Bu Ye Cheng (Long Xiao) Communications Market in Shanghai

About 300 meters (1000 ft) to the east of a pedestrian bridge near the Shanghai Railway Station is a market which fills the majority of a large building. The market's name is written, translated and transliterated in numerous ways. A map inside the market, the sign of a complaints office for the market, and a sign by the market's management, all indicate a name which includes the Chinese "龙晓通信市场" which I'll translate as "Long Xiao Communications Market"*. But names more closely resembling "Bu Ye Cheng Communications Market" — "Bu Ye Cheng", sometimes spelled as a single word, comes from the name of the entire building — appear to be more commonly used. Whatever you call the market, fortunately the gold-tinged building with a large digital billboard at the intersection of Tianmu West Road and Meiyuan Road is easy to spot.

If you so desire, you can collect business cards from the hundreds of stalls and marvel at the different names they give the market. But of more interest to me are the various mobile phones and related products that mostly fill its six dense levels.

I think it offers the closest experience in Shanghai to some of the markets in Shenzhen's immense Huaqiangbei electronics commercial area. I recommend taking a look, especially if you are interested in mobile phones and won't be in Shenzhen. I will refrain from sharing more details about what I saw there, since a closer look is in store for some similar markets in Shanghai and elsewhere in China.



*Two of the signs used the slightly longer name "上海龙晓通信产品市场".

Apple on Windows Above Apple in Shanghai

Above the Nanjing East Road Apple Store in Shanghai, a mall's digital billboard displayed an advertisement for the Apple Watch.

And like what I saw at a mall in Haikou, I discovered the digital billboard runs on Windows.

This case just included an added touch of irony.



Perhaps-not-needed-but-would-rather-error-on-the-side-of-openness-disclosure: I previously worked as a user experience researcher at Microsoft China. I didn't work on any projects directly related to digital billboards, partly because they are difficult to carry around.

A Cafe Hoping for Some Local Interactions

A Cafe in Xiangtan, Hunan

I wonder if they considered turning off the Wi-Fi.

Motorbike Phone Calls in Hengyang

The Hengxiang Bridge offers an excellent opportunity to appreciate Hengyang's "traffic culture" and the variety of vehicles used there.

It also offers an excellent opportunity to observe some real-life mobile phone usage in Hengyang. On that note, here are four photos I took as I crossed the bridge one afternoon:

In all four cases, a person was using their mobile phone while driving a motorbike. The above capture most, but not all, of the examples I saw.

Later as I walked back across the bridge, I saw one man park his bike in the dedicated bike lane and then have a phone conversation as he stood on the sidewalk.

And finally, tying it all together in what felt like a brief magical moment, I saw a man using a mobile phone while he rode by and looked at a woman who had stopped to use a mobile phone.

It is a just a small period of time and only a single location. But if representative, it suggests a large number of people in Hengyang are willing to use their phones while driving a motorbike, at least under some conditions. And much else could be learned, better appreciated, or questioned at this single bridge in Hengyang.

Perfect for a Wedding: Purchase a McDonald's French Fry Costume From China Online

As I mentioned before, a recent set of photos from Shenzhen, Guangdong province, could inspire a number of questions. Some of the questions I had were about a McDonald's french fries costume in one of the photos.

The person wearing the costume in the above photo was standing near a McDonald's in Huaqiangbei while another person was handing out McDonald's coupons. It appeared the costume had seen better days. Fortunately for the restaurant and anyone eager to be a box of McDonald's french fries, the seemingly same costume is available for purchase online. One Guangdong-based store sells a complete costume through China-based AliExpress for US $206.

The costume includes a helmet "strong and hard enough to avoid breaking and sudden striking" — a valuable feature since you never know when this costume might provoke an attack. The seller's list of settings where the costume could be appropriate includes "wedding ceremony".

I don't question the authenticity of the McDonald's restaurant, but, as far as I can tell, the costume doesn't represent an official McDonald's character. The closest I found were the Fry Kids, formerly known as the Fry Guys. Although they have an affinity for fries, they are not fries themselves, which has its advantages.

