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There, that got your attention didn't it?

Today is Friday and I know you're all just gagging to labour away on some spreadsheets to quantify the unquantifiable. So to ease the pain, we (note the use of the Royal we, which we invoke if only to mock the rapidly aging farts at Wallpaper) are giving away some stunning Chinese prizes including a genuine post cultural-revolution antique - OK so its only mid 80's but a lot of cultural stuff got wiped out during those times and so its the real deal.

First prize originates from a rare film import of a Charles Bronson Movie that escapes me for the time being pictured below.


Second prize is a Super XXL Chairman Mao T Shirt which is actually something we don't see too much of here in China. What with him being 70% good and 30% bad.


In order to win these fabulous prizes, shipped to any GPS position on the planet (including Nottingham) all you have to do is answer the following Olympic question in the cleverest or funniest way possible. The question is for the Olympic 'tag line' pictured below:


What is the dream?


Entries in the comments section please, with the winner and runner up to be chosen by next Monday 9.00 AM GMT. No use of the official explanation will be accepted. What with it being so profoundly unprofound.

Tibet

I've stayed well away from this subject apart from a nod to some of the themes that create this type of tension all round the world, including I might add the troubles in Ireland, which as it slowly heals itself, is surely a solid example of how only dialogue has a chance to ameliorate conflict. Anything else is a vacuum and/or the sort of binary polarisation that we are beginning to see played out in the theater of media. This morning however the front page of China Daily has a lead story headlined "Students rap media 'hegemony' " and I feel that it would be constructive to highlight the obvious, because pluarlism of opinion is not a default reporting in China.

I should point out that I'm not strictly speaking in favour of China's withdrawal from Tibet. It's way too far down the line for that to be a constructive move. Tibet was a piss poor theocracy before the Chinese Communist party annexed it over 1949-51 and it will be a dirt poor theocracy if the impossible happened and the Dalai Lama was invited in for a red-carpet-run to the throne in Lhasa.

We all now know very well that failed states are extremely hard to prop up. There's is possibly nothing more we would like to do in Afghanistan and Iraq than wrap up and call it a day if we weren't all so guilty of being compliant in the biggest media con job since say Kristallnacht with it's skillfully orchestrated violence or the more contemporary Weapons for Mass Delusion hunt. No it's better to let people stand on their own two feet and that can only come about with the maturity that maybe a few hundred years of participatory democracy gives such as the recent devolution we have seen with the Scottish and Welsh parliaments in the United Kingdom. Even then the discourse can be heated and confrontational.

The point is that bias in the media is always going to be evident. The notion that news media don't have bias is just plain stupid. Guardian readers like their daily dose of Liberalism and Telegraph readers like their daily dose of Conservatism. CNN despite it's left leaning bias couldn't provide the perspective that the Arab States needed and thus Al Jazeera was born. If you're looking for objectivity in your news I suggest you read both sides of an opinion and form your own. That's as good as its going to get.

But here's the point for writing this post. China is already emerging as a world power, if not the psychological de facto world-power already. This requires from the peoples of the world a change in mindset as to how the old order is perceived. As the United States staggers under a mountain of debt built by rich folk selling bad loans to poor folk with the poor folk picking up the tab it's time to reassess the shape of the world. There's a new kid on the block and if you feel uncomfortable with that then I guess its worth reminding you that the obsession with wealth creation known as Neo Liberal Capitalism is the reason why China is on the rise. Didn't we teach them this way? Didn't we say it's all about who owns the dollars? About the money and the power?

That doesn't mean though that the obvious shouldn't be pointed out. For as those Chinese students abroad petition Gordon Brown with their "29 Pence Action" Campaign, (notably missing from the blogosphere), a mature civilization's response should welcome pluralism of opinion and that they are indeed highlighting a bias in the Western Media's reporting on Tibet, for the Western Media have mistakenly taken to reporting history for reporting news. What happened in 1949 is history what happened in Tibet this month is news.

Finally I should end on the most obvious point for those Chinese overseas who are blessed with the ability to take their grievances to the Western Media. Good luck to you, but surely the irony of being able to do this while here I am, several hundred yards from The National People's Congress, blogging away on yet another banned blogging platform by the net nanny, in the heart of Beijing with absolutely no chance of writing a letter to caution the leaders pictured below, and now on the internet, that an eye for an eye only leaves the world blind.

Beijing Art

I recieved an invite from Joy Island to see her band play at a Shopping Mall (coincidentally called Joy Shopping Mall) on Saturday and I went along to check out her band Two Oranges' music. I discovered that it was also an art and environment combo (is that the original word for mashup?) sponsored by Arrtco who seem quite clued up.

