Sexy User Generated Propaganda Hero for China

Lei Feng, icon of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, please meet Second Right Brother, your Web 2.0 counterpart.

Lei Feng was a selfless and modest soldier devoted to Chairman Mao who was killed by a truck backing up. Created by Mao’s government the old fashioned way - fiat of the propaganda department - Lei Feng was intended to inspire the nation as it recovered from the failures of the Great Leap Forward.

Second Right Brother (the only name we know him by) is a member of the torch security detail who for many Chinese (women) has come to embody a new handsome hero standing up to protect China’s pride. Second right refers to his position in the security detail.

His true identity remains a mystery and Chinese Internet users, many of them women, simply refer to him as You Er GeGe or 右二哥哥, literally translated as Second Right Brother.

But Second Right Brother’s good works have not gone unnoticed by obsessive sites showing his photograph, sharing stories about him and even proposing marriage.

Once this Olympic torch relay is over, Second Right Brother may find a second career in the sphere of capitalist propaganda, aka sponsorship.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Technorati Tags: China, Internet, Olympics, propaganda, second right brother, torch, web, you er gege

CNN, now a four-letter word in China

In continuing fallout from the travails of the Olympic torch, CNN now appears to be entering the Chinese vocabulary in a less than complimentary manner.

A university teacher here in Hong Kong reports that his Chinese students now use the expression “so CNN” to mean something that is subjective, lying and deceitful. One student admonished another “don’t be so CNN”.

(Image from the Anti-CNN website.)

UPDATE: Further evidence of the trend from a new fad in anti-CNN t-shirts reported by Danwei.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Technorati Tags: anti-cnn, China, cnn, Olympics, torch

China Trend: Mobile phone condoms

A Beijing restaurant trend that protects the sloppy eater’s phone. The waiters at this restaurant delicately placed the diner’s phones in the bags.

Marketers take note: Great advertising opportunity since people tend to look down at BlackBerrys so often. I have long been fascinated by the cultural differences in use of mobile phones, something I wrote about here for the IHT. Thanks for the great dinner, Andrew!

Technorati Tags: China, Mobile phones

Popularity: 7% [?]

Beijing101: Humidifiers and Air Filters

Built on the rim of the Gobi desert and one of the most polluted cities in the world, Beijing residents are forced to take extreme measures to survive the winter, including facial cream.

Other necessary equipment discussed in this video are humidifiers and air filters. Winter life in Beijing is a bubble-boy existence!

Any tips further tips on surviving our first Beijing winter are most welcome.

This video courtesy of Seemsic (more on that later!)

Technorati Tags: Humidifiers, Air filters, Loic Le Meur, Seesmic

Popularity: 2% [?]

Kaiser Kuo and Andrew Lih on China’s unique Internet trends

Two prominent experts on China’s digital development tell what is unique, new and different in China’s Internet.

Kaiser Kuo, director of digital strategy in China for Ogilvy and a prolific writer, highlighted four trends unique to China:

TREND: Hyper-speed peer-to-peer networks

COMPANY: www.blin.cn

High speed P2P has arisen in part due to China’s lax regulatory environment (read: high level of piracy) and, according to Kaiser, they outstrip Bittorrent by a country mile.

Kaiser puts their speed at 50 times that of Bittorrent and said they also have an amazing ability to grab bandwidth.

The protocols are so fast that people use them to watch videos in real time rather than download full films.

In a test with his wife, Kaiser said that within minutes of starting to install the client software, she began watching a DVD-quality film in real time that was never paused once due to slow downloading.

TREND: Chinese-built browser

COMPANY: Maxthon

Pitching Maxthon as the first Chinese web company to have a global footprint, Kaiser said the browser had a tabbed form before Firefox and continues to innovate the browsing experience.

TREND: Flexible media player

COMPANY: Baofeng

A media player that can play in “every format known to man”.

TREND: Video sharing websites

COMPANIES: 56.com (backed by Sequoia), Tudou.com and Youku.com

Unlike the US, where YouTube dominates, there is a hotly contested three-way race in China between these sites. Click on them to see how they are experimenting with advertising.

For Andrew Lih, author of the upcoming book The Wikipedia Story, China’s gaming world offers something very unique and different.

While games formerly came into China, there is now a new generation of Chinese games created by Chinese, for the Chinese market.

One of these, run by Zen Tou Networks (spelling?), has a system feature that runs counter to gaming culture in the US and Europe. Instead of starting at a level playing field and earning your special powers and levels, players can simply buy their way up the game.

Since credit cards are still nascent in China, people buy cards in malls and newsstands to pay for armor and special powers on this wildly popular game.

Sounds like virtual raw capitalism is running strong in the PRC!

Technorati Tags: 56.com, Andrew Lih, baofeng, Beijing, beijing101, blin.cn, China, Kaiser Kuo, maxthon, Ogilvy, Ogilvy Digital Watch, p2p, Sequoia, Tudou, Youku

Popularity: 5% [?]

Technorati Tags: Kaiser Kuo

Beijing101: Beijing jazz for Daniel Pearl

Last night I attended a great jazz session at the Beijing CD Jazz Club that was part of the World Music Days in honor of murdered Wall Street reporter Daniel Pearl.

Matt Roberts, Beijinger and trombonist in the Ah-Q Jazz Arkestra, in this video describes the background of the Beijing event. More than 15 musicians and about one hundred people in the audience.

