fair game, and the Web site includes functions for discussion and private messaging as well.
// AjS
[Friday 5 is the product of my work at Edelman Digital (China). Link here for the full Friday 5 archive. If you'd like to be added to the bilingual (English & Chinese) Friday 5 email distribution list, please send me an email at: adam DOT schokora AT edelman DOT com.]
:: 56minus1 has been included on CNReviews’ listing of “Ten Eclectic China Blogs You Should Follow.” Very cool of you CNReviews. I’m honored and flattered. Thank you. // AjS
:: since 2007 Kenneth Tan has been the editor and main contributor to Shanghaiist.com, a popular English language blog focused on Shanghai. I caught up with Ken for a short chat about his new job at Gays.com, the “digital” gay scene in China, and his men’s lingerie shop MANifesto.com.cn. Follow Ken on Twitter at @singaporeano.
56minus1: I hear you are leaving your role at Shanghaiist.com what the hell are they going to do with out you?
Kenneth Tan: Haha. Yes, after two years of non-stop editing, it’s just time to move on to a new challenge. Shanghaiist is going to do fine without me. Elaine Chow, our new editor, who also writes for Gizmodo, has been doing one helluva kickass job. I will still be posting on Shanghaiist every now and then, just not daily like I used to.
56minus1: Do you want to contribute to 56minus1?
Kenneth Tan: Would love to but don’t think I can spare the time Adam! As it is, I can barely find time to write my own blog!
56minus1: I understand you have been working on a new site called Gays.com – what is your role there?
Kenneth Tan: Yes I’ve been working on Gays.com for about one and a half years now. I help devise the overall strategy and direction of the network and also take care of marketing and corporate communications for the site.
56minus1: Tell us a little bit about Gays.com. Start with how you guys managed to secure get such a, uh, perfect URL?
Kenneth Tan: Our purchase of the domain name Gays.com in late 2006 for the price of USD 500,000 was one of the most talked about sales in the domain name industry for that year. It took us a while to decide what to do with the site, but eventually we chose to position Gays.com as the world’s first social network for the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community for real people, real names, and real world connections. You see, prior to Gays.com, gay and lesbian social networks were either dating or hookup sites, and so for obvious reasons, the two communities never really got to mingle together online. We’re here to bridge the gap and build a social network that will include people from across the LGBT spectrum. We’re also here to challenge people to step out with their real names and identities, and not hide behind an online nickname like they’re used to. It’s about time the gay Internet landscape came out of the closet!
56minus1: Tell us more about the sites users and general demographics.
Kenneth Tan: Gays.com is currently shaping up to be a very international community. Our 60,000 members come from 145 countries across all six continents and represented among the top cities on the network are a good mix of North American, European and Asian cities. Shanghai and Beijing both figure among the top ten cities on the site, buoyed by a large and active gay expatriate community.
On the whole though, we expect most of our growth in the early phase to be driven by North America and Europe. In China as in many other parts of Asia, people prefer to hang out online anonymously. It will take some time before more gay Asians are willing to “come out” on the Internet in an authentic social environment. And let’s not forget the linguistic diversity across Asia. Taking all these considerations in mind, we think we’re actually doing pretty well in Asia. Later this year, we’ll be making our site available first in all the major European languages and then in the Asian languages, and I believe this will bring about a significant boost in traffic to the site.
56minus1: Besides the Web site, what else has Gays.com been working on?
Kenneth Tan: Our latest project — and one which we’re really proud of — is the IDAHO Challenge. IDAHO stands for the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia, a day observed on May 17 every year, which happens to coincide with the anniversary of our launch. This being our very first birthday, we decided to do something really ambitious and the result was this joint undertaking between Gays.com and the Paris-based IDAHO Committee, which has been instrumental in the new UN statement to decriminalize homosexuality, now signed by 67 countries around the world. The Challenge is simple — we want LGBT people from all around the world to get in front of their video camera, and tell us their name, where they come from and how proud they are to be gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, like in the video you see below:
56minus1: Tell us about the “digital gay” (or Gay 2.0) scene in China?