So I am left wondering whether the McDonald's Corporation has approved or cares about the use of this french fry costume for promotions. I would also be interested to learn whether they have approved the public selling of the costume, which includes their registered trademark.

One thing I am not questioning, though, is whether there are any opportunities for the costume in a wedding. In Hong Kong, which borders Shenzhen, McDonald's offers wedding parties.

From the wedding party page of the McDonald's Hong Kong website

Genuine, Fake, and In-between: A Visit to Electronics Markets at Shenzhen's Huaqiangbei

Several days ago I spent part of one afternoon in Shenzhen's Huaqiangbei (also known as Huaqiang North) commercial area. According to ShenzhenShopper:

Theres over 20 shopping malls located in the Huaqiangbei area which provides about 70 million square meters of business area. Annual sales reaching over 20 billion, and there’s something like 130,000 people employed in the area. Yep, it’s large.

Huaqiangbei is most known for being one of the biggest electronics markets in the world. For many first time visitors, especially those already familiar with typical consumer electronics chain stores in China, I would agree with the suggestion on PIXEL to:

Skip [the consumer electronics shops] and spend your time in the buildings dedicated to Android tablets, “Shanzhai” phones (copies), phone accessories, components, LEDs, various gadgets, etc.

Just one of the shopping centers on its own can be overwhelming to those not accustomed with their scale, density, and intensity. Charles Arthur shared a gallery of photos on The Guardian. As prelude to another gallery of photos on Tech in Asia, Paul Bischoff wrote:

Within lies stall after stall after stall of nearly every gadget, component, and tool imaginable. Over half a dozen city blocks are filled to the brim with crowded marketplaces, each ranging from four to 10 floors high. Photos hardly do it justice. The place is immense.

For a variety of reasons, I kept my photo-taking activities to a minimum this time. The photo above is of an alley on the outskirts of Huaqiangbei. On both sides are huge electronics markets which aren't labeled even on Seeed Studio's detailed Shenzhen Map for Makers (free PDF download). The several markets I visited on this block mostly focused on mobile phone products — from components to complete phones to accessories. Here is just a small taste of what I saw in these markets where the line between genuine and fake can be blurry:

• Thousands of mobile phones with cracked screens, some showing clear signs they were from the U.S.
• Screens for various brand name phones for sale.
• Workers fixing and cleaning phones.
• Workers affixing brand name labels to unmarked batteries.
• Workers packaging iPhones to appear as new.
• Foreigners making purchases, reminding me of what I learned at a fake stuffed toy wholesale store in Guangzhou.

There is much more to say about Huaqiangbei, but I will leave it this for now. It can be a fascinating place to visit, even if you don't need to change an iPhone 5c into an iPhone 5s.

Yahoo Leaves, Apple's Watch Copied, and GitHub Attacked: Assorted China Tech Links

In addition to other topics, I plan a return to some China tech-related themes here. For a starter, I'll share assorted excerpts of four recent pieces sans commentary by me. Much more can be found by clicking the related links.

1. Yahoo closing its office in China received a lot of media attention. Michael Smith, an ex-Yahoo employee, provided some useful perspective:

China was really just one of the last remote engineering orgs to go. Brazil gone. Indonesia gone. The centralization plan was back on target. Build in HQ – launch everywhere. Like a lot of big internet companies really.

So yes – they closed China. I don’t think it has any connection to a pull back in China since Yahoo is already gone from China. Now the engineers are too.

Big deal. Not.

2. Even before Apple's new smart watch was publicly available, you could buy an imitation of it in China. Peter Ford reported one person's account of the processes used in China's electronics copying business:

If there are product details he is unsure of, he says, “I wait for the product to come out, or ideally see if I can get it earlier than the release date.” Since so many electronic goods are made in China, where factories “are leaky, very leaky,” he adds, “people will straight up offer that stuff to you.”

Nor does a manufacturer of what the source calls “facsimiles” need to resort only to the black market to see engineering ahead of time. “Companies like Apple buy things from other providers and put them together in a pretty package,” he says. “I don’t even need to ‘pirate’ their stuff; I just buy it from the same guys who sell it to them [ie Apple].”

