The Great China R&D Squeeze of 2021 & the US Obsession with China’s Collapse

January 28, 2022 by Jason Li

Lots of gems in this year’s edition of Dan Wang’s annual letter. It is really worth the long read, but today we’re going to hone in on two sections of his analysis on where China is today. First, on the 2021 squeeze on tech companies:

Beijing’s attitude marks a difference with capitalism as it’s practiced in the US. Over…

Continue readingThe Great China R&D Squeeze of 2021 & the US Obsession with China’s Collapse

Starting Up in Shenzhen

Shenzhen Everywhere

January 8, 2019 by An Xiao Mina

Excerpted from the MIT Technology Review’s Inside Shenzhen’s race to outdo Silicon Valley by An Xiao Mina and Jan Chipchase:

In much the same way that open-source software enables a global community of developers to copy and remix each other’s work, rapidly creating variants on a piece of software to meet different needs, the shanzhai method delivered “hardware…

Continue readingShenzhen Everywhere

Cyberpunk Pollution Masks, Editor’s Picks from China

November 16, 2018 by Jason Li

Photos of smoke, dust and children — Image from the UBT Taobao store.

As the deadliest fire in California’s history rages on, we trawled through over 500 items on China e-commerce behemoth Taobao to find you the most stylish pollution masks on earth today. What we found was better than anything created by this Dutch designer or this Swedish…

Continue readingCyberpunk Pollution Masks, Editor’s Picks from China

Typography Design

Julius Hui’s eclectic Chinese typography Instagram stream

October 23, 2018 by Jason Li

Hong Kong-based typographer Julius Hui has recently started an Instagram account dedicated to Chinese type design with insightful and incisive bilingual commentary. Below we’ve captured our some of our favorites:

1.

Inspiration_Calligraphers in Qing dynasty are usually not recommended by scholars, they are always being criticised as ‘too rigid’ and ‘too robotic’.…

Continue readingJulius Hui’s eclectic Chinese typography Instagram stream

Starting Up in Shenzhen

Photo Essay: Fidget Spinners, AR Guns and Panda Cams in Shenzhen

September 5, 2017 by An Xiao Mina

Editor’s note: Below is a select excerpt of An Xiao Mina’s Instagram posts from her recent trip to China.

Shenzhen, world epicenter of fidget spinners

At the world epicenter of fidget spinners. I see them in my head, spinning spinning spinning in Berlin, New York, Manila, suddenly viral, suddenly memetic.

…

Continue readingPhoto Essay: Fidget Spinners, AR Guns and Panda Cams in Shenzhen

Ethnography of Tech

VR malls, mobile payments and tuhao-themed parties (#cxinchina 2016 edition)

January 5, 2017 by Christina Xu

Editor’s note: Below is a selection of our favorite Instagram posts that Christina published during her 2016 trip to Beijing, Chengdu & Shanghai to research technology, youth culture and trends.

Technology

There are VR kiosks in almost every mid-high end mall I’ve been into in Beijing and Shanghai, as well…

Continue readingVR malls, mobile payments and tuhao-themed parties (#cxinchina 2016 edition)

Typography Design

Chinese fonts are really, really hard to make

April 8, 2016 by Jason Li

Nikhil Sonnad has penned a great primer on Chinese fonts on Quartz called The long, incredibly tortuous, and fascinating process of creating a Chinese font. Much of the article describes the lengths designers must go to in order to create Chinese font:

The default set for English-language fonts contains about 230 glyphs. A font that covers all of the…

Continue readingChinese fonts are really, really hard to make

Mobile-only design trumps mobile-first on China’s internet

November 18, 2015 by Jason Li

Kendra (whose writing we previously featured) writes about the state of Chinese web design in 2015 in Smashing Magazine’s On China’s Bleeding Edge: Web Design Trends 2015. Reporting on the advent of responsive, mobile-first design in China, she discovers that companies are instead going for a Wechat-friendly, mobile-only approach. In an interview with Saber Zou, head…

Continue readingMobile-only design trumps mobile-first on China’s internet

An underground temple for books in Chengdu

October 26, 2015 by Jason Li

Photo of Fangsuo Book Store

From gooood:

Taiwanese designer Chih-Kang Chu was inspired by the history of Xuanzhang, a famous Chinese Buddhist monk in Tang dynasty; he resided and practiced Buddhism in Daci Temple before he went on a spiritual journey to India. Fangsuo Book Store is located at the underground level of the commercial streets, which surrounds…

Continue readingAn underground temple for books in Chengdu

Typography Design

The Hunt for a Chinese Lorem Ipsum

October 7, 2015 by Jason Li

Lorem ipsum according to Wikipedia:

In publishing and graphic design, lorem ipsum is a filler text commonly used to demonstrate the graphic elements of a document or visual presentation. Replacing meaningful content with placeholder text allows viewers to focus on graphic aspects such as font,…

Continue readingThe Hunt for a Chinese Lorem Ipsum

八八吧 · 88 Bar

Tag: design

The Great China R&D Squeeze of 2021 & the US Obsession with China’s Collapse

Shenzhen Everywhere

Cyberpunk Pollution Masks, Editor’s Picks from China

Julius Hui’s eclectic Chinese typography Instagram stream

Photo Essay: Fidget Spinners, AR Guns and Panda Cams in Shenzhen

Shenzhen, world epicenter of fidget spinners

VR malls, mobile payments and tuhao-themed parties (#cxinchina 2016 edition)

Technology

Chinese fonts are really, really hard to make

Mobile-only design trumps mobile-first on China’s internet

An underground temple for books in Chengdu

The Hunt for a Chinese Lorem Ipsum