First Prize is an Olloclip Core Lens and Pivot Grip, plus a one-on-one mobile photography workshop with Singaporean photographer and documentary filmmaker Siok Siok Tan.
Five Second Prize winners will receive an autographed copy of Tan’s most recent photo book, Citybook.
In a first for the country’s music industry (and maybe the world’s?), the hip new boy band on the block is composed entirely of girls.
Acrush made its music video debut last month with the song Activists (行动派), and the buzz has only been spreading. The members dance, sing, and rap with a cultivated rough-around-the-edges cool you’d normally expect to see from Korean supergroups like Big Bang. What might be even more surprising is the actual quality of the song itself, as well as the video, both of which have a much more hip and modern feel than most mainland pop offerings.
Assembled through the proven Korean formula for manufacturing pop stars, the group found its final members after several rounds of auditions and rigorous cuts. Tencent is behind the scenes of all this, backing the Zhejiang Huati Culture Communications Co Ltd, which took the initiative to assemble the group.
The group has already received widespread international media coverage, and has a Weibo account boasting huge numbers of followers given their very recent debut. But when surveyed, not many local music fans seem to have heard of them.
“I honestly haven’t heard any Chinese person talk about them,” one admits. “I think I’ve only read an English article on them.”
We hope that changes in the very near future. Watch the video for Activists above. We’ve got your back with the translated version of the lyrics below. (Italics = English)
Activists
I refuse to be an insignificant existence any longer
When will this world of chaos start to rupture?
Hotheaded, too hotheaded; a sign of danger
Hotheaded, too hotheaded; my reckless paces
Hotheaded, too hotheaded; sound the alarm
Let it go
How do I fight my hardest
so that the future will come?
How do I tear off these labels
so that I can rule my own life?
“Haste makes waste”
Why wouldn’t I understand this principle?
Instead of waiting for a gift of a bouquet
Why not plant flowers yourself?
Break through the obstacles
Evolve to be irreplaceable
Break free from the sea of fire
I am my own trump card
[0:50] I refuse to be an insignificant existence any longer
When will this world of chaos start to rupture?
I’m sick of enduring this weakness Come back as activists
Even if it must be painful, let it bring the most euphoria
Everybody go!
Bounce everybody, bounce everybody, yeah Bounce everybody, bounce Bounce everybody, bounce everybody, yeah We got right now
The transformation starts now
[1:27] This is the worst and the best of times
While displaying individuality, show one’s capability Yeah Only favored
are you qualified to sigh
Don’t expect it
Won’t give you any weaknesses
I, the ace wakes and accepts his rival’s worship
I, with all firepower, occupy all the stage Up, up, up My word must be
Must try to be the one
exception
[1:47] I don’t exist for anyone
Dancing heart breaks through barriers
Pure power is beyond imagination Come back, highest pose,
lofty activists
Everybody go
Bounce everybody, bounce everybody, yeah Bounce everybody, bounce Bounce everybody, bounce everybody, yeah We got right now The transformation starts now
[2:31] Everybody go, yeah Everybody is expecting my new collision Right now follow my perfect tempo
Look, gotta break all illusions
Everybody go
Bounce everybody, bounce everybody, yeah Bounce everybody, bounce Bounce everybody, bounce everybody, yeah We got right now The transformation starts now
Bounce everybody, bounce everybody, yeah Bounce everybody, bounce Bounce everybody, bounce everybody, yeah We got right now The transformation starts now
Yin (音, “music”) is a weekly Radii feature that looks at Chinese songs spanning classical to folk to modern experimental, and everything in between. Drop us a line if you have a suggestion: [email protected].
Lingering in bed until lunchtime or staying up late to play mobile games is becoming far too common among young Chinese students. But the recent case of a 13-year-old schoolboy in Hangzhou takes gaming addiction to a whole new level.
Inside Children’s Hospital Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Mr. Zhang, the boy’s father, told the reporters the story. Last Thursday, when he came home after work, he found his son, Maomao, had spent the previous three hours playing the mobile game King of Glory (basically League of Legends) instead of reviewing lessons for the next day’s exam. Failing to contain his fury, he scolded Maomao sharply. The boy, surprisingly, leapt impulsively from the balcony of their fourth-story home, fracturing both his patella and thighbone.