3. Github, an online site used by many developers worldwide for coding, has been the target of a remarkable attack. Eva Dou explains the attack and why it appears that not only is the source based in China but the Chinese government is behind it:

Mikko Hyponen, the chief research officer of cybersecurity firm F-Secure, said the attack was likely to have involved Chinese authorities because the hackers were able to manipulate Web traffic at a high level of China’s Internet infrastructure. It appeared to be a new type for China, he added. “It had to be someone who had the ability to tamper with all the Internet traffic coming into China.” he said.

4. Erik Hjelmvik at NETRESEC provides an intriguing and in-depth look at how the GitHug attack works:

We have looked closer at this attack, and can conclude that China is using their active and passive network infrastructure in order to perform a man-on-the-side attack against GitHub. See our "TTL analysis" at the end of this blog post to see how we know this is a Man-on-the-side attack.

In short, this is how this Man-on-the-Side attack is carried out:

1. An innocent user is browsing the internet from outside China.
2. One website the user visits loads a javascript from a server in China, for example the Badiu Analytics script that often is used by web admins to track visitor statistics (much like Google Analytics).
3. The web browser's request for the Baidu javascript is detected by the Chinese passive infrastructure as it enters China.
4. A fake response is sent out from within China instead of the actual Baidu Analytics script. This fake response is a malicious javascript that tells the user's browser to continuously reload two specific pages on GitHub.com.

That's all for now, folks.

Monitoring a No-Photography Zone

A sign I saw today at a store in Zhongshan, Guangdong, seemed symbolic of a common theme in both China and the U.S.: an expectation to monitor but not be monitored.

Today's View of the Chongqing International E-commerce Industrial Park

If you have been hankering for a photo of the Chongqing International E-commerce Industrial Park, today is your lucky day:



An article posted on CQNEWS almost exactly a year ago mentioned the park:

As the competition for a domestic e-commerce platform is fierce, Chongqing plans to expand the competition worldwide, creating multinational e-commerce industries in the city and building 10 industrial parks. In 2014, Chongqing will support 500 to 800 middle and small-sized enterprises to perform e-commerce.

Chongqing has decided to create multinational e-commerce industries throughout the city and build 10 industrial parks. Chongqing International E-commerce Industrial Park, built in Nan’an District in 2013, is Chongqing’s first e-commerce industrial park involved in multinational trade and has introduced enterprises like basic operation, platform professional operation and e-commerce, perfected Chongqing’s multinational e-commerce system and promoted its development.

I assume "perfected" should be "perfecting". If they have indeed "perfected Chongqing’s multinational e-commerce system", I need to go back.

Activities At Scenic Chaotianmen: Outdoor Karaoke

At the scenic Chaotianmen docks in Chongqing yesterday, I saw two men setting up a portable karaoke system in front of a scene which has changed significantly during the past 6 years.

Elsewhere at the docks, I saw another man showcasing his karaoke offerings as well.

Nearby on the steps, I spoke to two college students visiting from Xi'an, China, wearing newly purchased flower headbands.

When I later walked by the same area again, the students were the first paying customers I saw at the temporary karaoke stations.

For singing two songs, they paid 10 RMB (about US $1.60).

Activity at the outdoor karaoke stations may have picked in the evening when people come for river cruises to take in more of the city's rapidly evolving skyline lit up at night.

A Genuine Microsoft Store in Shanghai

1st floor of Buynow and lower level of Metro City

Recently at the Buynow (百脑汇) electronics shopping center in Shanghai's Metro City mall, I saw a Microsoft store set in two separate locations. I didn't see any reason to assume it was a "fake", and Microsoft's store finder identifies this shopping center as holding one of the 18 stores it currently lists in China. Much of the store space and a nearby promotion focused on the Xbox. There were tables with Surface tablets and Windows Phones as well. Notably, other than the Xbox games, I didn't see any software for sale.

I will refrain from commenting further*. After sharing so much in the past about the many unauthorized Apple stores in China and the Android store in Zhuhai, I just figured I would take advantage of this opportunity to throw in a few Microsoft store scenes for some balance and a small taste of what Microsoft is now doing in China.



