:: taken in Shanghai, China, just outside the Neocha studio.  // AjS

:: 本周的Friday 5 将再次关注中国的记者博客。在本篇中予以介绍的记者在互联网上都享有较高的知名度，其原因或是因为其在传统媒体的成就，或者是更偏重其在网上的努力。这些博客不同程度涉及他们所从事的新闻媒体工作，另外，他们向大量网上读者所传达的关于他们日常生活的点点滴滴也相当有趣。而这些记者也大多利用互联网这个更加开放（虽然依然被审查）的环境来发表那些不能被传统纸媒所接纳的文章。

:: 相比较于西方的同行，中国媒体对为各种丑闻贴上“门”

/// AjS

[Friday 5是我服务的爱德曼数码(中国)的一项产品。这里是全部Friday 5 的存档。 有意通过电子邮件订阅双语Friday 5者可通过以下地址向我发送邮件索取：adam 点 schokora 在 edelman 点 com。]

:: 大众对于病毒式传播的视频广告逐渐产生审美疲劳。尽管制作精良，

// AjS

:: here are five more examples of the fascinating Chinese Internet slang and memes that today’s local netizens are all about. This installment ranges from memes inspired by government-speak (“pressure difference”) and the depressed economy (“to be found a job”), to imports from Korea and Japan. Two examples trace the progress of a meme from its use as an inconsequential piece of Internet fluff to its roll in larger commercial or charitable endeavors.

brother chun / brother zeng (春哥 / 曾哥) ::
Li Yuchun and Zeng Yike, both tomboyish Super Girl stars whose androgynous style is a key factor contributing to their popularity. When Li won the competition back in 2005, she appealed to many female fans because she seemed like a liberator who cast off social constraints, and she gave confidence to women who fell short of the cultural ideal. On the other hand, there are those who think “she looks like a man.” The Brother Chun meme is due to this second group. The initial catchphrase was “Brother Chun is All Man, A Real Iron-man” (春哥纯爷们, 铁血真汉子) and sparked an online explosion of photoshopped images that combined Li’s head and men’s bodies. It soon transformed into a parody cult, with Li’s head ’shopped onto the bodies of the icons of various religions, all captioned with “Believe in Chun brother and live forever” (信春哥，得永生) Since then, there have been other variations in a more materialistic vein: “Believe in Chun brother and you will not fail your exams (新春哥，不挂科), and “Believe in Chun brother and make a fortune” (信春哥，发大财).With an Internet culture in China that seems able to turn everything into entertainment, these memes spread quite fast and also extended their influence to the offline world. “All man” (纯爷们) or even just 纯 (pure) has gone on to be a general reference to “male quality” with a humorous undertone (the term was notably used by mincing comedian Xiao Shenyang at this year’s Spring Festival Gala, the biggest annual mainstream media / entertainment event in China). Brother Chun even has been exploited for commercial gain: an expansion released in June for the Chinese edition of the video game MapleStory (冒险岛：骑士团的逆袭), run by Shanda, echoed the meme in its advertising: “Help Brother Chun: Exterminate the Spring Dove and Gain Eternal Life” (助春哥，灭春鸽，得永生). Zeng Yike had her own set of fans and slightly obsessed anti-fans who copied the Brother Chun phenomenon wholesale – “Brother Zeng,” male body photoshops (particularly Stallone), slogans, a parody cult, and an ugly undercurrent of misogyny.

