They do a lot of things. They synthesize energy from the sun’s rays. They produce oxygen all over the world, for which we are all very grateful. They make a great garden feature that can tie together a whole lawnscape.
One thing trees are not known for is spontaneously bursting into flames of their own accord. Residents in Chongqing were treated to a spectacle they “haven’t seen before” (you can say that again, pal), when an otherwise calm and placid tree decided to do just that.
We would speculate on a combination of factors. One, Chongqing is super hot right now. Actually, a huge portion of China is experiencing record high temperatures at the moment. Two, the top of the tree that caught fire looks like it would have a lot of little, jagged pieces of dry wood, making it kind of an ideal spot for a sudden psychosatanic-meteorological phenomenon (if you’ve never heard that terminology, it’s because we just made it up). And three, there’s no leaf coverage there at the top. That poor wood up there just had to endure the brutal direct sunlight until it couldn’t take it anymore. Everyone has a breaking point.
The people taking the video were pretty positive about it. They’re just happy and interested – Chongqing weather is awesome!
The fire department came by later to squelch the strange occurrence, and everybody left safe and happy. Except for the tree, crushed for daring to be different. Check out Pear Video’s footage of the weirdness.
How did a girl from a Communist “red family” start to question the ideology she’d believed since she was a kid?
How did a spoiled single child rebel against her parents by destroying the piano she was forced to play with a screwdriver?
How did a Chinese student wake up at 12:00am every day for six months to prepare for the Gaokao (Chinese college entrance exam) that she almost failed?
How did a girl from a conservative Chinese family — where sex is a taboo topic of conversation — learn most of her English from Sex and the City?
Fascinated by these questions? These stories belong to Jingjing and Yajun, and you will hear all about it on our show today!
For this episode, we will spend a bit of time introducing ourselves. Before we get to the show, here are the top four things you should know about us going in:
Yajun and Jingjing are not related, even though they have the same surname, Zhang (张 — it’s one of the most common surnames in the world)
They were born in ’80s, and are both only children
They were forced to learn an instrument (or a hobby) when they were young
They both love to laugh (as you have probably noticed on the show…)
In this episode, Yajun and Jingjing share some of their personal stories growing up as only children, including their most traumatic experiences as students, their ideology clashes, and who was the most important influencer to form their values about life and relationships.
Have the text messages from your ex-lover gone from sad to scary? Need someone to help transport your frail, sickly son-in-law Dudley? Do you possess powerful insider knowledge that could convince official state bodies to put a bounty on your head?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, and you somehow happen to live in Qingdao in Shandong province, then boy do we have news for you.
Starting next month, you’ll be able to rent bodyguards as easily as you would a taxi. The app, called Jinyiwei (“embroidered uniform guard” – the name of the elite imperial secret police during the Ming dynasty), has rolled out to a mixed response. Some say it’s a good idea and will be useful to vulnerable groups. Others say the app will turn out to be a place of employment for petty crooks and good-for-nothings who fancy themselves bodyguards. Still others are concerned that the app will be exploited by lonely women looking for lovers (lowkey a pretty sexist thing to be worried about).
Li Shangshang, one of the app’s developers, spoke some words of reassurance to the State-run China Daily:
“Our employees need to upload their ID cards, military discharge certificates and permits. They are also required to take manners and etiquette training classes and wear a uniform at work. Those who don’t feel safe, especially when going somewhere uncertain or when carrying valuables, can log on and send requests. Those who are confronted with disputes or harassment but feel it’s inconvenient to have police intervene, can try the app, and the right helpers will respond.”
Apparently a lot of the bodyguards are ex-military, and can perform services that range from transporting valuables to administering emergency first aid. And at a reasonable price ranging from 70 to 200 RMB an hour (about $10 to $30), maybe you need a bodyguard more than you realized.
Qingdao – it’s time to feel safe. Accessibly, conveniently, safe.
Sneak peek at an upcoming release from Beijing vinyl label Genjing Records. The connection with our weekly photo theme — “handwriting” — comes from illustrator and Radii contributor Krish Raghav‘s subtle incorporation of ZATO’s tag into the cover art (check the lil dragon) for a forthcoming split 7″ between Beijing’s Birdstriking and New Zealand’s Die! Die! Die! Here’s ZATO in Baitasi. And here’s Krish, who is currently working on the upcoming Concrete and Grass music festival in Shanghai, on some Chinese bands worth your attention:
2003’s seemingly minor addition of a second, front-facing camera on the Sony Ericsson Z1010 forever changed how we experience our increasingly digital world. Now selfies are inescapable, as present on our picturesque vacations as they are in our cybernetic love lives. There’s a cultural cycle that takes place when selfies are introduced – novelty, ridicule, innovation, acceptance. It goes from hey, let’s take a selfie, to why does she do that duck face in every picture? to Snapchat has interactive filters now! to the lyrics wait, let me take a selfie constituting a plausible theme for a hit radio single (disclaimer: we hate The Chainsmokers). But in China there’s one more stage in the cycle – marketability.
Billboards, subway ads, TV screens and mobile phones are plastered with the image of the selfie. And it’s not the selfie itself: it’s the act of taking one.
