Author Archives: An Xiao Mina

A Curated History of the Grass Mud Horse Song

As I thought about how to kick off the China Meme Report, I was overwhelmed.  The Chinese internet is huge–some 500 million people are logging on each day, and nearly half of those are using microblogs. As in Twitter, Chinese microblogs like Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo are feeding grounds of some amazing memes. Fortunately, [...]

The Last Train Home: Following One Migrant Family’s Struggles

Chunjie aka Spring Festival aka Chinese New Year is here!  It was my first month in China last year, and I had just moved to Beijing.  I vividly remember dropping off my roommate at Beijing airport for her own participating in Chunyun–the elegant word-pairing that sums up the largest annual human migration on earth–and then [...]

Is China a Telecom Bridge to North Korea?

Image courtesy Scallop Holden on a Creative Commons License. With the world’s eyes on North Korea right now, it’s important to remember the role of China in this story.  As the North’s primary ally, China will be playing a critical role in the coming months and years as the leadership transition plays out. But equally [...]

Is Twitter Catching Up To Weibo?: Multimedia and Emoji in Western Social Media

There’s an interesting article in Penn Olson recently about Twitter’s new redesign and just how much it resembles Sina Weibo.  It’s been circulating around a few tech circles I follow: Twitter’s slick new redesign has brought it – visually and practically – closer to China’s most dynamic microblogging platform, Sina’s Weibo. It shows, perhaps, that [...]

Shanghai Government to Sponsor Hacking Spaces?

I came across this article recently on hackaday.com, talking up the possibility of new hackerspaces in China: Government leadership in Shanghai wants to build 100 community hackerspaces funded by the Chinese government. Each space will be at least 100 square meters, open 200 days a year, and come equipped with wood and metal lathes, saws, [...]