jia junpeng, postcards, & loneliness (贾君鹏 / 明信片 / 寂寞) ::
On July 16 a post appeared on the Baidu World of Warcraft Postbar (魔兽贴吧) that read simply, “Jia Junpeng, your mom wants you to go home for dinner” (贾君鹏你妈妈喊你回家吃饭). The short post – nothing more than the title, and no clue as to the identity of Jia Junpeng – highlighted the intensity of gaming culture on the Chinese Internet: eating and sleeping in web cafes without going home to eat. By the end of the day the postreportedly had more than 4 million views and 300,000 comments. A Beijing-based media company later claimed that the phrase was a viral marketing ploy, although there are other competing theories as to its origins. Jia himself was never found (see ChinaHush for more). Like other memes, Jia Junpeng has been Photoshopped extensively: Saddam Hussein, films stills, and comics, among other settings (see chinaSMACK for more images). It was also harnessed for other causes: “Taiwan, your motherland wants you to come home for dinner”). The Jia Junpeng meme, with its mention of “dinner” and a reference to the non-loneliness of being with family, was a natural complement for an earlier WoW meme, “Brother’s not eating dinner, I’m eating loneliness” (哥吃的不是面, 是寂寞), which appeared accompanied by a picture of a young man and a bowl of noodles after WoW suspended operations on June 7. Without a game to play, online groups sprang up: the “Loneliness Group” (寂寞派) and the Loneliness (Political) Party (寂寞党), and the catchphrase structure gave rise to many variations, such as “I’m not posting a post, I’m posting loneliness” (我发的不是帖子, 是寂寞). Jia Junpeng took on another dimension when the Amoiist, a blogger from Xiamen, was detained by police in July 2009 for posting an appeal video about a rape and murder. After his arrest, other netizens got involved to save the blogger, whose real name was Guo Baofeng (郭宝峰). They twittered “Guo Baofeng, your mum wants you to go home for dinner” in Chinese and English, and organized a drive to send postcards bearing that message to the Mawei prison where Guo was being held. He was eventually released, and whether or not the postcards had anything to do with it, the campaign captured the attention of the major mainstream media (See The Time Weekly 时代周报). And both Jia Junpeng and loneliness have been appropriated as t-shirt slogans. Mengtoy, a T-Shirt and plush toy company with a shop on Taobao.com, features t-shirts bearing the slogan “WoW: your mom wants you to go home for dinner,” and “MoM: I’m not eating dinner, I’m eating loneliness,” cleverly inverting the WoW into MoM.

passive actions: 被 ::
被 (bèi) is a passive marker in Chinese language, but when it’s used with verbs that aren’t normally thought of in passive terms, it represents futility in the face of external circumstances beyond your own control. It’s a familiar linguistics structure – remember back to last May when donations were being solicited for the Wenchuan Earthquake recovery effort, and 被捐款 (bèi juānkuǎn), “to be donated”, indicated that a “voluntary” contribution was automatically (sometimes unwillingly) deducted from many people’s salary. But involuntary donations apparently take place all the time, and they’ve been on the rise following the damage wrought on Taiwan by typhoon Morakot. This June, recent graduates exposed a dodgy strategy that some colleges use to inflate their successful employment statistics: they require students to provide proof of employment before they can obtain a diploma, or they cook up fake employment contracts and recruit graduates into non-existent jobs. The term 就业 (jiùyè) means “to find a job”; made passive, 被就业 (bèi jiùyè) indicates that the job-seeker finds themselves with an employment contract without actually having any of the benefits or responsibilities that come with a job: work and a salary, for example. In July, 被增长 (bèi zēngzhǎng, “to be increased”) hit the net. 增长 (zēngzhǎng), means “gain”, and is used to describe economic gains, increases in satisfaction rates, and other rising trends. When it’s applied passively, “to have been increased” indicates that someone is part of a statistical group whose numbers have risen without any actual gains being made. (This happens more than frequently in China.) The term seems to stem from a blog post made by commentator Xia Yucai, who wrote “My income has ‘been increased’ by the State Statistics Bureau” (我的收入在国家统计局那里“被增长”了). Finally, in late July and early August, 全勤 (quán qín), “perfect attendance,” has also been taken passive, 被全勤 (bèi quánqín, “to be perfect attendanced”), to describe workers who don’t take any vacation, not of their own volition, but because they are unable to take time off. Originally an isolated observation, the term took off in popularity because “perfect attendanced” workers form a significant group online. The question “Little white-collar, have you been ‘perfect attendanced’ today?” notes the demographic group affected by “perfect attendance” and many of the other passive memes.