But while Mr. Zhang was badly worried about his son’s health, Maomao demanded his father fetch his smartphone, as he urgently wanted to log back in to the game. He’s expected to be bedridden for weeks.
Maomao is just one of millions of game addicts. (According to some estimates, more than 24 million Chinese between the ages of 13 and 29 are digital addicts.) And King of Glory, published by Tencent in November 2015, has done its share to increase those numbers, as it counts more than 200 million players, with the daily active user count around 80 million. In addition, research indicates that students made up nearly 60 percent of the players — and the average age appears to be getting lower.
In light of increasing numbers of students getting lost in mobile games, psychologists and educators are suggesting that parents take more responsibility in supervising their kids. Others, however, believe that offering “direction” is more beneficial than “blockage.” In their eyes, there are two principal reasons for why students feel a special attachment to phone games. First, primary and middle school students are at an age when their self-awareness begins to take hold, which means they are eager to test self-constructed identities by immersing themselves in a virtual environment. Second, popular games such as King of Glory have transformed into a social phenomenon, which means students play these games not just for the action, but because their peers do.
All in all, the trend is a big concern, and some schools are taking action. As Shanghai Daily reports:
Wang Yang, headmaster of Shanghai Caoyang No.2 High School, said his school has banned playing online games on campus.
“We have told all students that such behavior will be recorded in the comprehensive evaluation system, which will be used in applying for universities,” he said. The headmaster called for legislation to fine game producers and operators for allowing teenagers to register and play games.
Some might say this is dangerous. I say nah. This is just another day in the life of a boss who’s got somewhere to be, and lots of boxes that need to get there. She’s got this.
If you’re still reading this column – in which case, hi Mom! – you might be wondering how big a deal live streaming (zhibo) can possibly be. Sure, I may have thrown around a few large numbers in my introductory post, but, I mean, come on: how much money can there be in a less-organized and far-less-talented version of YouTube where every video is essentially improvised?
To skip straight to the end – spoilers! – a lot. It’s a 4-plus-billion-dollar industry with rapidly growing investment from the big boys like Alibaba and Baidu. in, meaning there will be more money pouring into live streaming soon than coming out of the entire film industry in China – and let’s not forget that this country is single-handedly keeping Michael Bay’s film career (and shitty video game adaptations) going.
There are more people in China watching zhibo than there are people in America. You may have heard the horror stories of people getting plastic surgery in the hopes of winning the live-stream-lottery; but the zhibo community is not just a collection of vapid pretty smiles anymore. Online gaming – something with just a *tiny* bit of popularity in China – is moving quickly into the live streaming field. You can watch sports, concerts, hiking, fishing, and much more – hell, there’s even an audience for pearl-diving.
So the point is, it’s big. And though I’m sure investment money pours in from left and right, a huge chunk of the money comes from regular Joes and Janes (or Zhangs and Wangs, as the case may be) spending a little bit of real money for “tickets,” which can be used to send gifts to streamers.
And a LOT of gifts get sent – from little one- to two-ticket stars, eggs, hearts, and cucumbers (no idea, don’t ask) all the way up to multi-thousand-sticker Ferraris, yachts, and planes. Like any good app asking you to spend money on imaginary goods, Yingke (or YK for short, i.e. the zhibo app I use) is always switching up the gifts and upping the ante as more and more users join up. When I first started, the 1,200-ticket Ferraris were one of the biggest gifts you could send rolling across the screen; now, they pale in comparison to a 10,000-ticket firework display, a 13,000-ticket yacht, and a 33,440-ticket island paradise that takes up the entire screen for several seconds with an animated explosion of color and prestige (for context, 33,400 tickets is worth over $150 if you trade those tickets in for cash).
Watch a popular host for an hour and you’ll see them receive anywhere between a few hundred to more than a thousand RMB in gifts from their audience – and there’re several hundred *hot* streaming rooms going at any given time on YK alone.
Here’s what getting a typical gift looks like:
I’m not a math genius, but I believe that adds up to anywhere between a metric f@#kload and a cubic sh*t-ton of money.