*Disclosure: I previously worked as a user experience researcher for Microsoft China.

Yellow Leaves, Leafblowers, and a Street Cleaning Truck

One day after I mentioned the fake indoor fall foliage at a mall in Shanghai, of course there were many leaves on the ground in Shanghai due to strong winds. The outdoor real leaves weren't as colorful though.

I would say most tree leaves in Shanghai are still greenish, but brown leaves on some trees are easy to find. And gingko tree leaves in particular have taken on a yellow hue.

Yanzhong Green Space (Square Park)

More leaves have fallen during the past week or so, which in turn leads to a desire in some to remove the leaves or encourage them to rest elsewhere. This past weekend I saw someone struck by this urge (or perhaps paid by someone else struck by this urge) using a piece of technology which made me think of James Fallows. His feelings regarding leafblowers are in part captured with a label he used to categorize a few posts about them: "Leafblower Menace".

So I sent him a photo of a leafblower in action on Changping Road in Shanghai. I also sent him photos of people I saw later that afternoon on the same road using more traditional and quieter leaf clearing methods. You can see the photos and few thoughts about them in his new post "China Catches Up".

The people in the photos were primarily concerned about cleaning the sidewalk when I saw them. But, yet again on Changping Road, yesterday I saw technology specifically designed for cleaning the street.

Fortunately for me, no water sprayed out.

The slogan on the side of the street cleaning truck suggests to me that at least some people believe the truck represents progress for Shanghai's Jing'an district. And I have seen far many more street cleaning trucks than leafblowers in China.

Perhaps it is a positive sign I haven't seen any leafblowers with similar slogans.

The Great Acceleration at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum

Two months ago I entered the Taipei Fine Arts Museum and paused for a few moments as I looked at the sign listing the current exhibitions:

Needless to say, I was both surprised and disappointed to learn that the vast majority of the museum was closed in order to install a new exhibition. My visit proved to be rather brief.

Fortunately, I recently was able to return and see the new exhibition "The Great Acceleration". Not only did my visit last much longer, but I needed a second day to make a first pass through everything. As described in Art Agenda:

“The Great Acceleration: Art in the Anthropocene,” curated by Nicolas Bourriaud, casts human subjects as both increasingly ghostly, stressing limitations and finitudes, as well more aligned with the organic, strange, and sensory. In other words: both more dead and more alive. These qualities have been thrown into relief by the ascendance of the machinic technologies and algorithmic logics that have come to condition much of our activity and attention. Expanding on these issues, the biennial, held solely at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, features 52 artists and collectives, finely installed. As one might expect from Bourriaud, known for coining terms and corralling practices such as “relational aesthetics,” “postproduction,” and “altermodernism,” artistic approaches, rather than particular geographies, histories, or politics, connected the works in the exhibition.

And as described by exhibition curator Nicolas Bourriaud:

Human activity has been transforming the planet for millennia. All the ecosystems now bear the mark of human presence, but the scale and speed of change in the last 60 years, called by scientists The Great Acceleration, also led them to name anthropocene this new geological epoch — an era marked by the strong impact of human activities upon the atmospherical and geological evolution of planet earth.

Taipei Biennial 2014 uses this image in order to examine how contemporary art adresses this new contract between human beings, animals, vegetals, machines, products and objects. How does today’s art define and represent our space-time ? The exhibition will highlight the way artists focus on links, chainings, connections and mutations : how they envision planet earth as a huge network, where new states of matter and new forms of relations appear…

See the above links for more on the exhibition.

If you are in Taipei before the exhibition ends on January 4, 2015, I highly recommend spending at least an afternoon there. Below I will share photos of just a few of the installations along with excerpts of descriptions provided by the museum. The photos are not intended to be fully representative of the pieces and don't show any of the art videos. But they do provide a hint of the incredible diversity of artistic expression on display.

Formasa Decelerator — Opavivará! (Brazil)

Opavivará! is an art collective from Rio de Janeiro, which develops actions in public places of the city, galleries and cultural institutions, proposing inversions in the use of urban space, through the creation of relational devices that provide collective experiences.

