:: in last week’s Friday Five, I focused on China’s “Post 90″ generation on the Chinese Internet. This week, I’ve decided to take a look at the other end of the age spectrum – China’s oldsters.

China’s Internet population may be dominated by young people, but Chinese seniors have a space of their own online as well. In fact, Baidu.com, China’s leading local search engine, recently launched a special senior-oriented search option that features large text, links to handy reference information like weather and stocks, and a categorized directory of major online destinations that oldsters might find useful. As nice as it is, it’s still a wrapper around a normal browsing experience, and to find individual Web sites specifically targeted at the elderly demographic requires a bit more effort. To that end, I thought it fitting to dig around and take a closer look at the Senior 2.0 scene in China. Below is a selection of senior-oriented offerings on the Chinese Internet.

general ::
The focus of China50Plus is pretty self-evident. It’s a news and information portal for people getting on in years, with a fairly extensive blogging platform and other forum tools as well. China50Plus bloggers post photos, reflections on life, and cheesy animations. And a blog purportedly by 99-year-old math professor Xu Xianyu (徐献瑜) contained posts about his interests, which included poetry as well as math, until he announced he was headed for the hospital in a March post. An English language about page explains that the service is supported by the Gerontological Society of China. Lots of BBSs can be found that target oldsters, but many of them are very low-trafficked and limited to a small community of users. China Seniors Forum (中国老年社区) is a moderately-trafficked discussion forum. The most active sub-boards are Making Net Friends (网友之窗) for new member introductions, and Learning for Seniors (老有所学), where members share information about computer-related topics like Photoshop, Flash, and HTML. “Setting Sun” (夕阳) is a gentle euphemism for aging, so many websites targeted at the elderly will include that in their names. The Red Sunset Forum is a space for seniors to meet people and chat; the most popular sub-forum is a virtual Tea House whose topics include word games and dialect exchange.

services ::
OldKids (老小孩) has blogs and forums, but its main mission is to offer training in computers and the Internet to the elderly. The Web site has a directory of off-line training sessions in skills like WindowsXP (in Shanghai), and offers video courses on the same subject matter. OldKid’s archives also feature entertainment offerings like classic movies and games. Seniors, get ready to experience Super Mario! (well, Luigi’s Revenge). Other websites help seniors with more immediate concerns, like finding places to spend the rest of their years. Older99 is a directory of retirement communities and nursing homes, with a wide range of other categories of aging-related information. Health is another concern, and God of Longevity manages to provide wellness information relatively unscathed by the flood of dodgy ads for drugs and supplements that cover most other health websites. God of Longevity has sub-sites for illnesses, healthy living, emotional life, and friends-making.

nostalgia ::
The Zhiqing (educated youth) sent down to the countryside in the 60s are getting on in years, and there are a number of online forums for them to look back on their younger days. Beijing Zhiqing BBS is aimed at former zhiqing from Beijing and receives a few thousand posts a day. The most popular sub-boards currently are Yan’an, which connects people who spent time in northern Shaanxi province, and Mountains and Gardens, which organizes outings for members. There’s a similar BBS for Shanghai-based zhiqing, which is more art-oriented, and for zhiqing based in other major cities throughout the country. For participants in an earlier period of Chinese history, Love Old Soldiers is ostensibly a website for veterans of the anti-Japanese war, although current active members seem to be mostly younger people. One of the site’s missions is to provide stipends to elderly veterans in need of financial support, as in the case of 58th Division veteran Duan Wenzhou (段文周).

offline activities ::
The Jianchen Cup, an annual exercise competition for seniors, hosts an active BBS on its website. The Cup is co-organised by the Chinese Health Education Association and is sponsored by the Shenzhen health products company King Soldier (深圳市金士吉康复用品科技有限公司), which means a lot of the off-line activities promoted on the site are also in Shenzhen. The BBS, too, is mostly about activities in the local area, such as this post about a the Guanhai Tai dance group. According to rankings listed on the site, the top three interest groups at the moment are Food, Morning Exercise, and Social Issues. (More Jianchen Cup info on Baidu Baike.) Old Cadres Home (老干部之家) is associated with the print magazine of the same name, and provides forums and information, as well as travel planning, products, and outings. And like other age groups, seniors get together through QQ groups set up for organizing dancing and other activities (one for Guangzhou).

companionship ::
Seniors need love, too. Old People Love is a website for senior singles in search of their other half. Users can search by city and availability. Another match-making site In Search of a Spouse is fee-based: VIP members can upgrade to send messages and add friends for 200 yuan for six months or 300 yuan for one year. A thorough help section explains how to log in and register for the benefit of old people who don’t know how to use the Internet (and other information about sending and receiving messages and check private contact details). The Web site also features a BBS. Oldster (夕阳夜话) is a BBS targeted at gay seniors. A photo sub-board is the most popular forum on the site, but photos only show up for registered users. ChGay, a website aimed at a wider age range, has a section for seniors as well as a group for May-December romances.

// 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.]

