Monthly Archives: January 2009
Pepsi – Choice of a Niú Generation
There are some cheesy ads tying products to Chinese New Year but I think this has to be one of the saddest pieces of display advertising I’ve encountered.
Beijing music show part 2 & 3
As penned in a previous post I was walking the back streets of the Beijing a while back and ran into the gentleman in this video who showed me how he plays a few traditional instruments. Without further ado, here’s…that guy!
Is charging for Free Software worse than piracy?
Excuse me for getting a bit nerdy in this post. On the weekend I was at the markets and looking for fun examples of Shanzhai gadgets and stumbled across a stall offering software. Usually this is full of dodgy versions of software like Office, Windows, Photoshop, and so on. I’ve no use for these types [...]
Posted in Technology Tagged free software, Free Software Foundation, Linux, Ubuntu, Windows 2 Comments
Shanzhai eye: Dike shoes
I love Shanzhai (山寨) goods, aka counterfeit knockoffs, in China. Whenever there’s a fashionable good, a group of entrepreneurial go-getters are ready to re-create said good and serve it up in the fake markets. In Shanghai, western tourists can be seen flocking to the markets for a bit of brand-name Shanzhai action and scuttling out [...]
Year of the Reindeer Dragon
The shopping centre next to Jing An Temple have put up a pretty impressive light show for Christmas and Chinese New Year season (Earth Hour was so 2008, anyway). I couldn’t help notice that after Christmas the creators changed the neon from Santa’s reindeers into dragons. Traditionally I thought dragons were more snake-like, however, I [...]
The Shanghai Circus
With some friends visiting from overseas lately we decided to check out the carnival scene in town and visit the Shanghai Circus. I believe there are a few different circus acts and can’t compare the carnies we saw to other establishments featuring small-handed, cabbage-smelling, triangle-fingered folk around town. What I can say is that the [...]
Shanghai weather: Beautiful one day…
Stating Shanghai’s many contrasts can be an overstated, overdrawn, and constantly repeated task written about in many blogs and articles. East meets West, Rich vs Poor, Old and New, Capitalism and Communism, and well worn conclusions about Shanghai being a city of Yin and Yang. I won’t bore you with these in this post but [...]
Video: Shanghai – city of contrasts and confusion!
This video of Shanghai in 1947 has grabbed the attention of a few lately so I’m getting on the bandwagon. According to the original poster of the video it was shot in the short period after WWII when the concessions were closed (1946) and just before the communists rode into town (1949). It’s an interesting [...]
Photos: Chinese New Year fireworks