Author Archives: Jason Li

Classic & Modern Chinese Landscape Paintings: Which is which?

First up, a modern rendition of the Zhangye Danxia (a classic landscape found only in China) by Rebecca Mok. (Via Rebecca Mok Illustrates.) Then, a classic Chinese landscape style rendering by Zao Lu… (Via Co.Design.) …except that Zao’s “paintings” are actually photoshopped pictures of trash heaps in China.

Artists and officials, cosy together in the Middle Kingdom

Over at the Atlantic, Nick Frisch discusses the outrage that ensued when Mo Yan, “Communist Party member, People’s Liberation Army veteran, Vice-Chairman of the state-run China Writers’ Association” won the Nobel Prize for Literature last October.  The paper quoted Gao Xingjian, the 2000 literature laureate whose dissident stature and French citizenship made him ineligible for [...]

How a bookstore evolved into becoming a banned books center in Hong Kong

From the Atlantic, In Hong Kong, a Sanctuary for Banned Books: Later that year we began to get mainland visitors from cities like Beijing and Tianjin who were traveling on their own. Our sign said “People’s Commune” in Chinese, and our logo was Mao Zedong’s face, so maybe that caught their eye. Sometimes, customers would [...]

Kowloon Walled City repository

Those of us who’ve been in Hong Kong are constantly barraged by articles and people describing the magic of the now-dismantled Kowloon Walled City. Amidst the romanticization of this 6.5 acre block that was ungoverned or policed for decades (it lay in limbo between communist China and colonial British rule), people rarely offer any photographs [...]

Swipe typing, China edition

Above: TouchPal (触宝)’s promo video for their smartphone swipe-typing technology. Note the (probably unauthorized) Lady Gaga soundtrack. Francis Pisani over at Winch5 has a feature on TouchPal Cootek, a China born-and-bred smartphone swipe-typing technology. Pisani claims that their keyboard works much better than the Swype that’s offered on Samsung phones. Amongst Cootek’s many features are predictive [...]

Featured design: Cover

Update: It seems that magCulture is no longer selling this from its online store, and the originally linked-to review has gone missing. Presenting Cover, a new magazine coming out of China by Mazzybox. (Anyone have more information about him/her? magCulture says that Mazzybox works at a studio called Deadline.) The magazine’s second edition, pictured below, [...]

The Hardware Fairyland of Huaqiangbei Road, Shenzhen

Photos by Windell H. Oksay, from an Evil Mad Scientist post in 2009. From the hours I spent there last year, it hasn’t changed since then. Note the heavy advertising expenditure from Samsung, who were out there back in 2009 already.  The electronics markets around Huaqiangbei Road (华强北路) in Shenzhen are huge; hardware components, tape [...]

Trying to cash in on Chinese New Year – Chinese sneakers from Western companies

From Adidas: From Nike, and apparently not for sale: Not very subtle, are they? (Image sources here, here and here.)

2 rooftops, 2 farms, 2 cities

A Tale of Two Rooftops from The Perennial Plate on Vimeo. A beautiful tale of two rooftop farms, one in Beijing and one in Hong Kong, and the people behind them. Via This Big City.

The Free Lunch case for inefficient, redundant design

In her talk for The Conference 2012, Designing for Trust: How China’s Free Lunch avoided The Curse of Kelvin (embedded above), Tricia Wang makes the case that the inefficient data entry and publishing sequence pictured below is the culturally appropriate and only effective solution available. The case study she gives is of journalist Deng Fei’s Free Lunch [...]