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

:: 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 these interviews from the CNBloggercon), it is active once again. Chang Ping has an 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.]

:: 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。

:: Shanghai is the next stop for A Nice Set, a traveling exhibition of customized slipmats designed by leading artists from around the world. Presented by NeochaEDGE and Jellymon, A Nice Set | Shanghai will feature slipmat designs from international artists as well as the first showing of original slipmat designs from emerging Chinese artists. Further integrating the music + art theme, a set of Aerial7 headphones will receive a custom-design treatment by Chinese artists and displayed at the exhibition.

A Nice Set | Shanghai exhibition will open at 7:30 PM on September 12th at SOURCE’s gallery space, and run until September 28. Original slipmats, reproductions, IdN’s commemorative book, and custom-designed Aerial7 headphones will all be available for sale throughout the exhibition. // AjS

Exhibition Opening Party :: Sept 12, 2009, 19:30

Exhibition Dates :: Sept 12 – Sept 28, 2009

Location :: SOURCE (158 Xinle Road, Near Donghu Road)

Participating Artists ::

China

Raylei, B6, Tyakasha, Yan Wei, Nini Sum, Jellymon, Kidplastik, Chairman, Shinjil, 96k, Rubberpixy

International

Asif Mian, Ben Loiz & Carolina Chaves, Bob Kronbauer, Build, Carlos Rodriguez, David Ellis, Genevieve Gauckler, Gerry Villareal, Harmen Liemburg, Hanna Werning, Hort, Ian Wright, Ian “Swifty” Swift, Jeff Staple, Jeff Zimmermann, Jenni Kim, Jeremy Hollister, Jeremyville, Maki Kawakita, Marc Atlan, Ray Smith, Republic of Regina, Stephen Bliss, Judy Wellfare, Kai and Sunny, Kenn Sakurai, Kustaa Saksi, Luca Ionesco, Maceo Villareal, Stephan “Maze” Georges, Timothy Saccenti, Universal Everything, Value and Service, Yuko Shimizu and many more

What is a slipmat?

A slipmat is a circular piece of felt material that DJs use on turntables to manipulate a record.

The Concept ::

Just as DJs sample the work of many musicians into the new mixes, visual artists tap into their own cultural surroundings, sampling the influences they have accumulated and integrate them into their work. Both the visual artist and the DJ can be seen as “selectors” who draw inspiration from their respective environments, as well as its trends and fads, with the finished product of a painting or a mix being their interpretation of the world around them.

First conceptualised by Jeremy Hollister of New York creative studio Plus et Plus and Jeff Staple of Staple Designs and The Reed Space, A Nice Set invites leading artists to customize a pair of blank slipmats with dimensions of the canvas as their only constraints.

The Artists ::

The selection of participating artists for A Nice Set is not based on any universal visual aesthetic, but rather on talent, uniqueness and a passion for music – in both the work and the lives of the chosen artists.

Since its debut in Hong Kong, A Nice Set has been on tour for the past three years, travelling from Tokyo to Spain, Paris, Australia and Singapore hitting Shanghai this September. In each city, a selection of local talent is chosen to be included in each exhibition alongside the original collective. The works of the local artists then travel to the next city of the tour, ever expanding global pool of customized designs.

Organizers ::

NeochaEDGE

NeochaEDGE is a full-service idea and execution house passionate about helping clients understand, engage, and co-create with Chinese creative communities, trendsetters, and youth culture opinion leaders.

NeochaEDGE is a daily-curated, bilingual website and discovery engine dedicated to showcasing leading-edge creative content and emerging youth culture in China.

NeochaEDGE is a product of Neocha.com, an online community and social network that empowers Chinese creatives to promote their work, collaborate with other creatives, and engage with fans.

Jellymon

Jellymon / JMGS is a multi-discipline design studio that creates Artwork, Toys, Fashion, Lifestyle products, Branding, Creative Direction. Jellymon was set up by Lin Lin and Sam Jacobs. The pair met at Chelsea School of Art in 2002 and have been working together ever since. Jellymon is about art and products with a fun and thoughtful twist. JMGS works closely with brands and advertising agencies. The projects we work on are very wide ranging but most focus mainly on the Youth Market.