Specially conceived for the Taipei Biennale 2014, Formosa Decelarator is also contaminated by local Brazilian traditions, rituals and tea ceremonies. . . .

The idea revolves around a sort of temple of idleness, an invitation to inactivity, a space that worships the non-productive and non-active and that stands as a counter-proposition to our accelerated, superficial and volatile times. It aims to evoke a collective ambience based on sharing and on the relationships that arise through the interaction of the public, a tool to transform the challenge of living together into a vibrant and pulsating exercise of pleasure, congregation and creative idleness.

Yucca Invest Trading Plant — Ola Pehrson (Sweden)

Every plant is in itself a perfectly economical system, with a minimum of waste, with its own resources, something which certainly can’t be said of many companies. A yucca palm tree has been chosen as a representative of a typical plant for a young urban businessman. The plant has been exposed to six months of intensive market education, during which it has been fed with stock market rates encoded into electric currents, combined with an index-related conditioning diet of either rich or meagre rations of water and sunlight. This is an attempt to stimulate a market-adapted habitus, similar to that which years of financial transactions develop in the experienced stock brokers’ nervous system.

Zoo — Ching-Hui Chou (Taiwan)

Zoo is a space full of imagination and conflict. It symbolizes a time of joy (for visitors), yet it also symbolizes a time of confinement and segregation (for animals). It symbolizes the convenience and marvels of modern life (a collection of rare animals from all over the world), and it also suggests a hint of the apocalyptic salvation of Noah’s Ark (protecting species on the verge of extinction). Cages in zoos are used as an allusion to modern people’s lives in cages.

Mobile Phone and Stone Tool — Shimabuku (Japan)

A mobile phone is one of the newest devices of humankind, and a stone tool is the oldest. Actually, they are similar in some aspects. Firstly, the size is similar. When held in a person’s hand, some of them feel very much alike. Stone tools also have “memory” just like mobile phones. You could imagine “calling” or “taking a photo” with a stone tool.

Dangerous Computer Virus — Abu-Bakarr Mansaray (Sierra Leone/Netherlands)

Mansaray’s creations particularly focus on unusual yet sophisticated drawings and machines based on his scientific background. His preparatory drawings, created by pencil, ballpoint pen or crayons, seem to be blueprints, but they can be regarded as the characteristics of his artwork, as evidenced in the works shown at the Taipei Biennial 2014. There is no doubt that the conflicting, warring circumstances of Sierra Leone play an influential role in shaping Mansaray’s creative imagination and futuristic point of view. Even though his works, to some extent, bear witness to the horrors of war, it is still evident that Mansaray attempts to express the power of creation.

Decriminalization of Taiwanese Indigenous Hunting Rifles — En-Man Chang (Taiwan)

The term “decriminalization” refers to a situation where a previously illegal activity or action is designated legal. When legal behavior is suddenly reclassified as illegal, that is called “criminalization.” In a civilized society, how is it that the traditional hunting of indigenous peoples results in them being subject to the legal system of a different culture? In the past, hunters were the pride of the tribe, but they are now labeled criminals by the legal system because the prevailing political-economic system declines to respect cultural diversity.

Keep Soothe and Carry On — David Douard (France)

The installation Keep Soothe and Carry On, made in 2014, is an installation that takes its starting point in its title, which Douard got from the classic English slogan “Keep Calm and Carry On.” Reflecting present-day reality, this installation is represented in the form of a marketing slogan, with the launch of several derived objects (cups, T-shirts, posters…). That is why Douard has retained the R of a trademark, serving as a powerful symbol in the installation.

He decided to use this advertisement as a tranquilizer in society. The rest of the installation serves as elements of a disordered society which the slogan addresses

Buk — Harold Ancart (Belgium)

Buk is a plastic bucket holding a smart phone that plays “The Ultimate Very Best of Elvis” on a loop. The bucket serves as a soundbox for the smart phone as it amplifies the sound of the music released through the speaker of the phone. This anticipative sculpture witnesses a fictional lifestyle improvement for homeless people in the future. No longer subject to cold, for they will all carry electronic warming systems incorporated into their jackets, the homeless people will reunite and party around Buk rather than metallic trash cans set on fire.