Korean and Japanese affectations ::
思密达 (sīmìdá, also 斯米达) is a Chinese transliteration of a Korean honorific (하십니다) that is used as a sentence-ending particle in net-speak. It invaded Tianya’s Entertainment Gossip boards in 2008, to the point that people made posts asking people to please knock it off, and it’s spread across the net since then. There’s an undercurrent of anti-Korean sentiment to its use in some contexts (online jokester Chun Baba has the line “Everything belongs to Korea simida” 什么都是韩国的思密达), but it’s also used generally as a mark of sarcasm, or even simply a cute affectation that flies over the heads of many ordinary netizens. What’s particularly amusing about the mystery surrounding 思密达 is that when it shows up in the title of a web page (which pushes it to the top of search engine results), it’s most likely being used as the transliteration of Smecta, a diarrhea remedy for young children, so casual netizens who run across the term in forums remain in the dark, unless they take advantage of one of the many Ask sites, where the term is defined quite widely. There’s something similar going on for the Japanese sentence ending particle です, which has been taken into Chinese as 的说, most likely through soaps imported from Taiwan. It’s much less tied to Japan than “simida” is to Korea, and is mainly used as a cutesy, exclamatory sentence ending word. There’s a contentious Baidu Postbar devoted to the term where enthusiasts and denigrators fight it out through the use of other contemporary memes. And then there’s the meta-commentary: “The word desu was invented by the Koreans simida” (“的说”这个词是寒国人发明的思密达).

pressure difference: the Shanghai building collapse ::
On June 27, a 13-storey building in the Lotus Riverside development in Shanghai toppled over due to poorly-planned excavations for an underground parking garage. The building remained in one piece, and photos of the accident captured the attention of China’s netizens. Just as they had with the CCTV fire in February, netizens reimagined the scene in a series of Photoshops showing a Transformer attack, a number of Ultraman battles, and various other destructive events, including a visit from Brother Chun. The term 楼脆脆, “fragile building”, was the popular term used to describe the fallen structure. Just this month a building in Chengdu was discovered to have leaned sideways so the top was resting against the building next door, and it was given a similar name: 楼歪歪, “leaning building.” The official explanation for the Shanghai collapse employed the term “pressure difference” (压力差) to describe how the building was pushed over. The term was first mocked for seeming to indicate that the building itself was problem free (“blame it on the pressure difference”) and it now has been adopted for use in other areas of pressure (not just the physical ones of ground on building): A thread titled “India, be careful of ‘pressure difference’” was posted on Sohu’s military forums (印度，请小心“压力差”), and netizens have mixed the term with last year’s “Have you gone out for soy sauce today?” (今天你打酱油了吗) to create “Have you had pressure difference today?” (今天你压力差了吗？).

// 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.]

:: a Chinese netizen spoof of a KFC commercial. Chinese speakers, listen closely. Very funny.  // AjS

:: my friend Brad and his wife recently found this subversive RMB 10 note in Shanghai. If you don’t know what’s printed on it, please consult your Chinese dictionary. I’ve heard about this before, but this is the first time I’ve actually seen it. Clever, and probably quite effective at spreading a message. Has anyone else come across such notes?  // AjS

:: taken in the small town of Chuzhou in Anhui province, China. I found these to be ingenious advertising efforts. The first photo says, “There is a noodle shop across the way.” The second photo says, “The old Ao De fried chicken shop is across the street.” Sure enough, in both cases, these shops were directly across the alley – less that 10 meters away. I was curious about the necessity and effectiveness of such advertisements, so I took the time to observe pedestrian reactions to them.

Not that these figures represent statistically sound research, but, in 30 minutes (the time it took me to finish my bubble tea), 47 people walked by these two signs (they were right next to each other). Only a few people didn’t notice them, but every person that noticed them looked across the street to confirm what they had just read. 22 of those people people crossed the street and went to one of the two restaurants. Fascinating.  // AjS

:: Chinese retro design has always fascinated me. Over the years I’ve bought more than a few 70’s and 80’s era Chinese books just for the cover designs. I recently saw some threads on MOP with interesting primary school language study book covers, so I thought I’d scour the Web for more examples from the 60s through to the 80s and share here, see below. It’s not only the images that get people nostalgic, there are a few dedicated souls transcribing the stories in these books.  // XD

[Xiao Du is a guest contributor on fifty 5]

:: like China’s “Post-80s Generation” before it, the “Post-90s Generation” is a shorthand for a vaguely-defined demographic group of Chinese people born roughly in the same decade. On the Chinese Internet, however, “Post-90s” has connotations of a young, affluent, urban, alternative aesthetic, and includes among its ranks people born in the mid to late 80s as well — see the reader age poll on FZL8.com which has choices for ages 16-21; 30% of respondents are under 16, and 15-20% were born in the 80s.