Sponsors ::

Aerial7

Aerial7 was founded in 2008 based on the idea that great sound can be combined with awesome, eye-catching design. Our headphones are influenced by our devotion to art, streetwear, action sports, and DJ culture. They deliver unsurpassed audio quality in models that are as much a statement of individualism as they are a practical necessity.

Vedett

Vedett is a premium Belgian beer brand with a somewhat different attitude; taking itself not too serious (except when it comes to quality, then we’re damn serious!), a bit quirky, modest, not telling you what to do or how to behave.

:: 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.]

:: see below for some photos and anecdotal (sometimes random) notes from a recent trip I took to southern Vietnam. This was only my second time in Vietnam, so please correct me if I got anything wrong. Thanks.  // AjS

snaps ::

scribbles ::

• Vietnam is really two words and should be spelled Viet Nam.
• Pepsi not Coke.
• I have never seen stores selling caskets before. In Vietnam such stores are all along the roadside. It’s very sad to see a stack of children-sized caskets ready for the sell.
• There are a lot catholic churches in Vietnam.
• Vietnamese cemeteries are above ground and beautiful.
• Warrior sneakers and Tiger beer are the only Chinese brands I noticed in the Vietnamese market.
• Pho is of course never better than in Vietnam.
• Motorbikes not cars.
• Vietnam has some of the most interesting signage, particularly government propaganda anti-smoking, and disease awareness signs.
• Vietnamese people don’t stare, at you in fact, you’re lucky if they look at you at all.
• Some local fishing boats look like teacups floating in the water.
• In-store / shop / home Buddhist shrines have flashing neon lights.
• Quite a few people speak Mandarin. More than I would have expected.
• Samsung and NOKIA seem to be market leaders in the hand set space in Vietnam.
• A few KFC, no McDonalds. A good thing.
• WIFI internet access is fairly readily available in HCM city. The fastest internet connection I’ve accessed in years in in the HCM city airport courtesy of Vietnam Airlines.
• Vietnamese coffee is still the best coffee in the world to me.
• Automobile horns are different…they are considerably louder, at a higher pitch, and more annoying.
• Buildings are tall, skinny, and deep.
• Motorcycle helmets is a good industry to be in.
• “Same same.” is a full and proper sentence in Vietnam.
• Unlike the most of the rest of East Asia, Karaoke is not a very big deal here.
• Barefoot.
• Limes, not lemons.
• Bugs are bigger here.
• What’s the point of the last 3 zeros in local currency?
• The Mekong River is very muddy.
• The Vietnamese, like almost every country I’ve ever visited (accept Germany) appear to be quite patriotic.
• There is no subway in HCM city, although I understand that is going to change soon.
• Although the official name is apparently HCM city, most local people still seem to refer to it as Saigon. Saigon sounds much better, but
• HCM was a pretty interesting guy and probably worst have a big Vietnamese city named after him.
• A lot of graffiti tags, but couldn’t really find and proper pieces.
• There is an odd and very obvious surplus of older Western men with badly done arm tattoos running around this country.
• Palm trees and coconuts.
• To my great delight, 8bit Nintendo is still played by the average Vietnamese “gamer”
• The Saigon River-front in downtown HCM city reminds of what Shanghai must have looked like in the late 80s or so.
• Bread appears to be a pretty standard part of local cuisine…unlike most other East Asian countries.
• Petro not gas.

:: the Beijing edition of City Weekend magazine recently interviewed me about NeochaEDGE and the creative community in China, see below (or news-stands) for the print article. To see the full interview online, link here.  // AjS

:: in light of the role Web 2.0 and online communications played in the recent unrest in Xinjiang, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at where and how China’s ethnic minorities congregate via online community in China. A bit of context for unknowing readers: China has 56 officially recognized ethic groups. 55 of them are minorities, with the majority ethnic group, Han, accounting for 90+% of China’s population.

The scale and diversity of the Chinese Internet means that members of China’s 55 ethnic minorities looking for online communities that reflect their offline culture have a wide variety of options available to them. Although there are occasional problems, as in the case of Uyghur discussion forums suspended after the Urumqi riots, or when community websites of groups in China’s more “restive” regions sometimes have to deal with the firm hand of government authorities, the Chinese Internet still has a wealth of resources for people who want to meet others like themselves online, or who want to converse in their own language.