The Deluge – Noah’s Ark — Hung-Chih Peng (Taiwan)

Reflecting ferry disasters, floods and other recent ecological crises, Peng’s work The Deluge – Noah’s Ark attempts to show the impotence of human beings in the face of uncontrollable catastrophic challenges. The rapid acceleration in the Anthropocene era causes climate change, environmental pollution, and ecological crises. All the measures to control these problems seem to be in vain. Human beings are unable to return to the unspoiled living environment of the past, and have become victims of their own endeavors. This work serves as a metaphor exposing the collision between Mother Nature and the accelerated development of industrialized civilization.

*Correction: an earlier version of this post mistakenly referred to the Taipei Fine Arts Museum as the Taipei Museum for the Fine Arts.

Assorted Technology in China Links: Illogical Business, Xiaomi's Growth, Fake Deals, and Your Apple in China

Several recent articles about technology in China have caught my eye. Some I hope to comment on next week, but I suspect I wont make it to others. So for four of those, here are links, excerpts, and very brief comments.

1. In an interview Lenovo's Chief Executive Yang Yuanqing commented on their competitors in China's mobile phone market:

I would say China is the most competitive market in the world. There are so many local players, and some of them are not logical in how they do business. They don’t want to make money in the short term. We definitely don’t want to lose our leadership position in China, and we must balance growth in market share with profitability.

It would be interesting to hear more of Yang's thoughts about the "not logical" local players and their long term potential.

2. Market analyst Canalys says that at least in one measure Xiaomi has passed Samsung in China:

In little over a year, Xiaomi has risen from being a niche player to become the leading smart phone vendor in the world’s largest market, overtaking Samsung in volume terms in Q2. Xiaomi took a 14% share in China, on the back of 240% year-on-year growth. With Lenovo, Yulong, Huawei, BBK, ZTE, OPPO and K-Touch, the eight Chinese vendors in the top 10 together accounted for a total of 70.7 million units and a 65% market share.

Though as someone from Lenovo might point out, higher volume doesn't necessarily mean higher profits.

3. The profitable e-commerce company Alibaba has made a deal with some luxury brands such as Burberry:

Like many premium brands, Burberry PLC had been fretting about a flood of discount Burberry products—some of them fakes—on Alibaba's two big marketplaces, which accounted for 80% of China's estimated $300 billion in online shopping last year. Burberry hadn't authorized any of those vendors to sell its goods.

Alibaba would do its best to get those products off its sites if Burberry opened its own shop on Alibaba's online mall, Burberry was told, according to people familiar with the talks. Burberry opened a store on Alibaba's Tmall in April.

Some would say this is the pragmatic side of doing business in China.

4. In perhaps another sign of pragmatic decisions, Apple is changing how it stores users' data:

Apple Inc (AAPL.O) has begun keeping the personal data of some Chinese users on servers in mainland China, marking the first time the tech giant is storing user data on Chinese soil . . .

The data will be kept on servers provided by China Telecom Corp Ltd (0728.HK), the country's third-largest wireless carrier, Apple said in a statement on Friday.

The article notes a few issues this change raises, such as data access speeds and privacy. Relevant to these issues is a definition of "some Chinese users" that would indicate exactly who fits into this category. I haven't seen one yet.

And that is all for now.

A Variety of Mobile Devices for Sale in Hengyang

Laptops, smartphones, and electronic Chinese-English dictionaries aren't the only mobile devices I have seen in Hengyang, China. At a large indoor shopping center near the Hengyang Railway Station, I saw several stores selling a variety of mobile audio and video devices.

There were radio, TV, and DVD players. The ones I checked all had USB sockets. With a USB flash drive, also for sale at the stores, the radios could play recorded music and the TVs could play recorded movies. And with the addition of a small card, watching CCTV on the TVs was no problem as well.

Elsewhere in the shopping center, I saw some of the technology in use. For example, one person was relaxing next to their shop while watching a movie on a portable DVD player.

