Recently I came across an article reporting that the best selling phone in India is actually a Chinese Shanzhai brand called GFIVE (基伍). I had no idea that the “stockade village on the mountain” has gone so global! According to this article, in 2010 GFIVE has a 21% market share in India, selling around 35million phones a year. The company that has the second largest market share in India is Nokia, but it only has 13%.

One of GFIVE’s biggest hits in India and in the Middle East is a phone that features super-sized speakers. I was quite impressed by the story of how Mr. Zhang Wenxue’s (张文学), the founder of GFIVE, came up with this idea of “phone+large speakers”, no matter it is true or not. According to Zhang, when he was doing research in Dubai, he joined the local’s barbecue parties in the desert, but he observed there was no good device that can play music for the parties in the desert where an electricity outlet is hard to find. That was where Zhang got his inspiration. GFIVE is a good example of Shanzhai manufacturers, who are known for their quick response to local demands and the diverse line-up of their products. But this story also reminded me that the Shanzhai phone is more a toy than a tool for its users.

Some of my lawyer friends still use Nokia and Blackberry because they need to make calls and check emails. But for the working class young people I interviewed, phones are more often used for text messages and QQ. Besides, the mobile phone is probably the only toy that they can afford to carry and play in their busy and fluid lives. They also want to appear cool and fun in front of their friends, that is why phones like the following have became legends:

I know such phones seem a little silly, but their fans are certainly aware of it. These phones are called jiong/囧 phones: phones that cause “mixed feeling” in people. And in reviews they are often associated with the comic style of Stephen Chou （周星驰), the king of parody and spoof in Chinese cinema.

The Shanzhai producers often confuse originality with ever more excessive functions, like cameras, flashlights, multiple batteries or sim cards, but when this excess is pushed to such an extreme, it is again great material for humor. Look at these fictional Shanzhai phones that netizens made up:

The term Shanzhai is used to describe not only products but also cultural content. Now parodies, spoofs and mischiefs are also called Shanzhai. Some manufacturers have already realized that such cultural association is actually a good way to distinguish themselves, which even give them some edge over the established brands. So here is a Shanzhai phone’s ad slogan:”You have to sell your kidney to get an iPhone? You can get our phone by being a prostitute just once“. (Referring to the true story that a young man sold his kidney to buy an iPhone. Being a prostitute? For each set of sexual service, sex workers in China typically earn 500 yuan, the price of many Shanzhai phones).

Shanzhai, stockade village on the mountain, actually has another layer of meaning in Chinese literature. It is where the heroic outlaws in ancient China lived, where the Chinese “Robin Hoods” had their adventure and fun. I know I must be over-romanticizing the culture of Shanzhai. But I am in the Shanzhai state of mind right now, I cannot help fancying a phone that can run Symbian, Windows, IOS, android and porn all at the same time!

Spotted in Shenzhen on the west side of the Nanshan district.

Anyone know how the lettering is made (the old and new instances)?

The website of People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the CCP, is now a listed company in the Shanghai Stock Exchange. The company raised 1.4 billion yuan (US$222.2 million) in its IPO, nearly three times the amount it hoped for. On the first day of its trading, its stock price surged 76%. Before People’s Daily’s IPO, some pro-democracy activists said that no citizen would buy the stock of a propaganda machine whose profit comes solely from government subsidy. But they couldn’t be more wrong.

Hu Xijin (胡锡进), the Chief Editor of Global Times and a shareholder of People’s Daily, proclaimed victoriously, “The strong performance of People’s Daily on the stock market clearly showed that the majority of Chinese people support our political system. People have voted with their own money.” Meanwhile, pro-democracy blogger Wu Yue San Ke (五岳散客) sadly reflected: “In our society most people are still willing to exchange democracy for monetary gains.”

I do find the retail investors’ enthusiasm over People’s Daily unnerving, only because it confirms my pessimistic view that many people are not against a repressive system as long as they have a chance to join the repressor side. But from an investor’s perspective, People’s Daily’s success is no surprise. The single most important lesson Chinese investors learned in the past several years is that you have to “Follow the Government”. People are buying People’s Daily only because they believe the government will not let it fail even if it means showering taxpayer money on it.

A Webpage of People.com.cn

Here are some facts about the website of People’s Daily that have been discovered by netizens so far:

• It has certain monopolistic advantages in the heavily controlled news industry. For example, a Chinese journalist can only be acknowledged as a “professional journalist” after they received a “journalist license” from the government. Any journalistic investigation might be considered illegal if the journalist does not have the “journalist license”. None of the other Internet news portal has any journalist licenses, while People’s Daily has more than 120 ones.
• The other Internet news portals, from Sina, Sohu to Tencent, are required to buy and publish news from People’s Daily. How many companies have such power over their competitors?
• The biggest clients of People’s Daily are all government institutions who are not price sensitive at all.
• It can generate profit even without income. For example, the People’s Search Engine, which is set up to compete with Google, has not been monetized at all, but already has more than 30 million yuan profit magically showing up in its book.
• It plans to spend part of the money it raised on office equipment, namely iPhones and iPads, at the price of 10000 yuan each, several times the market price.

