Editor’s note: As some of you might know, 88 Bar members Tricia Wang and Christina Xu spent the spring of this year doing research and fieldwork around people and technology in China. Here we’ve excerpted some of the highlights from Tricia’s Instagram account.
First stop – a Tencent conference in Beijing headlined by a talk on “user research in the era of big data”:
Second stop – spotting signs of upward mobility in rural Guizhou:
Lastly – the rise and fall of an internet cafe in Guizhou:
#bytesofchina – This #internetcafe in rural #guizhou, china is the single source of income for a family. After the husband was injured in a work accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down in 2005, the wife had to find a way to support their two children. A friend suggested she build an #internetcafe. When she first opened it in 2008, she was averaging 3,000¥ ($500) per month. She said they the cafe used to be full of children playing games and people watching movies. But in recent years, mobile internet made it to this region. People now play games and watch movies on their smartphones instead of the Internet cafe. As a result, she is now only able to make around 100¥ ($17) per month on the cafe. The other source of income is her husband’s disability payment of 100¥ per month. Her two kids have borrowed money to study at local technical schools. Since she doesn’t have a permit to run the cafe, her relatives, who work inside the local government alerts her when county police come into town. As mobile internet coverage and smartphone use have rapidly increased over the last 5 years, Internet cafes are slowly disappearing around the country. It’s fascinating to learn that the economics of maintaining a cafe in rural areas are less feasible now as people are spending more time on personal devices. It’s quite possible these spaces will become a relic of the pre-smartphone age in China. #livefieldnote #triciainchina
A photo posted by tricia the wolf (@triciawang) on Mar 10, 2015 at 3:55am PDT