Kenneth Tan: Most people find it hard to believe when I tell them that China has a thriving online gay scene. There is a plethora of gay portals, online forums, mailing lists, chatrooms, QQ groups available today and it is through the Internet that I’ve witnessed firsthand how gay Chinese people are organizing themselves into sports clubs, language exchange groups, arts groups, and so on. Gay life has flourished all across China in just the last few years and this is no doubt all thanks to the Internet. The Web has facilitated the coming out of a whole new generation of young gay men and women, from the cities to the villages.
I happen to be acquainted with a few of these masterminds behind some of the biggergayChineseportals and I will tell you for one that these guys experience little to no harrassment from the powers that be. Most of them manage to fly under the radar by actively self-censoring their sites to make sure they are free of pornographic content.
Some important blogs to watch if you’re interested in following LGBT developments in China would be those of Li Yinhe (a sociologist, sexologist and activist who has submitted proposals to legalise gay marriage to the CPPCC three times), Cheng Qingsong (film critic and script writer), and QAF Beijing (soon QueerComrades.com), China’s first and longest running queer Webcast which will be introducing its third season soon.
56minus1: How is your men’s lingerie business doing?
Kenneth Tan: MANifesto continues to serve its customers online and through our two stores in Shanghai (located in Shanghai Studio) and Beijing (right next to the Forbidden City). We remain very proud of the fact today that we pretty much pioneered the category of designer men’s underwear and swimwear targeted at the gay and metrosexual crowd in China. Within a year of our launch, counterfeits of our designs started appearing all over Taobao and to be frank it’s been a pain in the you-know-where dealing with them, but that’s the risk that any entrepreneur has to take on when he or she decides to do business in China. My dream is still to some day be able to develop our own inhouse label but that looks like it will have to take a back seat for now due to my other commitments!
:: in my day to day interaction with clients and brands across the different practice teams at Edelman China, I am often asked: “what’s happening online in Chinese social media around [INSERT ANY TOPIC].” When I first began researching Chinese social media, online communities, efluencers, Internet word of mouth, etc., I was skeptical about finding anything of real substance around obscure or niche topics, but it didn’t take long for me to learn my lesson. With 300+ million active users, the Chinese Internet has a place for everyone and everything. In almost all cases, robust and active interaction among netizens exists around just about any imaginable topic. As such, the opportunities for companies / brands to engage online with different target audiences is essentially endless.
graffiti & urban art :: GCC is an intimate forum for graffiti artists across the country. It was launched late last year as the new incarnation of graffiti.net.cn, a forum that lost control of its URL, and the comments in the “resurrection” thread showed that it had been sorely missed. Cyworld, a SNS for “showing off” things, has a community devoted to graffiti in Xi’an (西美街头涂鸦社团). It links to a website devoted to Xi’an street culture, and other crews such as MiG, and a group of several in Jiangsu. Douban has a graffiti group where members contribute photos, discuss techniques, and share prospective locations for graffiti projects. One post has a helpful bilingual list of graffiti-related terms in Chinese and English. Douban also has an urban stencil art group. Crews often make use of blogs to publicize their offline projects. Beijing’s well-known 916 crew (916涂鸦社) posts frequently about their activities in and around the Communication University of China. Popil, an artist who hangs around Neocha.com (graffiti tag), also features photos of her work on her Blogbus as well. And Cherub, who posts on GCC, puts up extensive photos of her work in Shenzhen and other places in China.