The successful IPO of the website of People’s Daily is a testament to the success of state capitalism in China. The bureaucrats working for People’s Daily must be celebrating: Who said the Internet or the market will undermine state authority? Now we have more money to buy luxury goods such as iPhones and LV or to fly first class to the US for business tour. And if we have some money left, we can spend it on educating people that democratic values are just Western imperialist ideology.

Related article: Red Pad, a Pad Tailor-Made for Government Officials

Titanic 3D is out.  Yes, we all know this, the world over.  The film is expected to make hundreds of millions in China alone.

But it will be missing the nudity scene.  I remember watching the Colbert Report and seeing James Cameron report that the reason it was cut was because censors feared that Chinese men might reach out their hands and disturb viewers in front of them.  Here’s the report from Offbeat China, and the message they translated:

“Considering the vivid 3D effects, we fear that viewers may reach out their hands for a touch and thus interrupt other people’s viewing. To avoid potential conflicts between viewers and out of consideration of building a harmonious ethical social environment, we’ve decided to cut off the nudity scenes,” according to an official at the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television.

It seemed absurd, but I accepted it as fact.  I’ve certainly heard stranger pronouncements from Chinese officials.  And yet, I saw in the Global Times that this might be a hoax:

Analysts Monday called on authorities to create the Chinese mainland’s own film-rating system, after an online joke concerning the removal of nude scenes in Titanic 3D entertained many fans, critics and media outlets.

“It is fake, and it is a joke from a student who is going to graduate,” the original poster of the message explained Saturday on his Sina blog.

The message claimed the State Administration of Radio Film and Television (SARFT) had cut nude scenes from Titanic 3D for fear that the viewers would reach out and disturb other viewers.

I dismissed this briefly, as the story was coming from Chinese state media–of course they would deny something that’s embarrassing to a state agency.  In general, if a fact is denied, that’s a good sign that it might be true.

Discovering the Hoax

But then I saw the story repeated in other sources, like the Hong Kong-based Weibo Today:

And Western media finally caught the hoax too, with reports from The Hollywood Reporter and Gawker, though not till after the false report had already been disseminated.  The original story had always been intended and understood as a hoax, until it started spreading without the crucial “fake news” hashtag the original poster claims to have placed.  Offbeat China offered a good analysis of the joke turned into fact.  Their insight is particularly helpful, as their original post played a role in launching the story into the English-speaking world.

The joke was made so popular that I, myself, find it hard to believe that it was fabricated. But fake is fake, truth is truth. It is fake and it is from an evil joke by a lonely loser who soon will graduate from college.

The idea of fabricating fake news as satire and entertainment came from an American satire news organization The Onion. If you want to get a quick idea of their style, I recommend you to watch a 2008 movie The Onion Movie. Personally, I became familiar with such culture thanks to a non-popular Web figure “Huang Bo Ma” (his Renren, Douban and Weibo). Here are also some of his fake news works, many of which used to be very popular on the Internet (one, two, three).

People will notice that all fake news works are tagged as #Monologue# to distinguish from authentic news.  When I wrote the “fear of touch” joke, considering people’s unfamiliarity with the culture of The Onion, I changed the tag into #fake news# so that it won’t be seen as true. I posted the joke on my Renren album and my Sina Weibo account. Due to my small number of fans on Sina Weibo, the joke was soon buried. But the screenshot on Renren became viral. The iron[y] was, the joke became a hit exactly because the #fake news# tag was lost in people’s constant re-posting.

Losing Context: When Satirical Humor Crosses Cultures

It reminds me of when Beijing Evening News reported an Onion story as fact.  They misunderstood the context, and though everyone in the West knows “Onion” means satire, a casual viewer might not.

This is the power of a meme.  It picks up, it spreads, it’s remixed.  But then the original context is lost.  As the original blogger noted, his “fake news” hashtag disappeared after a while, and it was just an out of context story.  And although those who create the meme are in on the joke, those standing outside have no clue.  Indeed, anyone who knows anything about China’s social media sphere knows that everything has to be taken with a grain of salt; this SARFT joke was a way of poking fun at an opaque government agency that censored material without stating why.

The “truth” amplifies.  And in this case, like Chinese whispers (or Chinese Weibos, as it were), it travels through the grapevine and becomes something else.  The story also happened to fit stereotypes of China–that the men are sexually repressed, that the government is heavyhanded and nonsensical–, so it flew around Western media.  It seemed true enough (sound familiar?).  The next thing we know, the director himself is stating a joke as fact on national television.