I wanted to share some snaps of the art for the time being because it was rather good and seemingly transcended the language barrier. I particularly like the feces theme on the video installation below. I think we'd all be a bit more careful about our electricity use if our notebooks or TV's took an occasional crap. Anyway here ya go it was on sale for 1200 Euros in case you are curious of the prices.

I quite like that pick up your phone and get your money ready line. QVC couldn't have put it any better could they?

The bike below looked like the frame had grown out of the trees or vice versa.

The print poster below was called something like 'Bath together, Save water'. Which reminded me of an old campaign I think from when the UK suffered a very memorable drought in 1976. Beijing is almost rain free and needs to pump its water in from further and further afield each year as its next to a desert. I can't help thinking about Frank Herbert's SF book Dune that I was into as a lad and where water is so scarce on the desert planet Arrakis that it is considered an honour to be spat upon.

Lastly I really like this piece which with a bit of typography help and a couple of word tweaks would have got a full 10 out of 10 for its 25 mini frames. Each contained a line that built up a narrative of human development from nature to robot and one particularly poignant frame on the bottom left with a jet plane and the planet earth, and the line; "They began to see the world as a plaything" which is kind of true when I think about say the time I took a plane to the airport and jumped on the next random flight out - I ended up in Phnom Penh. Imagine when most people in China can afford to do that. I'm guessing it's not too far off.

Update: Today's China Daily reports today that 97 airports are to open in China within 12 years. Naturally this is seen as only a good thing because the West taught China that the only benchmark worth knowing is the economic growth that we are all seemingly choking on.

Beijing Yoof

Beijing is much more restrained than Shanghai when it comes to self expression but there are pockets of the cool kids, particularly in the Xidan area which I've taken to exploring to see if there's anything interesting.

I guess that Harajuku thing is beginning to emerge more confidently here and it makes a welcome break from the monotony of monotone or overkill on the colour red. I really like these folk because they have that spark of life which frankly takes a bit of courage. Some people like to invoke the 'nail that sticks out, gets hammered in' rule of thumb for Asia but I say bollocks to that. The nail that sticks out gets noticed.

....unlike most ego driven marketing communications that sadly pass for 'creative'. Few people are willing to champion these folk and yet they are just as valid a part of modern China as the migrant workers who build the endlessly emerging skyline. I also find them refreshingly modest and unchippy.

This is BRILLIANT

With thanks from Gustavo who is shaping up as a very hip and talented creative planner. (Picture taken last night at LAN club where the Ministry of Sound were playing)

Twitter Explained with Schweppervescence

I was in some old fashioned groups last week for Beijing University students and I learnt some pretty neat stuff. Best of all, again was really how nice the folk in Beijing are in general - innocent almost, if that doesn't sound patronizing (that excludes advertising folk and clients btw). I was describing this to a colleague and concluded that it's not the worst place in the world for the balance of power to shift from D.C. to Beijing.

As I believe it already has from a global psychological power-perspective.

Even more so in a few months when more people will be looking at China than at any time in the entire history of the country. But more practically I can share how most of the youngish respondents were pretty conversant with Lost, 24, Desperate housewives and Heroes through P2P file sharing.

I thought it was a brave and edgy way for the curious and young to find out a little more about the frankly amazing media culture of the U.S. but after a little bit of probing it seems that in China, content like this is seen as being from the outside world more so than the U.S. specifically. Which raises an interesting view that I haven't really thought of since I first learned German in the early 90's and discovered that foreigners are called 'Auslander'.

Anyway, completely unrelated to any of this is the Twitter explained video which is useful for those still scratching their heads over the whole thing. Unfortunately it doesn't even come close to explaining the Twitter Karate that Sam and I invented over the weekend (with a little subsequent Twitter Wrestling from Angus

Lastly I want to post about this Schweppes ad which is easily the best thing since Gorrilla although I'm loving Singing Dog and Moonwalking Gorrilla. It highlights what for me is a growing problem and one that can only deteriorate as clever brands move closer to achieving feelings and move further away from 20th century messaging model, which has it's place, but more in an Adsense/Google way than the last-years-of-TV as we know it should.

Incidentally I think this could be a Golden age for advertising because the clever brands will mark out territory for feelings while the clock ticks for interrupted attention media. It's just a matter of time. The difference between describing an ad using storyboards (or even using them in research) to seeing the final piece is too wide for me because it doesn't come anywhere near close to conveying the emotion that I feel when I see a fantastic piece of work like this. I did read about some of this brand talked about over at Rob's but I had no idea if the Cynic gang were involved with this piece while writing this post. Either way it stands for itself. Bravo!