In hopes of helping everyone better understand this sometimes odd and detached demographic, the five categories below provide a rough outline of the image and characteristics conjured up in the minds of today’s Chinese netizens by the term “Post-90s.”

non-mainstream culture ::
Remember in the early part of the decade when Han Han and other young celebrities born in the 1980s were hailed as representatives of a new, “alternative” sub-culture in China? For the post-90s generation, the term “linglei” (另类, meaning: alternative) has been replaced with “feizhuliu” (非主流) which means something like “non-mainstream,” but it still refers to an “alternative” sub-culture, only one that is expressed by today’s teens (See here on Baidu Baike for a current in-depth discussion of the phenomenon). Fashion-wise, “non-mainstream” combines goth and punk elements with styles borrowed from trendy Korean and Japanese youth culture. Hallmarks of the “non-mainstream” photo: looking up at the camera, the subject (usually a teenage girl), often wearing clunky glasses, opens her eyes wide, purses her lips, and flashes a V-sign. Trendy consumer products are often visible in frame (see the “conspicuous consumption” below). In full length photos, toes are pointed inward to give the impression of innocence combined with reluctant exhibitionism (example). Often, text or cartoony images are Photoshop’d in, or the subject’s eyes are enlarged to make her look even more like a character from manga or animation (example). That example comes from a whole gallery of similar images that have been entered into a “Cool” contest on 360Quan. More angsty and emo are bloody, apparently Photoshop’d self-mutilation images. They’re not incredibly common, but their shock value has made disproportionately representative of the crazy moodiness of China’s Post-90s generation.

argot ::
“Martian” language is a form of online writing that prizes linguistic and typographical playfulness: it combines abbreviations, letters, and numbers, with character combinations that correspond to pronunciations drawn from different Chinese dialects or tones of voice. It’s been around for a while, and is generally associated with online youth culture. The Huoxingwen BBS discussion portal has forums for various dialects, software that translates back and forth from standard written Mandarin to Martian, and conversation exchange. The Martian dialect most closely identified with the post-90s alternative subculture is “brain damaged writing” (脑残文), which is essentially standard Mandarin written using the most obscure characters possible. Traditional and rare variant characters are only the beginning: wrapping characters in other radicals, using duplicate and triplicate forms, and finding seldom-used characters that have a common character as a minor component are all valid techniques. Pinyin and English get rendered in Greek or Cyrillic. In its extreme stages, brain damaged writing literally splits the characters apart and builds them out of isolated radicals and phonetic symbols, example: ロ艾~~还媞叧リ冩 莪ㄋ，亻尒看，叧リヌ寸莪ㄖㄅ噫苋那庅茤，ㄝ子媞册リㄋロ巴 is an expansion of 哎，还是别提我了。你看，别对我的意见那么多。好是删了吧.

haunts ::
Although it would be misleading to assume that China’s Post-90s only hang out in one space on the Internet, 360Quan is a major focal point for post-90s teenagers, as evidenced by its overall “alternative” aesthetic and the tagline “young, stylish SNS” in the title bar. PK is a big activity on 360Quan: users can challenge each other head-to-head and vie for votes from the 360Quan userbase. PK categories include “alternative culture” (非主流), “sunniness” (阳光), “figure” (身材), “beauty” (美丽), “being cool” (搞酷), and “on the street” (街头). 360Quan also provides space for online “clans” (家族), ad-hoc groups of users linked by common interest or mutual acquaintance, a large number of whose names use Martian and brain-damaged writing. A wealth of similarly-targeted BBSs and social networks, successful and otherwise, can be found simply by searching for “90后” (meaning: post-90) in Baidu or other large search engines. Post-90s Home is one of the larger ones. Douban.com is also host to various post-90s communities, including The Nineties, with 1,281 members, and People of the Nineties with 1,190 members at time of writing. The BBS format and general tenor of Douban means that these forums feature some interesting discussions of post-90s identity – what does it mean to be part of that group?

conspicuous consumption ::
For better or for worse, China’s post-90s generation is seen as fairly materialistic. Born into an age of relative abundance, today’s urban teenagers seem entirely comfortable with consumerist culture, which they embrace fully without the ethical or cultural guilt shown by earlier generations, to the point that showing off wealth and possessions in online photo sets is a fairly common practice. A recent thread in the post-90s forum on Sina’s Women’s Channel asked members how much they typically spend on their clothes, in order to dispel the myth that they are a generation of spendthrifts. Brand-names pop up throughout the thread, and one netizen who claimed to be a 15-year-old girl attending high school in the US reported her current clothing and handbags were worth 37,030 RMB, generating a follow-up profile piece. Another post-90 girl won the moniker Sack-Girl (麻袋女) for carrying a bag full of cash to this year’s Shanghai International Automobile Industry Exhibition. Her blog, “International Aristocrat,” expresses disdain toward Shanghainese and the Auto exhibition itself.