Now, you’d think everyone would immediately convert these gifts to cash, but the masterminds behind YK have come up with a pretty brilliant method for keeping most of the money rotating around the system. See, everyone on these streaming apps has a “level,” with a little progress bar that is for all intents and purposes just like an experience bar in a video game (think WoW). Every time you give someone a gift, you get 10x the gift’s value in “experience” toward your next level. As you progress higher and higher in the level system, your name changes colors, you get little stars next to your profile pic, the system announces your presence when entering a streaming room, and you even (supposedly) get preferential treatment from the apps discovery algorithms. I myself just reached level 17, the first point at which your little number changes from a boring ordinary green circle to an exciting orange half-moon – and I’d be lying if I said the hit of dopamine didn’t get me amped up for my next “level.”
—>
So, not only does investing your hard-earned gifts give you the rush of higher numbers and shiny prestige, the app tries to convince you that without a higher level, you’ll never get discovered by enough people to make it big anyway. And to a degree, that’s clearly true; obviously we have no idea how much or how little your level makes a difference in how easily you can be discovered, but the fact that higher-level folks enter streaming rooms with a shiny visual effect that essentially says “lookit mr./ms. important over here” certainly makes their engagement with the host more likely to result in new followers.
Maggie and Carlos: gods walking amongst mere mortals
And as with any good freemium service, you can pay to win – or at least pay to get ahead. Of course the idea is that you stream, receive gifts, trade the gifts for tickets, and then use those tickets to give gifts in turn (the gifts devalue when you exchange them, meaning YK is constantly getting a cut before any advertisers even enter the picture). But if you prefer to streamline the process, YK and other apps are more than happy to let you purchase the tickets directly. And believe it or not, this is actually MORE dangerous in China than America. Here, just about everyone – myself joyously included – has their bank account directly hooked up to WeChat wallet and Alipay; the cash-free world has arrived in China, and while it is a beautiful thing, it makes spending money on silly in-app purchases quite a bit more tempting.
“But why?” I hear you ask: “Why are people so into this? Are young people these days really so dumb that they’ll waste money on something this stupid? At least when you play Clash of Clans you get to tap some goblins to death – here you’re literally just watching people… exist…?”
At least, I hope that’s what you’re asking. If you couldn’t care less, here’s a picture of a puppy.
I know I started off citing the big numbers and overall trend, but I think Chinese live streaming is something that needs to be brought down to the individual level and humanized to be understood. This just my pet theory (though I’m not alone), but it seems to me that mobile streaming in particular invites everyone to share in the streamer’s un-touched-up world. Sure, the profile pictures may be weirdly altered and the host may have arranged some mood lighting and a microphone, but at the end of the day you’re interacting real-time with a real human being. Rather than watching a slick, professional, prerecorded video, live streaming gives you a window into other people’s – theoretically speaking, more interesting – lives.
It’s a lot like how the Let’s Play craze on YouTube (videos of people playing video games and joking around doing so) confused and continues to confuse people who don’t get that it was never about well-scripted jokes or insightful commentary – it was about simulating the comfortable feeling of chilling with a funny friend when you’re stuck at work or in the library, or when you just don’t have that funny friend. Zhibo takes that one step further by removing a layer of artificiality – sure, the host might not be able to legitimately engage with every single person sending them messages, but the interaction is both real and in real-time.
And here, I believe, is where we get to the core of why live streaming is so much more popular in China than America: fun social interaction is in high demand and low supply here.
Before I open myself up to accusations of racism or cultural insensitivity or general jerkitude, let me caveat: no, I’m not implying that Chinese people are nerds who don’t know how to have fun or that everyone in China is just such a gosh-darn studious worker that they have no time for partying or any other such nonsense. What I’m saying is simple and statistic-based: despite the near-miraculous pace of improvement and change here, there are a LOT of very unhappy and directionless young people in China. A whole lot of people are overworked and underpaid. Many face enormous family and societal pressure to achieve goals that are implausible – millions of students who will put in unbelievable amounts of work will never get into a good school; millions of men, through no real fault of their own, will never find a wife; and millions of women will never look the way every billboard and movie and ad tells them they must in order to find a handsome and rich husband.
Really sucks the fun out of these profile pics, don’t it?
Throw in the fact that just about everyone my age is an only child (we’re an anti-social bunch) and that most major cities are regularly blanketed by thick gray clouds of thoroughly depressing smog, and the zhibo phenomenon starts to make a lot more sense. Put it all together, and you may begin to see the value of a service that allows you to to pick up your phone anytime, anywhere, and waste a few minutes chuckling at a charismatic pearl diver, sexy weightlifter, cool DJ…
…or even a dumb foreigner trying to improve his Chinese.