Translation: (top) What women remember from Titanic (bottom) What men remember from Titanic.

The Meme (Inadvertently) Became a Form of Advocacy

But the more remarkable thing is what the Global Times says we should learn from this.  Remember that the Times is a state newspaper:

Raymond Zhou, a film critic, told the Global Times that many viewers have been used to unexplained deletions by SARFT, so it is no wonder that quite a number of people believed the fake information on Titanic 3D.

“SARFT is treating all the viewers as children when evaluating the content of movies,” Zhou said, adding that “subjective” evaluation standards had in fact led to unnecessary cuts of some scenes, as well as leaving in some scenes inappropriate for minors.

“We need objective and transparent standards, which should be specific on what scenes could be kept or not for viewers of different ages,” he said.

Ironically, the satirical representation of government transparency might just turn into a real demand.

Translation: (left) Real name registration (right) Weibo

Real name registration has come and gone.  The article Tricia and I penned for Wired noted some of the dangers behind the requirements to register one’s real name (it’s quite rigorous – you have to include your identification card):

In a move to exert greater control on citizen speech online, the government is requiring that Sina Weibo and China’s other microblogs register the real names and identification cards of users in several cities. Those who do not register this week in many major cities like Beijing will not be allowed to share or forward posts; after a period of testing, the policy will go into effect nationwide.

Indeed, many of our fears came true.  In a major crackdown a few weeks ago, the Chinese government flexed its muscles by shutting down comments posts.  Then they shut down web sites and conducted a number of arrests.  It’s quite clear the government wanted to send a signal in no uncertain terms that it’s serious about quelling internet commentary. (Whether or not that’s ultimately possible is another story.)

Today, the word “real name registration” (实名制) is blocked.  In its place is at least one code word, “315″, which is short for March 15, the day real name registration kicked in across microblogs, as well as a few code words that are puns off of the original Chinese.

One friend told me that real name registration has turned Sina Weibo into LinkedIn, meaning it’s solely for professional purposes. I’m already seeing evidence that users are toning down their language and saving more critical commentary for other channels.  In China, you have to learn to read between the silent moments, and the silence here is deafening..

One month later, I thought I would share some of the memes I found online as users vented their fears of the coming “shimingzhi”–real name registration–a few weeks before it officially kicked in. The most common image? That of being silenced by a face mask, an already loaded image in a post-SARS China. But you can talk behind a face mask, and I have no doubt netizens will find a way to keep the conversation going.

Rough translation: "Bloggers aren't yet required to register their real name but are already sealed."

A photo of an actual identification card in front of a web site that references the coming real name registration highlights the anxieties of this requirement: your name *and* your official identity are tied in with what you're saying.

"Everyday 315 real name registration is more solid. / 3.15 We demand rights!" The image of a shield references the Great Firewall's official name, The Golden Shield Project.

"Real name registraiton... fuck you!"

"Weibo. We will not be silenced."

The two smileys show what you can and can't do with real name registration. The one up top is registered, the one below is not.

There were a few posters repurposed to reflect anxieties about being silenced.

One netizen's photo post showed the air at different times of the day and week.

Any foreigner who’s visited a Chinese city notices it right away.  It’s one of the most dominant memories of the main cityscapes I’ve witnessed across China, from Hong Kong to Chonqging to Shanghai to Beijing.  Smog.  And lots of smog.  Smog, smog everywhere and all of it coming into our lungs and in our hair and catching onto our clothes and tongues.  During my time in Beijing, I developed a nasty cough that didn’t go away until I returned to the US.  And I grew up in Los Angeles and Manila, two cities notorious for their smog.

I was shocked to hear many of my Chinese friends dismiss it.  “You’ll get used to it,” they said.  “It’s not so bad,” they’d reassure me.  Meanwhile, my cough kept getting worse, and the apocalyptic skies showed no signs of stopping.  And some just dismissed it all as “fog”, not even realizing that the acrid taste in the air couldn’t possibly be fog.  Those in the know seemed to accept smog as a basic fact of life (just as I had learned to accept smog as a fact of life growing up in Los Angeles).  Others just didn’t seem to be aware it was smog at all.

An infographic explaining the air quality and trends.

But the tide (or winds, as it were) may be changing, and all for the better.  As the Guardian Environment Network has reported, Beijingers are demanding more than ever for cleaner skies.  Why now?  Part of this is because pollution has been particularly bad, even leading to flight cancellations. But part of it is–you guessed it–Weibo.  So says writer and researcher Ma Jun:

Today people have access to different sources of information and better means to spread it quickly. We can see how fast the public was able to educate themselves about air pollution. Within several months, “PM 2.5” [my link] went from sounding like strange jargon to becoming a household phrase. Through Weibo, people spread information about air pollution, like a chain reaction. Eventually, I think the government decided to respond to this public uproar — it did not want to let anger simply grow.