:: meeting people online is not hard: online acquaintances can be made in general-interest BBS forums, through SNS websites, or over IM software. But finding love in these online relationships might be a little awkward, so a wide range of websites have sprung up to help Chinese netizens meet a special someone to spend the rest of their life with, or just to get together for a quick roll in the hay.

general match-making ::
Baihe is the premier online personals site in China. Founded in 2005, it claims to have reached 13 million registered members at the end of 2008. From its motto (“soul mates finding a happy marriage”) to the services it offers, Baihe is geared toward bringing people together for traditional marriages, not casual dating. The website provides a Soulmate tool that performs a personality quiz and tries to match users up with compatible mates. With its sizable membership, Baihe has large local sub-groups in cities across China so people can find possible matches close to them. Other matchmaking websites are job-specific. 91Fate is aimed at white-collar workers; the website specifies that members must have achieved at least a vocational college level of education. And at Central Meetup (央务鹊桥), the Chinese government has set up a website for single civil servants and party cadres. Aspiring members apply through the government and party employees committee and can then take part in special singles events organized by the website and related organizations. And Shanghai-registered gay portal BoySky has a personals section (阳光交友) that has profiles from men across the country, along with a BBS, chat rooms, and video chat services.

hook-ups ::
Some people may not be interested in long-term relationships. For them, there’s 9yiye (就一夜交友), whose name translates to “Friends for a night.” This matchmaking website is devoted to bringing people together for one-night stands. Newly-registered users are given 1,000 free credits, and the website encourages users to reveal their real personal information and participate in community-building activities by rewarding them with extra credits — 300 for uploading a personal, 40 for revealing a phone number, and 2 for posting a comment — which can be used toward typical SNS services like buying virtual gifts and sending phone messages. In terms of privacy protection,  the website allows users to send emails or text messages to others without revealing their addresses or phone numbers. Anticipating that one-night-stand registration could be used as a tool for harassment, 9yiye threatens to report people who fill in false information to the police. Currently, users are predominately male. There are countless other dodgy BBS forums that get thousands of comments a day in forums devoted to hookups. A random example is Avi4, which divides hookup requests by region and has other sub-forums for adult content and other, restricted boards for edgier stuff like partner-swapping and bestiality (how much of this is more than just for show remains unknown — entrance requires VIP status on the website). The site claims to be registered with the Ministry of Industry and Information in Guangzhou, but its registration number which isn’t in the database, and it’s hosted in the US. This and other sites like it (search Baidu for 一夜情论坛) form a part of the Chinese language Internet unwelcome by the authorities but that seems to satisfy a certain need on the part of netizens.

fetish ::
S&M site SMNei is an SNS aimed at people into S&M. Currently there are 25426 members who can join various interest groups, like “bondage and dripping wax” sex group, which are only open to members. Like other Facebook / Xiaonei knock-offs, SMNei profiles include a discussion board, a message board, a photo album, and functionality for users to seek other people who share their same S&M interests, such as seen in user Zuqiandai’s profile.

non-traditional relationships ::
Asexual Marriage (无性婚姻网) is probably the most well-known website devoted to bringing people together for marriages in which sex does not play a part. It’s been covered in the mainland media as well as in a 2006 Reuters article. The site mentions various reasons for which people may be seeking asexual marriages – no sex drive, a desire for purely platonic companionship, or for medical reasons – but judging from the articles posted on the front page as well as the links bar at the bottom, the website is largely geared toward homosexuals who are seeking a traditional marriage as demanded by heteronormative Chinese society.

video chat ::
Love65 (65经典社区) is a social network site that offers games, stories, and discussion groups but is mostly devoted to video chat. It’s fee-based, and features “dancing,” “KTV,” and “private chat”. A warning banner on video pages says that the platform is solely for making friends, and that members should not tempt video presenters to do anything obscene or pornographic. Similar restrictions appear on other mainstream video chat sites, such as Liaoliao (聊聊语音聊天网), particularly after anti-filth campaigns. Nonetheless, there are lots of dodgier sites, many of which seem to be outright scams, that promote sex chat services. 3ren.com, a platform for building special-interest SNS websites, hosts a recently-launched Naked Chatroom (裸聊社区) to connect people for sex chatting. However, judging from the QQ numbers that get exchanged on other BBS discussion forums, and screenshots that circulate on adult image websites, most naked chatting and cybering probably takes place outside the browser, in IM software applications.

// 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.]

:: 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 .

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:

Take up the IDAHO Challenge from Gays.com on Vimeo.

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 bigger gay Chinese portals 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!

56minus1: Thanks Ken.

// AjS

:: Danwei TV presents The Shanghai Beat, “Gay Shanghai.” In this episode, host Adam Schokora (小石) spends an evening exploring all things gay in Shanghai with local scene queen, Comrade Yutian, a self-proclaimed expert on queer Shanghai. This episode also features a performance by the Shanghainese garage-rock band Banana Monkey, shot in their rehearsal studio.

Note: this video was produced and originally post on Danwei in October, 2007.

This video is also available on Tudou for faster loading in China.

credits ::
produced by Adam J. Schokora & Ginger Xiang

contacts ::
email & msn IM:

special thanks ::
Yutian, Chi Heng Foundation, Hot Water Bottle, 刘向飞, 丝丝 and Jimi.

// AJS