Young teens on a Saturday night in the central business district of Hong Kong…
Doing that skid/drifting thing with their bikes. (See bottom left of the photo below.) But usually by wetting the floor with some water bottles first.
Oh, and did I mention the modded, souped-up bikes? (Modding on the spot in the photo below.)
Anyone know more about this trend/hobby?
Spotted in Hong Kong on the night of May 22, 2010.
Long-time readers will know I have a particular fixation with Chinese typography, so even though the logos below are technically Japanese, many of the characters they’ve used are also Chinese characters.
宮
山
北
青
Chinayouthology has a piece over on their blog explaining who the Chinese hipsters are. The term of “hipsters” in Chinese is 潮人, which literally translates to “trendy/hip person” and sounds a bit like 超人 (“super man”). The term is more straightforward than the American word “hipster” and not as unique a classifier. (Arguably, the term “hipster” in English has lost its subcultural roots as well.)
The post continues to define two types of hipsters, creative (those closer to being cultural producers) and mainstream (the followers). While I found the market segmentation of hipsters into two distinct categories too forced, I did enjoy their description of the creative hipster’s general sentiment:
Not all of the creative people look hip. But some of them do look really trendy. In fact they don’t care to ‘look’ cutting-edge but just care to be different. They usually HATE to be labeled as ‘Chao Ren’ which in their perception refers to ‘mainstream hipsters’.
招财童子 (the wealth-bringing-seeking children) are a suite of Chinese-themed, adorable, cartoon characters. For example:
Since I profiled their Opera-themed siblings in 2007 (here), they’ve become famous enough to appear on T-shirts, silly Flash animations and phone cards:
Happy preemptive Chinese New Year folks!
Go to their site now to watch a short, download a wallpaper…
Ice scupltures by Joseph Ellis
Alfredo Martinez at work
The New York Times has an interesting article about various artists who have chosen to go to China to maximize their creativity. Reasons include the cheap costs of materials and (other people’s) labor, an escape from the spotlight of the New York art scene, and China’s gritty lawless feeling that accompanies its rapid development.
See the full article here: For Expatriates in China, Creative Lives of Plenty.
Quote from Christopher Knight’s LA Times review of the Beijing painter Song Kun:
Nowhere is it more engaged than in the triptych, where three panels show different views of a rock band playing on a club’s stage, fronted by a young female singer. In the lower left quadrant of each view, illuminated by stage lights that variously blare into your eyes, a uniformed soldier or policeman is seen from behind, intently watching the musical performance.
Song keeps shifting our point of view on the nightclub action, but it’s the official watching the free-spirited woman who seems to be the work’s true subject. Whether a performer merely being checked out by an unexpected fan, a symbol of youthful rebellion under the watchful eye of an authorized representative of government control or perhaps art being metaphorically monitored by shadowy proscriptions, the triptych mesmerizes. The show is Song’s U.S. gallery debut, and it represents a big step forward.
CNNGo, CNN’s Asia travel guide, recently published top “people to watch” lists for Asia, Shanghai and Hong Kong. The lists include an interesting mix of artists, entrepreneurs and corporate heavyweights, which gives a good albeit skewed flavor of what is going on at the fringes of (the well-polished side of) society.
So go now, to CNNGo’s…
Or if you prefer something more salacious, see chinaSMACKChinaHush’s 20 hottest people on the internet in China (thanks John!).