Spring is in the air

I managed to slip out of the office yesterday for a very quick lunch and on the way I finally got to walk past the recently opened Beijing Opera House or officially titled National Centre for Performing Arts. It's surrounded by a moat like affair, giving the arts a sense of protection for which Beijing's reputation kicks Shanghai's dollar loving ass over. So forgive me if I slip a couple of pics from the Nokia N95 in because I've dropped this baby a couple of times now and it's miraculously past the flying battery and spinning battery-cover test which is always received with gratitude when it survives that particular tumble, and is indeed the first quality about Nokia that really turned me on to the brand. That and the banana shaped ones that we first got at HHCL which were iconic and still are in a retro way. But really, Its not meant to survive this kind of abuse so its like a second life for me which is worth a few hundred euros in reality.


But what I wanted to say is that even though I cannot bear the cold, I moved to Beijing knowing that I need to sacrifice some things to achieve others. However, even though there will be cold days ahead, spring has definitely sprung and there is a whiff of fast paced tarting up going on in Beijing in the last days before the entire planet thinks more about China than it has ever done in the history of this incredible country destined for a legacy that is even larger than its geographical size or population, because that is exactly how the numbers game works. Here are the flowers being planted in time for the arrival of the sun.

And many of the boulevards are going through intense tree planting each morning with entire sections of previously tundra like frozen mud now being dug up and prepped for beauty. China knows how to throw a few hundred thousand workers at a project. Like no other.


This is no time to go into the whole construction boom thing versus planning a city for 2050 but I will do at some point. There's something interesting going on here and I haven't quite found the words to embrace all of it.

Goldfish

So we had this Goldfish in our tank with a propensity for swimming upside down. Now I know that's usually a sign for impending demise but in this instance my colleagues assured me that this was our fish's preferred method for over a year now. Personally I think he liked to show-off but then why not? A Goldfish's life isn't all that remarkable after all. Sadly he got stuck in the water filter later on the day of filming and is now floating in a different celestial current.

Connecting Peoples

Earlier today I was passing that blood bank bus I've mentioned before when talking about brand utility, and I thought I'd do my bit and load up the People's Republic with some of my own juice as I had a pint or so to spare.


This nice Gentleman took all my details and loaded them up on the notebook.


And the nice nurse checked my blood pressure and took a sample to be on the safe side.


And I got on with taking a few pictures as the people on the bus were all the generous giving sort. (I don't count myself. I was looking for shameless blogging content).


And Bob's your uncle. No mess, no fuss, just juice. Which sounds like a line doesn't it?


And that was my Saturday afternoon, apart from buying some Stella McCartney's Adidas for a girl I haven't yet met, because I do that once in a while.....meet someone, figure out if I've bought the right size and if it looks like it will work, say 'here's something I bought earlier'.

Seriously though if there are any ladies out there who are really into this the Adidas 'Stella' the store on Wanfujing is doing 50% off and I can only justify buying the one item on the off chance of meeting a close fit, even though its easily the sexiest and most futuristic female clothing I've ever seen and it doesn't seem to be shifting over here. Its like Prada/Miu Miu meets Adidas. Which isn't a bad thing. Its still pricy but a half price sale is a fair chunk off. Go check out the current collection.

Joy Island

I've just come across the astonishingly talented Chinese Photographer Joy Island. Not bad for someone who started taking photos in 2005 is she? With creativity like this it shouldn't be too hard to breath some life into brands that all too often are sclerotic and asphyxiated with a marketing bullshit that has crushed the life, tonality, voice and ability to inspire or provoke thought, through endless quantitative measurement of the difference between idea free and idea less.

Great brands are about ideas, not about doing everything possible to avoid an idea, and we need to let let talented local Chinese creative people and artists connect at this level. Creativity doesn't come from an Apple Mac it comes from people. The brand idea that sticks out often gets hammered in, here in Asia, but with photography like this I just know that China has a brilliant future as long as the creativity is protected.

Learning to count

Everything is contextual

Update. Many of the photos in this post have been lost so I've deleted them. I hope it still makes some sense.

Particularly when it comes to advertising or otherwise we'd use the ads from yesteryear, year in and year out.... and they would work. I'll be fleshing out that theme at some point but in the mean time here's more China Syndrome.

The local bank cards don't have a 'chip' but do have a six figure PIN which makes a lot more sense than a four figure PIN. The one above was at the hotpot restaurant from this QIK video and has been given some love and affection with stick-on hearts and pseudo bling. A bit like putting a sprig of parsley on top of food. erm not!