comics, illustration, & animation :: Huoshen has a well-trafficked BBS with instructional posts, boards where artists can share finished work or sketches, and an e-magazine containing members’ work as well as how-tos. ComicYou hosts original comics, classified into strips, illustrations, and longer serializations. The site is a community of artists and enthusiasts and its members have published their work in magazines and as stand-alone graphic novels, most recently an authorized adaptation of Full Band Interception (全频带阻塞干扰) by noted science fiction author Liu Cixin. Douban has a group for aspiring comics authors with links to the blogs of well-known artists and writers, including fantasy illustrator Zhang Xiaoyu and risque comics artist Demidov. For readers of comics, Dongman.Net hosts translations of foreign-language comic books and animation, and includes other aspects of comics and otaku culture such as the “Damn Couples” movement (情侣去死去死团). The Marsarea Institute of Animation hosts forums where CG animators and illustrators can trade tips and tricks, or show off their latest masterpieces. The discussions can get very involved (as in this debate comparing domestic “artist’s rendering” techniques to those used overseas), but it’s difficult for outsiders to follow because images are only displayed to logged-in users.
cosplay kids ::
Cosplay, an activity in which people dress up in the costumes of characters from video games, cartoons, or books, has ties to the comics and gaming communities. Many comics websites have cosplay sub-boards, and the ChinaJoy Digital Entertainment Expo has held a cosplay event since 2004, televised since 2007. Cosplayzone is a Facebook-like SNS for cosplayers. Fans of specific stories or characters can usually find other cosplay enthusiasts on communities devoted to particular series, as in these cosplayers bringing to life characters from the domestic fantasy series “Legend of Wings” (羽传说). Douban hosts a cosplay group with 1,036 members who share pictures, exchange information about events, and trade costume tips. More of a look, and less tied to any particular story, is Douban’s “Gothic & Lolita” group, whose 564 members discuss gothic lolita-style clothing and post links to online shops (such as Taobao outlets) that have the “Alice gone bad” look for sale.
sneaker-heads :: X-Kicks (新新球鞋网) is THE place to go for sneaker discussion. The forum receives upwards of 10,000 comments a day about sneakers and sneaker culture. The Club Shoes BBS is a similar discussion forum whose No Fake board is the most popular sub-forum. Netizens post photos of sneakers and ask for opinions on whether they are genuine or fake. Slightly less organic is the Kicks.cn BBS , which is associated with the People’s Sports Publishing House-sponsored 鞋帮 kicks.cn magazine. One of the interesting sub-boards it hosts is devoted to scans and etext versions of articles and ads about name-brand shoes. Further along the corporate axis is the Sina Sports Shoe board “I’m crazy about shoes.” Nike is involved, so practically all of the shoes featured on the front page are Nike branded, even though group members discuss other brands. Douban has a number of groups devoted to shoe lovers, but the most popular ones are nostalgia-based: the FeiYue group and the Warrior Shoes group each have over 1,000 members who are fans of the classic state-owned athletic brands. [More on 56minus1 regarding Chinese retro sneakers: here, here, here, and here.]
body modification :: 360Quan, a generic youth-oriented social networking website has a channel especially for tattoos and other body art that distills the top posts from 360Quan groups such as Tattoo Lovers. China Tattoo Net is a social network for tattoo lovers, offering space for photo uploads and for discussion of techniques. Many tattoo parlors have their own websites providing galleries of their work and other related information. Hell Tattoo has a MySpace page whose friends list forms an ad-hoc community of tattoo artists and body art enthusiasts. China Body Art List has a handy list of a lot of other tattoo parlor websites. Douban has a large forum devoted to tattoo and body piercing, which hosts discussions of various piercings and the potential pain and awkwardness they may bring (with parents, for example). Less mainstream forms of body modification are still sensitive enough that their forums try to stay off the radar: Douban’s BME group is members-only, for example. Often, body mod forums are found as sub-boards on BBSs devoted to the rock music scene.
// AjS
[Friday 5 is the product of my work at Edelman Digital (China). Link here for the full Friday 5 archive. If you'd like to be added to the bilingual (English & Chinese) Friday 5 email distribution list, please send me an email at: adam DOT schokora AT edelman DOT com.]