How did citizens get the data?  Official government statistics typically paint a rosy picture. But the US Embassy has been behind @BeijingAir on Twitter, an alternative report that shows a much grimmer picture.  Since Twitter is blocked in China, though, and the feed is in English, it took a new iPhone app (with share to Weibo function) and the opening of a @BeijingAir Weibo account to get the data into the hands of average Chinese users.  As far as I’m able to glean, these were critical in alerting citizens to the poor quality of their air.

A chart showing air quality across the world, allowing Chinese to see that, compared to the world, their country just isn't safe or healthy in terms of air quality.

And so a meme was born.  Not a funny one, but a viral, remixed, and forwarded meme nonetheless.  There are two factors here.  First, is the presence of data and infographics.  Lots of data.  And data organized in a very crisp, unambiguous way.  With the release of clear visual infographics, Chinese citizens could see plainly that the air they’re breathing can’t be dismissed as fog.  You can’t just get used to this stuff.  It’s dangerous and unhealthy.

But what’s also important is that the data set a context that allowed everyone to participate with pictures.  With that context, when users started posting more and more images of pollution in their cities, they started to see their cities again with new eyes.  It’s something that comes naturally to foreigners – most Americans and Europeans, after all, have never seen smog like there is in China – but it’s not something you can necessarily catch if all you’ve known is dirty, polluted skies.  Even now, I don’t notice the smog in LA unless an out-of-towner points it out to me.

And so, with mounting pressure, even Chinese media reported on the smog, and now the government is seeking feedback on how to improve.  Weibo played a role, and so did infographics and photos.

The caption here reads: "Brown Layer," suggesting a layer of pollution and trash just beneath the surface.

A screenshot of the Beijing Air iPhone app at work. Users posted screenshots such as this to their Weibo feeds, thus spreading the data around to their networks.

Killer apps: a listing of iPhone apps folks can download to get access to Beijing Air data.

Photos such as this help netizens vent their concerns about air quality--and open everyone else's eyes to the air around them.

More infographics and data, with strong recommendations to don a face mask and not walk outside.

This infographic shows the interactions between city dwellers, farmers and pollution dumping in rivers.

Chinese memes.  They’re not all serious.  I’m drawn to the way memes are used to effect political and social change, but with over 500 million Chinese online, the majority of Sina Weibo is fun, fun, fun.  Indeed, as Tricia and I discuss in our recent op-ed in Wired, the danger of real name registration extends beyond those making sociopolitical critique.  It affects everybody, including those just using the site to relax.

What’s at stake here?  Just how diverse is China’s internet?  One of my favorite reports online is ChinaSmack, an irreverent, often controversial look at some of the more powerful memes online.  And then there’s Tea Leaf Nation, a new blog offering detailed reports from the world of China’s microblogs.

But now there’s a show.  And it’s so quirky I love it.  It’s called Weibo Today (above), and it’s put together by Hong Kong-based Elle Lee, who bills herself on her Twitter account as a “Stylish globetrotter from Shanghai & London. Social Digerati & Consultant.”

There’s only one show out so far but it’s worth a watch.  Hopefully it will continue.  Here’s what you can expect to learn about the magical world of Sina Weibo:

* Paris Hilton goes online

* Potatoes go viral as farmers sidestep distribution channels and sell potatoes directly online.

* A look at “TMD”.  Hint: it’s not for the faint of heart.

All of these sites offer insight into the wide world of China’s microblogs, from the serious to the irreverent to the quirky.  They’re all worth a look-see, as they each offer a glimpse into the wide wide world of China’s internet, which is much more diverse and quirky than stories about censorship would have you believe.

I currently spend half my week in Shenzhen at my new gig, and am lucky enough to experience life in a new city. I’m based in a residential neighborhood out west; the sound of kids sing-chanting often wakes me up unexpectedly during the week. In addition, I also happen to be part of a large estate with 20+ buildings.

Pictured above: The portable station of the local estate’s knife sharpener. The sign reads: Sharpening kitchen knives. 25th block, 3rd building, 1st floor. My colleague, Star Simpson, captures it best in her blog post:

I’d say he was in his seventies or eighties, and smiled a bright smile while he was talking to us. He had this cool rig — a hand-cranked knife sharpening grinding wheel built into a bench that he could heft on his own. We met him in the park but came back later, to his house (where he usually does business) and filmed this.

And around the corner, just outside our gates is a shoe repair professional, who sits there, from morning till evening, in an elegant vest. Again Star in her post:

This is me getting my boots repaired. In addition to a local knife sharpener, there’s a cobbler on nearly every block. The waterproof military surplus leather boots I picked up in Seattle had started to develop a hole, so I brought them to this guy who had them fixed up in a jiffy. Check out the awesome hand-cranked cast iron sewing machine he uses!

More videos and text over at Star’s blog.