Below is a snapshot of some online communities for five different minority groups in China: Uyghur, Tibetan, Mongolian, Hakka, and Manchu. Non-Chinese languages might require installing special fonts or viewing pages in a particular web browser, but discussion on many of the linked sites is conducted in standard Chinese script.

Uyghur ::
The most visible forum for Uyghurs in Xinjiang was the Uighur Online BBS discussion forum (维吾尔在线), run by economist Ilham Tohti. After the recent Urumqi riots, the website was blocked because of its use as a communication tool for rioters, and Ilham was detained by police. It’s still available through a proxy, though. It has active sub-forums for Uyghur issues, ethnic thought, and Han society, and even one for Hui people in predominantly Uyghur areas. On the newsy side of things, sub-boards range from current events to Uyghur issues in the foreign media. Translation between traditional ethnic languages, Mandarin Chinese, and English is a featured activity, with assignments handed out to interested members in exchange for system credits. A companion Uyghur-language BBS has a wide range of posts written in Latin script. My Uyghur is a Xinjiang-registered portal written in Uyghur Arabic script, and hosts BBS discussion forums in both Uyghur Arabic and in Chinese. Interestingly, many of the discussion threads on the Chinese forum are written in a mix of Chinese characters and Latin-script Uyghur. The My Uyghur website has an associated blog group on Netease with around one thousand members who post about Uyghur culture, faith, and customs, mostly in Chinese.

Tibetan ::
Tibet Culture, a Gansu-registered blog host and discussion forum, is an active community for Chinese-language discussion about Tibet and Tibetans. The BBS discussion forum has a range of sub-forums including Tibetan culture, literature, and Buddhist texts, but the blog section is far more interesting. pulls down several dozen blog posts a day ranging from art to t-shirts to current events like the Urumqi riots to Tibetan Buddhism. Most of the blog posts are in Chinese; occasionally Tibetan-language posts will be put up as image files. The government-run Tibet Information Center also hosts a blog service that covers many of the same topics; judging from the tag cloud, education is a major focus, as is the Dalai Lama, who takes a major drubbing from the site’s bloggers. Displaying Tibetan script is still an issue for many web browsers today, so Tibetan-language websites are doubly impenetrable to outsiders (you may have to try some of the links listed here in a number of different browsers to get them to render properly). ChodMe is a Tibetan-language blog host associated with the news portal TibetCM. Discussion-forum-wise, the Tibetan Youth BBS gets a fair amount of traffic.

Mongolian ::
The Mongolian Youth forum is a bilingual BBS that hosts discussion in both Chinese and Mongolian. On the Chinese side, the sub-board for international Mongol issues is quite popular and focuses largely on the country of Mongolia, with threads like this look at the army. The Mongolian-language side has less traffic, and the most popular sub-board seems to be about the environment and customs. The Mongolian Teacher Forum describes its mission to be “saving ethnic education” (拯救民族教育). The forum is mostly dedicated to pedagogical topics, with discussions over ethnicity-related issues quite common. In one re-posted article, the author questions why Inner Mongolia has no real Mongolian university: “Why can’t the Mongolians, who once founded the mightiest empire of the world, even build a Mongolian university in their own autonomous region?” Many of the active posters are teachers. For example, “Chasna”, a female Mongolian elementary school teacher has 541 posts. In one post, she talks about her experiences teaching ethics to young students. “Taliinhan” (塔林汗), which means “friend of the prairie” in Mongolian, is a forum about environmental protection issues in Inner Mongolia. A large proportion of discussion is dedicated to laws and regulations. The “Taliinhan environmental protection association,” an NGO founded in 2004, is the force behind the forum. Taliinhan seeks to “protect the prairie and the interest of the farmers within the boundary of law,” and one of their offline activities is the distribution of law texts to Mongolian farmers. QQ (57162485) and MSN () groups are available to further facilitate group communication. Sites in Mongolian occasionally give users a choice between a Cyrillic version (used more in outer Mongolia) and vertical Mongolian script (which has only become practical since the introduction of Windows Vista, and which still generally requires the use of the Internet Explorer browser). This BBS discussion forum, affiliated with the Mongolian News Portal of China, uses software from Inner Mongolian IT company Menksoft. Other solutions exist: The MGLBlog host uses Flash to display Mongol script.