These devices are an example of the diversity of electronics for sale in China, much of which rarely receive attention in comparison to smartphones. Yet knowing who buys these devices and why they buy them can be valuable to better designing devices with a broader range of functionality.

A Chinese English-Learning Device, a Cross, and an American Apple

The student with the Baicizhan English-learning app on her smartphone isn't the only person I have met in Hengyang who uses mobile technology to improve their language skills.

Several weeks later, an English teaching assistant visiting Hengyang from Xiangtan, Hunan, approached me while I was walking outside. She said she was excited to talk with a native English speaker.

Like the student, she carried a mobile device that helped her improve her English. Unlike the student, her device functioned solely as a Chinese-English dictionary. She said she always carried it around as was recommended in an English class she had taken. Compared with an app like Baicizhan, it raises questions about why one might purchase / use a dedicated device versus an app on a smartphone.

Finally, she wore a cross not for religious reasons but because she felt it was a fashionable accessory to her clothes. In fact, they were presented together in the store where she bought them--a not unusual sight in Chinese cities like Hengyang. And similar to my meeting with the university student, I noticed a bit of American spirit.

More on both the mobile and American spirit themes later.

A Chinese English-Learning App with Artistic Cats, Buttocks, and American Spirit

One day as I was walking by the above sports field at the University of South China in Hengyang, Hunan, I heard a student practicing English. While wearing earphones and looking at the screen of her Xiaomi mobile phone, she would say a word and after a brief pause say a sentence which included the word.

As part of her preparations for an important English test, she was using an English-learning app a friend of hers had recommended months ago. The Chinese name for the app is "百词斩". I am not aware of an English name, so I will use its romanized spelling in pinyin: "Baicizhan". Browser-based and paper-based versions are available at the Baicizhan website. It is also available on both iTunes and Google Play. Although Baicizhan provides a link to iTunes, for the Android version Baicizhan now offers a direct download, not surprising since Google is heavily blocked in China.

After looking at the online version, I would say it certainly has room for improvement. I am not familiar with language-learning theory, so I will refrain from conducting a full review of Baicizhan. However, I won't refrain from sharing a bit about how it works and some striking examples.

A section usually begins with multiple choice questions:

One voice says the word and another says the sentence. After choosing the photo one thinks best matches the sentence, the answer is provided along with the word's definition:

The above example is from a section Bacizhan says is using a nonstandard vocabulary list. Based on the section's name and other examples, it appears to deliberately use strange or funny examples to help people remember the words. Even so, it seems peculiar to say the photo of the kitten is a good answer for the above question.

Here are two other examples of Baicizhan's wit in the same section:

Many of the English words in the section were rather familiar to me, but I did learn (or perhaps relearned) something:

Photo 2 is the correct answer. I now know that "holothurian" is another name for a sea cucumber and that the word can be used as an adjective. I dissected a sea cucumber in a high school marine biology class and ate my first sea cucumber–they are a Chinese delicacy–in Jinan, Shandong. Some sea cucumbers are especially remarkable in their ability to "confuse or harm predators is [sic] by propelling their own toxic internal organs from their anus in the direction of attack". But I don't think that is the reason Bacizhan described the cat as holothurian. Instead, it is presumably referencing the cat's shape. I can't find a single instance of a cat being described as holothurian anywhere else. Regardless, Bacizhan delivered. I now know the word and await an opportunity to use it.

Overall, the words, questions, and images I saw in other sections, some of which include vocabulary to prepare for American or Chinese college entrance exams, were more mundane, though some still gave me pause.

And none of what I saw online captured the American spirit like what caused me to stop as I was walking by the student in Hengyang. I heard her say, "Facsimile. This is a facsimile of the original U.S. Constitution; of course it's not real." When she said the sentence, her phone wasn't displaying a Starbucks cup or an insect like I had seen on other students' mobile phones. Instead, along with the sentence and definition for "facsimile", it displayed an image of the U.S. Constitution, the U.S. flag, and a military dog tag.

It appears to be a cropped version of a stock photo by Sergey Kamshylin.

The title of the photo: "Freedom is not free".

Well, at least Baicizhan is free.