Look look, China overtakes the US in total consumption…
But, of course, the US is still king when it comes to consumption per capita.
Article and graphs from a Wall Street Journal article entitled “China Tops US in Energy Use.”
Via Paul Denlinger.
PANGBIANR 旁边儿 is a “platform for exploring the lived culture of making art, music, film & food in China.” So far they have a Twitter presence, a blog and some events coming up.
Here are some highlights from their blog:
1. The rise of nerdy board game parlors in Beijing (think Settlers of Catan not Monopoly):
2. A store selling underground cultural and intellectual goods in Kunming:
3. An interview with the Dailian band Which Park, who say…
Chinese rock was finished very early on. Without spirit, without a core, rock music can’t exist. Western rock music is a huge structure: from economics to culture, the influence is quite deep.
And see here for the details for their indie music & film festival on July 25th in Beijing.
On your left, Hong Kong. On your right, New York.
Two people in two places, sharing photos.
More here (via Cheryl Yau’s blog.)
Can somebody please tell me what this means?
Almost a decade ago, Boroditsky, then a young assistant professor at MIT, conducted a study of Mandarin speakers that thrust her into the spotlight. English speakers, she explains, tend to see time on a horizontal plane: The best years are ahead; he put his past behind him. Speakers of Mandarin, however, tend to see time both horizontally and vertically, with new events emerging from the ground like a spring of water, the past above and the future below.
Full article in Stanford Magazine (via Bobulate).
Update: Reader Julie Farrell has an answer:
The language this author uses is a little confusing.
There are two “planes” used for space and time in English and Mandarin: vertical and horizontal.
The horizontal plane is commonly used in both languages for space and time:
- Spacial: qian/hou, forward/behind (e.g. “qian/houbian” in M, or “behind the couch” in E)
- Temporal: (e.g. “houtian” in M, or “move the meeting forward”in E)
The vertical plane is common as a temporal (time) measure in Mandarin, but not nearly as common in English:
- Spacial: shang/xia, above/below (e.g. “zai zhuozi shang” in M, or “below the belt” in E)
- Temporal: (e.g. “shang/xia ge xingqi” in M, or “the meeting is coming up” in E)
In experiments, Boroditsky’s participants would be asked to identify whether certain temporal statements, like “January comes after February” were true or false. But immediately before they were asked these questions, they were given spacial “primes” illustrating vertical and horizontal relations (these came in the form of pictures with captions like “the red circle is above the blue circle” or “the green snail is behind the purple snail”). Then the participants’ reaction times from the temporal true/false questions were measured. The reaction times of English speakers were much faster after they had been given “horizontal” spacial primes. For Mandarin speakers, the vertical primes yielded quicker reaction times. Therefore, speakers of the two languages could be said to “see” time differently. This study was a major breakthrough for linguists and psychologists, as many have spent years trying to determine whether or not different languages affect the way we see and think about the world.
I hope that explanation is clear enough… Studies like this are hard to boil down, but (I think) worth the effort! I can remember my very first Chinese professor lying down on top of a table at the front of the class to describe to us how the Mandarin time-system worked. It was a novel concept to me then, and Boroditsky’s work makes it even more interesting!
Riding off of the wave of momentum out of ARTHK10, the local art community in Hong Kong has opened a new blog reporting on and reviewing local events. It’s an impressive effort so far and will no doubt further their bid to make Hong Kong the fine art capital of Asia.
Check out their site at http://artblog.hk/
July 1 is a day of protest in Hong Kong, coinciding with the anniversary of the former colony’s handover back to China. It’s come to life recently as a hodgepodge of dissent: Various groups, organizations and even artists use it as a public forum to shout back at the local government heads.
The experience as a participant is quite interesting: You gather in a park, am ordered and sung to by the organizers, then walk along stretches of closed-off roads alongside various groups with banners and slogans, and pass various stations who proffer you their ideals… or merch.
For example, I picked up (bought) a T-shirt in support of raising the minimum-wage to $33 HKD ($4.23 USD):
T-shirt reads: To work better not be a slave (puns the words “be a slave” with “McDonalds”)
I also picked up (free) a giant broadsheet (though it was printed on both sides) called “Our Ten Thousand Words.” I’ve placed my wallet next to the sheet as a reference for size.
The essays on this broadsheet are a collective whine about the current state of affairs from a younger generation. The connecting thread between all of them is a connection with farming (they work in it, their family are farmers, etc.).
Oh, and I also picked up a tan from walking under the sun.
This post also appears on World Wide Pop, my latest project featuring pop & indie culture from all over the world. I’m posting this here because it reports on something from China.
I first discovered I am MT (我叫MT, 2009-1010) while reading an article about the Tudou Video Festival Awards 2010. Tudou is one of China’s Youtube clones and its annual awards ceremony was once dubbed by a friend as China’s Sundance Festival. While this claim is probably not accurate, it does show that online video in China is a big deal. And within the 2010 Tudou awards, the team behind I am MT garnered the the most popular video blogger award.
Currently airing its third season, I am MT is an animated online TV series that is set loosely in the universe of the World of Warcraft (a giant online game where lots of people play together to kill monsters, one another and then level up). Each episode is 24 minutes long and features various cute SD characters hanging out, fighting one another and questing within the game’s world. The plot has elements of both medieval fantasy and slapstick humor.
Aside from slapstick, it also employs what people in China call e-gao humor. E-gao has been translated as “spoofing”; it’s a type of parody that borrows heavily from the original cultural work. In this case, I am MT makes fun of the World of Warcraft setting as well as borrowing theme songs and visual elements from Japanese pop culture.
Unfortunately, I find the writing weak and the pacing erratic. But then again, as a non-World of Warcraft player, I’m not the target audience. See for yourself though, all episodes starting from season two have subtitles in both English and Chinese.
Samples
Consumption options
Sister Lotus (芙蓉姐姐) who we reported on way back here and here in 2006 is still alive!
The Shanghaiist found her at a custom show:
The original story is that she rose to fame back in 2005 when she posted mock-provocative photos of herself on major BBSs/forums. These photos were accompanied by quotes such as “I have a physique that gives men nosebleeds.”
But I learned recently that her fame was partially manufactured and that she wasn’t just some random girl posting photos of herself online. The person who shot her photos and helped market her now runs an internet marking company that pays people to generate buzz around internet celebrities.
From a Xinhua article:
On average, it costs about 3,000 yuan ($440) to pay netizens to leave just one post on more than 3,000 online forums – and with a large enough budget, marketers can almost guarantee that their client will become an Internet sensation.
The article continues to say that now that Sister Lotus is popular but only as a target for mockery, and it’s hard for her to move beyond that. This is despite the fact that she “now has a personal assistant and is represented by Beijing Furong World International Culture and Media, an Internet marketing firm.“
So perhaps the photo above is a poor attempt at changing her image?
Lamma Island is one of the outlying islands in Hong Kong that is only accessible by ferry. All the namecards of businesses on Lamma have ferry timetables printed on the back. In this case the namecard folds out to show the schedule.