Hakka ::
Although it arguably should be, Hakka (客家) is not officially recognized as one of China’s 56 ethnic Groups. Hakka speakers are classified as Han Chinese, and they live mainly in Guangdong, Jiangxi, and Fujian. The lack of official recognition rankles some young people, who discuss various propositions for a “Hakka Province” or a “Hakka Municipality” (or even, tongue-in-cheek, a “Hakka Kingdom”). A thread on the Hakka Online BBS discussion forum argues in favor of a Hakka homeland, which one commenter suggests establishing around Meizhou, Guangdong. Earlier this year, Hakka Online launched its first annual pop music competition, which solicited original videos for Hakka-language songs (most of them from Taiwan). Another website, Hakka Forum, receives a couple dozen posts a day and has message boards for topics ranging from Hakka folk music and films to famous Hakka people, including an analysis of the family tree of Sun Yat-sen, who was born into a Hakka family. Hakka identity is a factor here, too: the discussion forum carries the tag-line, “The 56 ethnicities are like 56 flowers. One flower is the Han, and it has eight petals. One of these petals is the Hakka.” Hakka musicians and political figures are also featured on China Hakka Hall. The Hakka Sky BBS is a relatively active forum with about a thousand comments a day, most of them in the Hakka News and Cultural Encyclopedia boards. As Hakka people are spread across a large part of China, there are numerous smaller, local forums like Guangzhou Hakka, and Meizhou Hakka, which launched just this past April. Recent posts of interest include a student’s account of a trip to Yongding in Fujian, where he enjoyed ancient streets and earthen buildings that have been granted World Cultural Heritage status. Another post is about the “brewing” (酿) of food in Hakka culture, in this case, how to make brewed bitter melon. Interestingly, despite the unique language that defines part of Hakka identity, most of the conversation on all of these Hakka forums is conducted in Mandarin, except in cases where the finer points of Hakka itself are under discussion.

Manchu ::
Although a sizable group of people identify themselves as Manchu in China, the language and culture has practically vanished. Consequently, online Manchu communities feature discussions of traditional Manchu culture and introductory language materials from a learner’s perspective. Solonju, for example, has an online Manchu textbook and a BBS forum for discussion in both Chinese and Romanized Manchu. The Manchus website and BBS discussion forum, registered in Beijing, is written almost entirely in Chinese (except for a title written in Manchu and Jurchen script). One of the popular sub-boards is “Root finding,” where netizens can trace their genealogy based on their family name and the area they once lived. Other active boards include discussion of Manchu history and “Modern Manchu,” which consists of notifications for current Manchu cultural activities. Similarly, in the iManchu discussion forums, the hottest sub-board is devoted to the discussion of ethnic history. A Manchu blog group on Sohu has moderately active discussions of topics like Manchu script and traditional culture in a modern setting. The Internet also provides a number of Manchu language tools. A Manchu script creator converts Romanized Manchu into vertical Manchu script, and Enenggi hosts a Manchu word of the day and an online Manchu dictionary. Although the Manchu people of the northeast may have lost their language, the Xibe people of Xinjiang, who are related to the Manchu but are classified as an entirely separate ethnic group, retain a language that is quite close to classical Manchu. Xibe Web has a low-traffic BBS discussion forum where posts are made in Romanized Xibe. The website Xibe Culture has a similar Xibe-language BBS discussion forum.

// 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.]

:: 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

:: 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]

:: there is a great exhibition opening in Shanghai at Art Labor this weekend, running through July 10. Link here for more details. See below for some sample pieces from the artist, 26 year old Xian-based Ying Yefu (also know as Kodyo and Ren Qianyi).  // AjS

:: a special thanks to Danwei for helping me learn that this image is actually an Ai Weiwei photograph. I honestly had no idea. For the longest time I thought it was just a Zuo Xiao Zu Zhuo (左小祖咒) album cover, which, incidentally, hung framed on the the wall of my Beijing apartment from 2003 to 2006. Does anyone know where I can find more information about this photo?  // AjS

:: an excellent documentary examining social media’s deconstruction / decentralization of institutions, decision-making, and organizations, and the impact the Internet is having (and potentially could have) on government, finance, collaboration / information sharing, and online / offline networking. Buy the DVD here (the video below is the full documentary). For more information, extra clips, and reviews, link here. To watch this documentary in other languages, link here. H/T Sean Leow. // AjS

:: 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.