These steamed dumplings and cakes (Xiaolongbao) are still found all over Beijing from little vendors that keep the feel of food more interesting than elsewhere to me. I've been going on a bit about street food of late.


This is the first ad that has impressed me in China. I"m hoping its local as the brand is a local glasses retailer. There was a French version next to this poster, so it might well be international. 

Its also beautifully art directed. Seen in the Oriental Plaza, Beijing.


These little fellas (Motuoche) run around Beijing like the Tuk Tuk's of Bangkok, although far less ubiquitous. The example above is in mint condition and used solely by a restaurant to ferry its customers to and fro. It was all glinting and sparkling in the sun.


Well you might have caught on to that whole Ferrari brand extension thing over at Rob's which prompted me to take a look around their shop. They actually sell a Ferrari branded telescope on top of other pointless crap!! Its a top quality telescope with a Ferrari (which I think has like Prada, not the most attractive logo) badge on it. Ferrari are fucked if they need the few extra dollars that this retail shit provides. It would be a shameif they were the first luxury car brand to do a Pierre Cardin/Burberry. I know there are people who have made a bazillion in China (as indeed elsewhere around the world) who aren't very discerning but this is just plain crass.
La Pargay above however have got something going on. It's a talented local Chinese designer. Their clothes are really innovative and have a particular identity - that to my mind taps into the Mongolian roots of Northern China. The retail staff also remind me of Mac Cosmetics who have always hired interesting staff over classically beautiful assistants. Also the ladies in this shop were definitely wearing the most risque clothes I've seen women wear in Beijing. Its not summer yet so maybe things will change but the girls clothes here rarely reveal their upper torso unlike the girls here and which I hadn't really thought about till I took a look around La Pargay. These people are one to watch fashion lovers... You heard it here first.

I'm completely in love with I.T the clothing brand above. They are from Hong Kong and apart from doing very noticeable advertising. I like the cat aping the model in the lower right hand corner. I've done something I only do very rarely which is buy 3 of an item because I know I will love them forever.

These special edition Adidas caught my eye and were the "Special of the month". I'm not sold on what looked like under closer inspection a cutting edge pedometer on the tongue. Trainers like this do look OK with a baggy casual suit or something, a la Alexander McQueen some years ago. Sort of like a loud sneakers modest clothes look.

Lastly I think I've found the origin of toffee apples. I've never come across these in any other culture but these toffee fruits look splendid on their display pillars, and particularly at night when they are illuminated.

Yes I know this is a bit of a crap post but the work is piling up, and I'm getting deeper and deeper into a lot of local and international brands and finding their context here in China. We're also waiting to hear some news on that pitch I've mentioned to a few of you and which deserves a post once the dust has settled because doing marketing communications in China, as in lots of Asian places, is often way different from other places around the world. Sometimes I think the biggest challenge is overcoming that whole consensus thing which is responsible for what can only be described as consensual communications. The internet seems to be the only place where reality can be externalised. Albeit through virtual persona sometimes.

Update: I subsequently discovered that La Pargay is Italian. Just trying to champion local stuff when I see it!

Just The Watches

I visited this place first back in September and at the time it struck me how extraordinary the sheer range of watches were on sale. I took this QIK video earlier at the Silk Street Market which is kind of like MBK in Bangkok. Its depressing isn't it, how much effort goes into pumping out enough timepieces to keep our insatiable 'consumer' appetites fulfilled? Each of those watches has so many hundreds of component parts and must be at least days, weeks if not months of time from drawing board to supply side distribution and retail all around the world.

Wanna See My Lunchbox?

In a dramatic turn and subsequently bizzare twist of events it turns out that the owner of the mysterious Hello Kitty Lunch box over at Robs was in fact none other than Marcus Brown of Munich (formerly Southampton). The Kaiser, not widely known for his sweet 'Kawaii' side 'fessed' up that the lunch container was his regular victuals pack with a sheepish face over here . The scandal dubbed 'Kittygate' in the raggedy end of the digital press has rocked the male dominated blogosphere with underhand and pernicious jabs that Marcus is a pussy, so there was little else a chap could do for a chum other than come to the rescue with a picture of my own lunchbox. Beef noodles or no beefnoodles. Barbera who took this snap with an unsteady hand from laughing about the rapidly expanding waistline had to be coaxed into keeping a aim so do excuse the indulgent smiles that come about as middle age spread takes another innocent victim.