mockery ::
Inevitably, there has been a backlash. Baidu’s Postbar has a high-traffic “anti-alternative” BBS discussion forum where members post examples of post-90s culture to mock the generation. The top post for the time being is a poll: “What do you hate most about alternative culture?” The choices (which include “A disgrace to Photoshop,” “Pigeon-toed and costumed (fake Japan-esque + fake punk),” and “fake cons, fake CK”) sketch out a rough picture of how “alternative” is seen in the popular imagination. Chun Baba turned his acerbic barbs onto alternative post-90s in a (hilarious!) fake news broadcast that rounds up some of the Photoshop abominations mocked on the Baidu post. Another video blogger cooked up a widely-reposted 17-minute-long rant blasting the worship of Korean and Japanese culture that inspires post-90s alternative fashion. Finally, Douban hosts the “Post-90s Who Are Not Like Post-90s” group whose 288 members announce that they are not “alternative” and that they “wear their clothing properly,” unlike the widespread image of “punky” and “rebellious” post-90s kids.

// 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 recently had the opportunity to chat with an ex-Red Guard. This ex-Red Guard kindly allowed me to photograph some documents and things from his experience during the Cultural Revolution as a middle school student, and his participation in the national “down to the countryside, up to the mountains” (下乡, 上山) campaigns as a teenager / twenty-something. I have done some photoshop’ing on these photos to conceal the identify of this ex-Red Guard, but I can assure you, these are genuine artifacts straight from his scrapbook.  // AjS

:: below is a patch that was sewed onto the clothing (chest) of Red Guards, it reads: “Red Guard, Shanghai City Middle School Red Guard Representative Meeting, Yangpu Military Zone.” (Before the Cultural Revolution, Yangpu was, and is now, simply referred to as a “district,” it was “militarized” for purposes of the 10 year campaign.)

:: below is a certificate stating this ex-Red Guard’s participation in the Shanghai City, Wusong Middle School Red Guard Representative Meeting. The handwritten / cursive Chinese script to the left and right of Chairman Mao’s bust reads: “Rely on the helmsman when sailing the seas, rely on Mao Zedong thought when carrying out revolution (大海航行靠舵手, 干革命靠毛泽东思想).”

:: below is the outside front and back cover of a Red Guard passbook. The front cover (right) simply says: Red Guard (vertically), and Shanghai City Wusong Middle School Team / Unit (horizontally). The back cover (left) says: “The Three Main Rules of Discipline (三大纪律): 1) obey orders in all your actions, 2) do not take a single needle or piece of thread from the masses / people, and 3) turn in everything captured. The Eight Points for Attention (八项注意): 1) speak politely, 2) pay /price fairly for what you buy / sell, 3) return everything you borrow, 4) pay for anything you damage, 5) do not hit or swear at people, 6) do not damage crops, 7) do not take liberties with women, and 8) do not ill-treat captives.”

:: below is the inside front and back cover of a Red Guard passbook. The inside front cover (left) is a quote from Lin Biao (essentially second in command during the first half of the Cultural Revolution, 1966 – 71) that reads: “Read Chairman Mao’s books. Listen to Chairman Mao’s words. Follow Chairman Mao’s instructions on how to handle affairs. Be Chairman Mao’s Good Soldiers.” The inside back cover reads: “August 20, 1966. Red Guard certificate. Second year of middle school (the handwritten “中二” just above the photo).”

:: below is a public transit pass for this ex-Red Guard / “sent down educated youth” to use when returning home (Shanghai City, Yangpu District) from the countryside; dated May 12th, 1973.

:: a 0300TV interview with Chinese communist party pet dissident and well-known conceptual artist / designer Ai Weiwei (艾未未). Recording in Beijing in May of 2008.  // 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

:: taken in Zhenjiang (Jiangsu Province), China; a service center for Chinese Communist Party members. Is anyone aware of the types of services provided at such centers? I tried asking at the front desk but didn’t get very far.  // 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.]