Subtitled interviews with hip hop artists in China about why they choose to rap in Mandarin or their hometown dialect.

Some vouch for the large reach of Mandarin, while others vouch for the authenticity and history of their regional dialects. Watch the tensions play out above.

(Via Patrick Searle’s Twitter.)…

Continue readingTension between national and regional languages in Chinese rap

From an O’Reilly Radar interview with Chumby founder Andrew “bunnie” Huang:

The way it works is a lot of these large [U.S.] brands have almost no engineers on the inside… office consists of some product managers and maybe a couple of product engineers. And what they do is they just write kind of a Word document…

Continue readingUS to China, design to manufacturing

Above: “Hidden Elders” a RTHK documentary depicting the plight of the elders in the helter skelter modern Hong Kong. It was animated by Postgal Workshop and won the top prize last year at TBS Japan’s digicon.

Go to the awards page and watch the links labeled 2/3 and 3/3 -or- watch it from…

Continue readingAward-winning animated documentary from Hong Kong

From Tainan…

KLC: A family chain (of one), selling fried chicken and burgers:

From Beijing…

Yonghe Dawang: a nationwide chain first launched in Beijing, serving Chinese-style fast food:

KFC Ripoff Contest results:
Beijing 1, Tainan 0.

Photo credits:
Anonymous medical student…

Continue readingKFC Ripoff Contest: Beijing vs Tainan

From Sam Flemming, over at the China IWOM Blog:

1. …Anyone interested in participating in the group purchase can join the QQ group and continue discussing the details of the purchase.
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2. …The group leader plays a very important role in the group purchase process. On one side, he communicates with group members and…

Continue readingAccount of an online group purchase (团购)

A listen-to-this meme has been passed around the China Twittersphere today, so I thought I’d share it with you: Seeded by Adam Schokora over at 56minus1, it states,

all music people out there, Chinese indie folk music, please listen and share your thoughts: http://tinyurl.com/chqtpf

I like the first song quite a bit, and I’ve stolen it here…

Continue readingTweeter meme: Hear some Chinese indie folk

Peijin Chan is a photojournalist based in Shanghai. (This below is NOT him.)

Chinese New Year:

Temporary housing for earthquake victims:

See Peijin’s Flickr here. Found courtesy of Micah Sittig.

A Chinese artist made Alex Ross’ Ten Best Classical-Music Performances list in the New Yorker.

A description of the artist and the performance from an earlier piece in the New Yorker:

The pride of Beijing’s underground—No Beijing, Yan Jun calls it—is a twenty-two-year-old indie-rock wunderkind named Zhang Shouwang, who also goes…

Continue readingD22 makes the New Yorker’s classical music list

From Paul Denlinger’s Twitter:

每次看到人写China is a collectivist society就心里想这个人根本不懂中国

Translation: Every time I see someone write China is a collectivist society, I think to myself, this guy seriously doesn’t understand China.