Qik

Some of you have been viewing my Qik videos already, so I thought that now was as good a time as any to introduce them formally. I first came across Qik on Robert Scoble's blog and I thought it was a neat feature having the live video to internet on a Nokia N95 which is the smart phone I'm using. I also thought it would compete with some of the other video to net features like Kyte.tv or Ustream but as I've been using it I've also come to appreciate that its a cinch to use and has one extra feature that gives the broadcasts currency; there is a check box to send a link to my twitter account immediately. So it's kind of fun getting twitters back from friends about what they imagine I'm doing to whom in that hot tub in the second bathroom of the Hutong I'm intending to move into. Evidently my twitter chums have quite vivid imaginations!

Beijing Life

It gets a bit windy some days in Beijing

Yen Countdown

The PRC, being run in a top down sort of affair has allocated a district in Beijing solely for the artist community. It's called 798. I don't normally approve of art-under-duress but on New Years Eve I made an exception.

Beijing Strategy

The fifth to seventh floors at the Xie Dan shopping complex called Beijing Stategy are as good a place as any to check out where the hip kids are at, in the same way as say Harajuku would be the place to trend-watch emerging fashion changes in Tokyo. Its interesting to see what these young folk are wearing, what they are into and how they behave with each other. Although its mainly a 'teen +' fashion hangout, if you dig a little deeper into the boutique end on other floors you'll get to see a slightly older female customer looking for more sophisticated outfits. They're of the type that like to dress impressively but don't have the budget of hitting say The Place or The Peninsula Arcade at The Peninsula for top end luxury brands. Some of them are just smarter too! Beijing is a great place for buying clothes that look terrific but aren't necessarily designed to last forever. I guess this is somewhat indicative of the disposable society the West created I'd point out. More on that later because I've got some thoughts emerging on that one. I can't wait for oil to hit 200 bucks a barrel.

Anyway, while walking around Xie Dan which is one of at least three locations in Beijing that has a whole shop dedicated to Tim Burton's A Nightmare Before Christmas, I then stumbled across a shop called Boing Boing. I wondered at the time if they knew about one of the worlds top blogs and took a quick snap. So I was a bit bloody surprised to discover shortly afterwards I had been linked to by Boing Boing and saw my traffic stats go through the roof. Wanna take a peek?

Anyway, those peeps rushing over here to check out the crumpled porcelain beer cans will be unlikely to pay more visits and if truth be known I'm not looking for traffic, I'm looking for comrades as I mentioned to Johnnie, Damiano, Jamie and John last year at the Endurance in Soho. But it was quite a learning experience to check out the oodles of data that Google Analytics provides such as who came, where they came from, their ISP, what they clicked on, how long they stayed, where they went to next and all that stuff which very few bloggers ever talk about but is for me one of the reasons why I can 'head held up high' say I like a bit of quant now and again, as I said in one of my tweets that I've just discovered has been fed into a site I've never come across before. Once again I'm compelled to reminds folks that McLuhan said the third world war would be an information war with no division between civilian and military which sounds like fun doesn't it? (Churchill also said something similar and prescient).

China Central Television Building (CCTV)

I took a taxi ride out to the new CCTV building over the Christmas break. They have recently connected the two main pillars in a feat of engineering that can only be truly appreciated by standing under it, walking around it and hopefully the next time I go by sneaking into it.

Architecture for me is a love affair and I've been folllowing the Dutch mastermind for the CCTV building in Beijing for a while now. His name is Rem Koolhaas and this latest project is truly the only building since the the Guggenheim in Bilbao, which I've felt has challenged and then extended my appreciation and meaning of the building form. I was close to trembling while standing under that huge overhang - but maybe that was the hangover too. Its all steel and feels like a Airbus A340 is suspended over your head. Here are the pictures from my N95 mobile phone camera that really don't do it justice.

It appears to defy general gravitational and architectural balance guidelines. I'd really like to hear what Owen Hatherley of Nasty Brutalist and Short thinks of this design. I feel that this qualifies in some respects as as good example of brutalist with other design nods and dimensions that I'd love to hear Owen's erudite (and quality socialist I might add) views.

The shot below is really pushing the zoom feature on the N95 to the max. The slightest movement shows up on the final shot but I think it starts to give a feel for all the safety netting suspended underneath the overhang as it was conjoined recently.

I couldn't help but look at all the lovely media space waiting to be made beautiful. Or at least let Beijing use it as a graffiti space. Its huge and rusting at the moment.

It needs to be walked around to appreciate all its angles.


If you look really hard. You can see the construction workers walking on a little horizontal section at the point where the sky meets the upper part of the joining section. Or put another way the other side of where the sun's glare is.


Just seeing this building means I have no choice now but to buy a decent camera. Any suggestions very much welcome. You might be able to see what I'm trying to capture. Expect more Beijing architecture. There are some amazing pieces around the city for the Olympics.