Pangbianr 旁边儿 has soft launched pangbianr radio, a series of podcasts on art & culture in China. The first episode is “On Building Electronic Devices During The Cultural Revolution,” an interview with a woman who dabbled in making radios during that technology-starved era.

Highlights include an account of how she was the only woman at the black market for electronics components during the Cultural Revolution, as well as her having to build extra radios for her extended family, even when the thrill of building as a hobby was long gone.

Listen to the podcast here, in Chinese or English.

• “China, like the United States, produces 400 million tons of grain a year.”
• “Last year, there were 12 million new car sales in China… In this country, the rule of thumb is that for every five cars you have to pave one acre — roughly a football field.”
• “…all the leaders in Beijing at that time and indeed today are survivors of the great famine of 1959 to 1961, when according to official numbers, 30 million people starved to death.”
• “In 1996, China produced almost 15 million tons of soybeans. They consumed 15 million tons of soybeans. In 2010, they will again produce 15 million tons of soybeans, and they will consume 61 million tons — which means they’re importing like 46 million tons of soybeans.”

Via @pdenlinger.

As well as from historic San Francisco.

See his fine art site (via startdrawing.org).

The WSJ reports on Hung Huang’s latest venture, a new store at the upscale Sanlituan “Village” (outdoor mall) in Bejing. The store’s called BNC (Brand New China) in English and 薄荷糯米葱 (Mint, glutinous rice, onion) in Chinese. It will only feature items made by Chinese designers.

I find the store interesting because it will help pave out a path to success for Chinese designers by creating a commercial space between small store and global fashion brand. Plus it’s in the new hot, upscale mall complex, which are usually filled with foreign brands (they even have Coldstone Creamery).

Unfortunately, as Hung Huang points out, it’s only the non-Chinese developers who are interested in having a store dedicated to local Chinese talent, where most local property developers will only use Chinese designers for one-time PR events.

Via @rpeckham & @niubi.

P.S. The WSJ article starts off with yet another introduction about Hung Huang as the Oprah of China. It’s true that she’s multi-talented and successful, but I’m not exactly sure why WSJ and Fortune are so bent on finding a Chinese Oprah.

Each font for personal use costs ￥99元, and annual subscriptions for commercial use start at ￥1,999元. More details here.

(Via @pangbianr.)

Now can someone please make Typekit for Chinese fonts/China so that I can read all my Chinese sites with 30% less squinting?

The animation is pretty slick, and I love the way the animated characters climb on and throw around real-world props.

Via CNNGo.

For a more legible version of my notes, goto Flickr directly here.

And congratulations to @jonbuford @genesoo @5thconnection @photogoodness @danielhitome @hypercasey for putting on a successful startup conference in Hong Kong.

Joomla is an open-source content management system: Anyone can download it and install it on their server to build robust, complex websites. (Think Wordpress with more data manipulation options.)

In 2005, two Dutch entrepreneurs took Joomla with them to a small town in the Tibetan Plateau. There they founded a non-profit, Global Nomad, teaching local people how to build websites with it. By 2008, they had enough business to go from non-profit status to for-profit (foreigner owned), and started servicing local clients.

In this way, Global Nomad was able to stem the brain drain/urban flight… at least a little.

More details here. (Via Micah’s twitter.)

The accompanying text is: “On July 28 at the Yingxiong Shanrenfang Shopping Plaza in Jinan city, an old man wanted to jump down from the roof of the 6-meter tall glass house. The police tried to persuade him not to. Meanwhile the reporters from Jinan TV sat right underneath and ate KFC and drank Pepsi.”

Originally from a Netease forum, found and translated by ESWN.

Jan Chipchase, a well-known design researcher who moved to Shanghai recently, posts about his 6 Rules for Night-riding in Shanghai. I’ve excerpted my favorite parts below:

The first vehicle into a space has right of way: in the event of a tie – the biggest, most phucked-up vehicle wins. If one vehicle obviously belongs to a party official then the same rules apply, but the emphasis falls on the second vehicle to avoid contact. This makes taking junctions at speed pretty hairy.

Stay clear of the bicycle/motorbike/e bike lanes, and instead slipstream the larger traffic. You’ll be the only pedal power playing with the big boys and as long as they can see you they tend to show respect. The major exception to this are some of the bus lanes – they are a license to speed, can quickly become single lane channels with no escape route. Know your route kids.

22:00 is a good start time, the traffic has died down to something approaching lite.

Read the full post, or check out the rest of his blog for more entries (and some beautiful fieldwork photographs) about his move to Shanghai.

(The photo is actually from another post of his here.)