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Posts from the ‘Internet and media’ Category

Mar 6

Chengdu mother's group

Breast feeding rebels in China

Chengdu, China — A peaceful parental counter-movement is growing that is beginning to question the popular reliance in China on medically assisted births and infant formula, as well as the Tiger Mom ethos that puts children through the educational grinder.

They meet during chats online before slowly moving from the virtual world — often maintaining their online monikers — to form groups of friends who struggle against a tide of traditional thought, institutional stagnation and downright ignorance of how the female body works. Read more

Mar 5

Fengtser on the road

Lei Feng in the age of the microblog

March 5, 2012 is the 50th anniversary of the death of Lei Feng, a legendary PLA soldier who was devoted to Chairman Mao and selflessly serving the people. He is said to have died on March 5, 1962; in 1963 he became the subject of a nationwide propaganda campaign “Learn from Comrade Lei Feng” (向雷锋同志学习). Read more

Feb 10

Bo Xilai (left front) and Wang Lijun

Purported open letter from Wang Lijun

The Wang Lijun affair continues to fascinate China. Read more

Feb 8

Xiujiashi

Vacation style medical treatment

The first Chinese Internet meme of the Year of the Dragon has emerged: Read more

Feb 1

Han Han vs Fang Zhouzi

Han Han the novelist versus Fang Zhouzi the fraud-buster

It’s been an exciting two weeks on China’s microblog scene. Megablogger, rally racer, and novelist Han Han has been defending himself against science writer Fang Zhouzi’s charges that he didn’t write some of his most famous work.

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Dec 6

iPhone launch - image by Jonah Kessel

Teen digital habits in Beijing and Palo Alto

In August and September 2011, Danwei worked with the Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SPRIE) on a survey of the digital and media habits of high school students born in 1993 and 1994. The results were presented at the China 2.0 conference at Stanford Graduate School of Business School in September 2011. Read more

Sep 20

Make a civilized Internet

Groundhog day in China – Super Girls and the Internet

This morning, a reader drew my attention to an article on Danwei:

Alongside the movement for a “civilized” Internet, the anti-Super Girls campaign seems to be picking up steam as well. China Times published an interview yesterday with Liu Zhongde, one of the most outspoken critics of the Super Girls phenomenon.

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Sep 15

Only one restaurant

A village with only one restaurant

Below is a translation of a joke that is currently being circulated widely on Sina Weibo and other Chinese social networks:

There is a village that only has one restaurant. Everyone in the village has to eat at that restaurant. 


Villager: Why can’t we have more than one restaurant?

Waiter: Our village is in a stage of development where more than one restaurant can lead to chaos, so we only have one restaurant. 
 Read more

Sep 14

9-11 in China

A Chinese student on 9-11

This image is currently being circulated on Weibo. It’s a series of screenshots from a Phoenix TV program on the tenth anniversary of 9-11. The screenshots show an interview with a student in Beijing. These are the captions: Read more

Aug 28

Miss Universe China Bikini Competition, photo by Emma Zhang

Miss Universal Values

The band was playing Cocaine as the small entourage entered but it was highly doubtful any of them would ever touch the stuff: these were international representatives of China, “athletes” in a land of contradictions, competing for fresh spoils.

After years of half-organized humiliations, the country is determined to seize an unusual new prize this September: Miss Universe, a controversial trophy offered by a US organization headed by the failed Presidential candidate and China-basher, Donald Trump.

The stiffly embossed invitations to the after-party offered the opportunity to “mingle with stars, celebrities and Beijing’s elite” but, despite the dozens desperate for a moment, or ideally a picture, next to one, none of those at the centre of this civilized scrum were remotely famous (yet). They are the finalists from this year’s Miss Universe China – the grand pageant, an impressively well-organized, if somewhat dull, event in Beijing’s Mastercard Center, had just finished. Read more

Aug 25

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City Sun, the “undercover” paper

As commercial papers look for ways to hook readers’ interest, the City Sun (城市信报) appears to have found a reliable strategy: sending its reporters undercover.

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Aug 24

"Spring Palace" - Ming Dynasty porn

A brief history of Chinese porn

The origins of Chinese erotica and pornography can be traced way back into antiquity. Though remnants have been found dating from as early as the 1st century, production of erotic artwork appears to have properly flourished around the 10th century and reached its peak during the late Ming Dynasty (17th century).
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Aug 23

peoplespornography s

People’s Pornography – An interview with Katrien Jacobs

China has a long tradition of erotic art but pornographic films and pictures are currently illegal. Despite frequent anti-porn clampdowns, pornography remains available both online and in the form of DVDs.

A paper titled A Peep at Pornography Web in China compiled by scholars at Xi’an Jiatong University is one of the few authoritative sources of pornography statistics. The scholars examined “part of network traffic in Northwest Net of China, from Mar. 29 2009 to Jan. 25 2010″ and “collected 92,950 online porn web pages from 1,826 porn sites” of which only 12.8% were hosted on servers inside China. The paper looks at usage patterns of the people detected visiting porn sites, but does not attempt to derive any numbers about porn use nationwide.

Nonetheless, anecdotal evidence suggests demand for porn in China is growing. Aside from professionally produced films, there is a growing subculture of DIY porn movies, which is one of the subjects Dr. Katrien Jacobs examines in her new book, People’s Pornography: Sex and Surveillance on the Chinese Internet.

James Griffiths recently interviewed Dr. Jacobs about her new book:
Read more

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