A subway ad I saw yesterday
Take this one for instance. Two girls in kimonos sit in front of a sushi spread. They pause to snap a selfie. Posing for the camera, full of likable, youthful energy, the two girls hold up their favorite product – Lion King toothpaste, available online at Tmall. The sushi, the toothpaste, and the selfie aren’t really related in any way. But the girls are beautiful. They’re having a more photogenic time than you. And they’re about to win status and admiration from their peers when the photo goes up. Their white teeth sparkle as if to say, this could be you.
I noticed the iconography of the selfie-taker firsthand while working on a project for the Guilin tourism bureau. I was hosting a video travel feature, checking off all the boxes in one of China’s biggest tourist destinations while a camera crew followed to document every moment. Every so often our director would stop and hand us an off-brand GoPro on a selfie stick. You take selfie, and we film you, he told us. The GoPro didn’t even have to be on. The video quality was bad, not usable in the final product – but it didn’t matter. The director just wanted a shot that would convey the idea of us sharing our experience online, where it would be seen by our loving friends and acquaintances.
No, the GoPro is not on
The actual popularity of the selfie-taker as a marketing image seems excessive, but it’s only natural if you consider the origins of cell phone culture in China. The arrival of the first true wave of cell phones in the country culminated in 2003’s Cell Phone, a box office smash hit directed by master of “cool” cinema Feng Xiaogang, and the year’s most profitable Chinese film. The main plot device of the film is the stylish and desirable Motorola 388C, which takes the characters on a journey of adultery, romance, comedy and suspense while handily showcasing the phone’s biggest features. The film was a hit across the board, turning its primary sponsor Motorola into the most talked-about cell phone brand in the country. Immediately afterwards, Motorola launched its music and entertainment platform, alongside the supremely successful “Hello Moto” advertising campaign. Cell phones had become intertwined with the rapidly emerging idea of mobile music, cementing their association with coolness and youth.
Today the culture surrounding cell phones has changed a lot, while also managing to stay the same. Our phones are much, much more than fifteen-buttoned boxes for calling and sending text messages, and that rings especially true in China. People here reach for their phones any time they need to buy a coffee, pay their landlord, or unlock a public bike. QR codes, the scrambled mosaic boxes that the west carelessly left behind, are ready for scanning everywhere you look, jump off points of digital connection in our three-dimensional world.
Most advertisements for cell phones in China just consist of a pretty celebrity holding the product in a counterproductive grip
At the same time, the energy surrounding them has remained surprisingly similar. Every phone wants to be the hippest, the most stylish, the most youthful, the most international. iPhone is still the heavyweight symbol of status as far as mobile phones go, but local brands like Xiaomi, Huawei, and Oppo have jumped into the race. Cell phone marketing here tends to focus more on the image than on the capabilities of the product itself, and most graphic advertisements for cell phones just consist of a pretty celebrity holding the product in a counterproductive grip.
China’s current “it boy”, ‘Hip Hop of China’ judge Kris Wu, failing to use the Xiaomi phone in any human way
On a macro level, China as a consumer base is still wrapped up with two things: the pursuit of Western products and image, and the performance of that image to their peers. Buyers eat up Gucci handbags and name brand fashion, real or fake, as a way of wrapping themselves in a visible international veneer. Tables at nightclubs are bought up by teenage kids from wealthy families, who come only to be seen. They stay at the tables rather than the dance floor, texting aimlessly and ordering bottles of champagne, which are decked out in eye-catching pyrotechnic sparklers, to be conspicuously paraded to their table by models. They take the pictures to post later, and delve back into their digital worlds.
Another subway ad I snapped in 2015, advertising a job recruitment website. Featuring the world’s most punchable face
The selfie-taker, then, is the intersection of all these things. Cell phones, consumer products, and social image. The selfie-taker is international, young, cool. The selfie-taker is equipped with the products you need to succeed, whether that be a cell phone or something else entirely. Most of all, the selfie-taker is poised to demonstrate his or her personal value to the world at large. The image of someone taking a selfie embodies both the act of demonstrating value, as well as the value itself that is worth demonstrating. A selfie-taker in an exotic locale says my international life is worth sharing. A selfie-taker in a button-down shirt and tie says my professional success is worth sharing. Two kimono-clad selfie-takers with white teeth say my physical appearance is worth sharing.
The selfie-taker is the intersection of all these things: cell phones, consumer products, social image
The selfie itself is only a vehicle. By connecting the selfie to the product, whatever that happens to be, the ad creates a value demonstration of its own. It lets the viewer know that their product is not only capable of making your life better, but that your improved life will be seen and appreciated by everyone you know. Selfies in ads might seem eerily common here. But when you consider the context of a rapidly changing 21st century China where image is everything, it only makes sense.
If you’re around Beijing this Friday, August 25, join the Radii team for drinks and post-work-week chatter at Frost, a bar on Xingfucun Zhong Lu in Sanlitun with a quiet atmosphere and quality cocktails (and a mean burger, in case you want to head off the rest of your night). We’ll start at 7pm and go til 11 or so. Get in early to enjoy happy hour deals on Asahi, Tiger, and Mr. Gao brews, well drinks, and shots of Jägermeister or Fireball (all 25元 a pop from 7-8pm).