As described on the World Music Days website:

Inspired by the legacy of journalist and musician Daniel Pearl, World Music Days uses the universal language of music to spread a message of hope and unity across cultural divides. By simply including a dedication from the stage or in the program of your upcoming performance, you will reaffirm your commitment to international friendship and take a stand against the divisive forces that took Danny’s life. As a member of this global network of concerts, your music will inspire your audiences with a sense of unity and purpose.

World Music Days is an “awareness raiser,” not a fundraiser. There is no financial obligation to participate.

The Beijing CD Jazz Club is located about 300 meters south of the main entrance to the Agricultural Exhibition Hall, on the east side of the third ring road, (just by the pedestrian bridge). Telephone: 6506.8288.

Technorati Tags: Ah-Q Jazz Arkestra, Beijing, Beijing CD Jazz Club, beijing101, China, Daniel Pearl, jazz, Matt Roberts

Popularity: 3% [?]

Beijing101: Count with your hands

Our teacher at 1on1Mandarin, Wang Lao Shi, demonstrates the meaning of those gestures made by Beijing taxi drivers when explaining the bill.

Observing how different cultures gesture - such as counting or asking for the check in a restaurant - is one of the great pleasures of travel.

Technorati Tags: 1on1mandarin, beijing101

Popularity: 2% [?]

Beijing101: Land of the Man Bag

One joy of moving to a new country is seeing the different customs that prevail. One of my favorites in China is seeing men carrying their wife or girlfriend’s handbag, often the latest fru-fru LVMH knock-off.

Technorati Tags: beijing101, manbag

Popularity: 3% [?]

Beijing 101: Biking etiquette and trends

Leo Horn, an environmental economist who has been coming to China since the 1980s and written some highly noted paper’s on China’s environmental situation, puts Beijing’s current bicycle situation in context with that in Paris and London in this video.

While Beijing has a great deal more space on the roads for bicycles than Paris or London, bicycle space has been diminishing in recent years.

Leo said the attitude towards bikes is shown by how laws primarily protect cars against damages caused by pedestrians and bikes, rather than the other way around.

In visiting the Giant Bicycle shop (here’s a link in English), one of Beijing’s biggest and fanciest bike shops, Leo and I were struck by the total lack of safety equipment, such as reflectors and lamps.

I believe Bicyclists in London are required by law to wear fluorescent jackets, but we could not find any sort of reflective jacket or leg-band in the shop. The shop had no idea where we could find one. (They did, however, sell bicycle helmets.) At night, few bicycles in Beijing use lamps.

One positive move for air pollution has been Beijing’s move to require battery powered scooters, rather than allow the two stroke engines the spew filth into the air of Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City and other places in Asia. There is, however, an important decision to make when buying one of these bikes: Make sure to buy a lithium-based battery rather than a tough to dispose Acid-Lead battery.

Finally, an important Beijing cycling tip: Bicycles going the wrong way in cycling lanes hug the left-hand curb. This effectively makes bike lanes an oasis of British-style left-hand driving!

Technorati Tags: Beijing, beijing101, bicycles, China, jc decaux, Leo Horn, velib

Popularity: 3% [?]

Hooters Beijing Opening: The world is NOT flat.

One of the newest and easiest landmarks to spot near our apartment in Beijing - much to our chagrin - is Hooters, the American bar made famous for the buxom waitresses it hires.

In this video, the head of international franchising explains what Hooters hopes to bring to China. I am told that the US Ambassador to China visited the restaurant shortly before I arrived at the opening.

Technorati Tags: Beijing, hooters

Popularity: 8% [?]

HOW TO: Learn Mandarin (Lesson 1)

A 20-second out-take from our first self-taught Mandarin lesson.

In writing about unconventional language learning methods, I was told that the physical expression of sounds is an important part of internalizing a language. (Perhaps we took it too far.)

Technorati Tags: 1on1 mandarin, 1on1mandarin, 1on1mandarin.com, mandarin

Popularity: 3% [?]

China’s “Speech for Foreigners” dissected by Clay Chandler

A lively critique of “The Speech” that China’s leaders seem to offer up each time they address an international audience was delivered by Clay Chandler of Fortune magazine when he moderated a panel at the World Economic Forum’s Summer Davos in Dalian

At 4 minutes 40 seconds in this video, Clay expresses extreme disappointment at the speech delivered the previous evening by China premier, Wen Jiabao, and asked the first panelist - a high ranking Chinese official who had the misfortune of sitting on the panel - “Why can’t China’s leaders deliver a good speech?”

The official, surprisingly, disagreed with Clay’s assertion.

Later in the video, Thomas Friedman of the NY Times, a member of the panel, took China to task for not exerting “Soft Power” responsibly.

At one point Clay offered an amusing summary of what he suspects to be a laminated outline passed around by all Chinese leaders preparing to address an international audiences.

Memo to Chinese leaders: Throw out that greasy laminated sheet!!

I have summarized Clay’s outline of “The Speech for Foreigners” for your easy reference.

(Further suggestions welcome from Party members!)

Four steps of “The Speech” to Foreign Guests in China:

1- Basic welcome of the honored foreign guests.

2- Affirm the relationships with those on stage and in the room.

3- Run down checklist of what the party hopes to accomplish (and don’t forget those all-important buzzwords du jour: “peaceful rise” or “harmonious society” or “win-win situation”.

4- Make certain to deliver several minutes of the statistics with GDP up by X percent, exports up by Y percent, the rise of per capita income.

I would love to have heard how much the official translation of Clay’s outline resembled the premier’s speech!

For those willing to sit through the video, below is a video of the speech that premier Wen Jiabao delivered.

Technorati Tags: Clay Chandler, Dalian, Davos, WEF, World Economic Forum, Young Global Leaders

Popularity: 3% [?]