LEG3s is an award-winning mobile job hunting service specifically targeted at China’s 200 million migrant workers. The service informs those people about open positions, salary levels, the current situation in the job market etc. in over 100 cities in China. LEG3s has so far attracted 3 million end users who have to pay reasonable fees and can access the service through low-end mobile phones (LEG3s is pre-installed on some of those). CEO Jason Liu expects the user base to grow to 5 million by year-end.
Artist Dave McKean illustrates and writes the story about the ambiguous and corrupt deals made in a village in China. The story was originally from an anonymous Chinese reporter.
The clip is entitled “President Attacked by Shoe, Leads to War” (总统被扔鞋引发血战) in reference to the event last year when a journalist attacked US President Bush by throwing a shoe at him.
It was produced by 胡戈 (Hu Ge), the man behind the original egao film, the “Bloody Case That Started from a Steam Bun” (see ESWN’s coverage of it here).
Spoiler alert (read this only after you have watched it):
The ending, in case it’s not clear, reveals that the clip is an ad for Alibaba, “the world largest online B2B marketplace” — brilliant ad: It’s entertaining, directly related to the product and they contracted an internet-famous artist Hu Ge to create it.
Footnotes:
My friend Paul Saffo predicted the president-shoe meme would be a hit back in December 2008 here.
China is building what is billed as its first sex theme park, aimed at improving both the sex education and the sex life of its visitors.
Due to open in Chongqing in October, Love Land will include displays of giant genitalia, naked bodies and an exhibition on the history of sex.
He was inspired to build the park after a visit to South Korea’s popular sex theme park in Jeju.
By May 18 BBC was reporting that it had been demolished, and according to an Eastday report (thanks awflasher), it had been taken down by city officials on the 16th already.
There is something about this story that, I believe, represents some of the development happening in China: It’s driven by sheer entrepreneurial bravery, backed by non sequitar logic, and involves imitation.
ESWN translates an article from Southern Metropolis Daily about a real-life version of the popular BBS Xici Hutong. Specifically, the post detailed the failure to create a “Xici Street District in Nanjing to provide Internet users with a place to gather and spend money.”
The photo above is taken from the district’s apology ceremony for relying on the “internet economy” too much and failing to become profitable.
Given that large housing estates have online presences in the form of large web portals, is it wrong that large BBSs also have physical presences? And what is the business model for one?
Excerpt from an Adobe think tank piece written by Dori Tunstall of University of Illinois (Chicago):
An example of the nature-nurture problem in design could be determining whether physical or cultural differences might account for different responses of Chinese children and Chinese adults to a technology. The methodological approach to this problem requires both ethnographic and ergonomic research. On the nurture side, a team of design anthropologists would need to carry out ethnographic interviews, observations, ask people self-document their experiences, and perhaps participate in Chinese household activities. On the nature side, they would have to take physical measurements of Chinese adults and children in a lab or in the field, create databases and tables.
Intel may have followed this approach in its 2005 design of the China Home Learning PC. Design anthropologist Dr. Genevieve Bell and her team observed and interviewed Chinese families with school-aged children. The team provided Intel with ethnographic insights about the educational aspirations of Chinese families. One of their main insights was that Chinese parents viewed the computer as a distraction from their children learning Mandarin for school, which was an answer to the nurture question. But also, as part of their design process, Intel would have tested how adults and children interact with the hard and software features of the PC. The result was a physical lock-and-key mechanism that, from across the room, could alert Chinese parents to when the PC was being used in an “open mode,” which allowed for surfing the web of playing games, versus in an “education mode,” which restricted their child to schoolwork.
Ironically, I also worked on a similar idea during my sojourn at Microsoft Research in Beijing. Looking back on it, and reflecting on my current experience of designing yet another parental system for a client in the Middle East, I’m led to believe that as designers, it should be our job to foster a dialogue between parents and children rather than allow parents to “lock” and “unlock” their children’s experiences.
88 Bar is about finding bits and pieces in virtual China and examining them from the various lenses of our authors:
Lens 1: Designer
Jason Li has worked as an interaction designer, illustrator and researcher. Originally from Hong Kong, he has also lived in Canada, the US and Spain. He's writing a graphic novel in his spare time.
Lens 2: Cultural anthropologist
Lyn Jeffery is a research director at the Institute for the Future. She has spent more than 20 years living, working, and doing research in China.
Contact us if you're interesting in becoming one of our lenses.
