PandaPassport.com – China Blog

or

How Online User Generated Videos in China became way less Gay

Remember a while back when that Backdorm Boys Video was floating around the net?

And remember how silly you thought it was that grown-up, hairy-arsed men were enthusiastically singing these pussy songs that only an 11-year-old girl would admit to liking (let alone singing) in the West?

Well, it seems that the internet is doing China some good. Videos of human beatboxes have been floating around, and it seems that the Chinese are noticing that it’s way cooler than all that KTV pop-ballad crap.

It was only a matter of time before they caught on:

Source: Virtual China

That’s pretty ridiculous.

And if ya like that, check this out.

China Law Blog posted an interesting piece the other day, examining an NBC World Blog article which made this assertion:

China needs to produce businesses that come up with the kind of “path-breaking innovation” that he says begins with technological breakthroughs.

“There isn’t a single innovative Chinese company,” he adds, citing the country’s low rate of patent applications. At last official count, in 2004, China still only filed 2 per cent of the world’s global patent applications. Source

I think to say there’s not even a single innovative Chinese company is going a bit far. But given fact that there are 1.3 billion+ brains out there, and factor in the ammount of money it sinks into research and development — I’m sure China’s not where they want to be right now.

Especially since Japan is sitting at the top of the list of world innovators. And they spent less to get there.

Still, I wouldn’t dare say there’s no innovation in China.

But just when you thought it was safe…

That said, I appear to have become the latest victim of a certain not-so-creative (read: content-stealin’) Chinaman.

• See my Feb 23rd Post: Money Management in China, and in My Country
• Now check this out, from New China, New Chinese: Foreiner (sic) in China? Money Management: in China, and in my Country

Dude, that’s not cool.

Now if I submit my content to an aggregator like Chinalyst, no problem. But I don’t remember giving my consent before this one.

I feel so used and violated!
But oddly enough, there’s a strange sense of post-violation satisfaction as well.

Maybe I should have a smoke…

I mentioned the Chinese IM service QQ before, and how there’s, like, a ba-zillion people using it here in China.

Now I reluctantly stopped using QQ a while back for two reasons: 1) It’s a little resource heavy, and 2) My computer has about as much processing power as the sitting American President.

But I just found this interesting IM client called Pidgin, which you can use to consolidate all your Instant Messaging platforms such as MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, AOL, ICQ, and oddly enough, QQ.

I’ve installed the program, and it works pretty smoothly. It’s pretty light, and I find runs way better than QQ. You can a preview of Pidgin in the picture here. Notice that my QQ contacts are sorted on the top, while my MSN contacts are listed just below. Sweet, huh?

I’m having some trouble trying to get it to run a Chinese IME, but I’ll keep working on that and keep you updated.

UPDATE: Go to Tools> Preferences> Conversations, then uncheck Buddy Icons.
And then go to Tools> Preferences> Smiley Themes, then select None. Turns out program was transforming Chinese text for emoticon shortcuts, and displaying them as

But in the meantime, I have a ton of old friends who I’ve lost touch with sending me messages via QQ/Pidgin here today. It’s nice to see them all again.

To give Pidgin a try, click here.

I’ve recently been moving content from my Dalian City Guide to a newer, better location, but it seems there’s at least one listing on there that I’m gonna have to remove pronto.

Dalian Sea-Rhyme International Youth Hostel

??????????

This hostel is actually located on a warship, and looks like quite a neato place to stay. But it looks like at least one person ran into some problems. He contacted me, in order to warn others:
“hey this is T (we’ll call him T),
I was trying to post a review of the dalian hostel but got some crazy error messages about spam reports when i clicked send. can you add my coment manually? since your site comes up at the top of the serp for this hostel, i really do hope i can leave this
comment to warn everyone about them. thanks!!!
T from Beijing

T’s Review:

Hi this is T__ from Beijing. Was in Dalian for a day last week and booked a room in advance at the Dalian Sea Rhyme Youth Hostel on Zhongshan Qu (Warship #104). But upon arriving at the Dalian Sea Rhyme Youth Hostel I was met by a hostile (not to be confused with hostel) receptionist who refused to allowme through the front doors, claiming that FOREIGNERS ARE NOT ALLOWED at the Dalian Sea Rhyme Youth Hostel!

I was with my Chinese traveling companion, and we met with the manager of the Dalian Sea Rhyme Youth Hostel, reminding them that “international” usually means everyone, not just Chinese, and that the Dalian Sea Rhyme Youth Hostel’s racist, exclusionary policy of refusing westerners contradicted the basic tenants of YHA and HI.

They retorted that because the Dalian Sea Rhyme Youth Hostel was located on a naval facility that the government had established the NO FOREIGNERS ALLOWED at the Dalian Sea Rhyme Youth Hostel rule, but then how did the Dalian Sea Rhyme Youth Hostel ever get authorized to use the HI logo on the front of the boat? My intuition says that they were just holding out for
Chinese tour groups because that’s where the real money is, but I will email HI and YHA just in case.

I should also add that the Dalian Sea Rhyme Youth Hostel is located about an hour’s bus ride from the train station and quite a drag to find, especially if you are carrying a big pack. I was quite p.o.’d at having to return all the way back to Shengli Square to find a luguan (cheapest one from a tout for 35rmb), since there are no other affordable accomodations in the area.

It’s a real pity that the Dalian Sea Rhyme Youth Hostel does not allow foreigners, or that any hotel in China has the right to refuse western guests because of the color of our skin, but I hope leaving this post will start some change.

That’s just ridiculous.

So, needless to say, if you’re coming to Dalian you might want to consider scratching this hostel off your list.

For a list of accreddited hostels in China, please go to:

The Hostelling International Website

.

And take note that there is no hostel listed on that site for Dalian.
Surprise surprise…

I just wrote a little thingy over at Lost Laowai about how you can go about watching NHL Hockey online. And it’s live too.

Basically CBC.ca is streaming playoff games live (and they have previous games archived as well), but in order to watch them you need to be watching from inside Canada.

But I found a neato little workaround, which involved tricking the CBC by using a Canadian Proxy (i.e. making them think you’re computer is in Canada).

The semi-finals are in progress right now, and it’s Detroit vs Anaheim in the West, and Ottawa vs Buffalo in the East. So at least you’ll catch the Stanley Cup Finals in time.

In you’re interested in watching, drop on over to Lost Laowai for detailed instructions on how to do it. Be sure to check out all the other neato stuff that Lost Laowai is doing these days as well.

There are a few websites that I read, where the primary blogger (usually a male for some reason) will refer to a behind-the-scenes Ms. Blogger every once in a while. For example, Ryan has a very personal style of writing, and he mentions his significant other quite often. Imagethief has referred to Ms. Imagethief on numerous occasions, and Jeremiah quite often mentions YJ.

I was thinking it would be interesting to actually give our significant others a chance to speak for once.

I thought I’d start, and let my girlfriend express her thoughts on Pandapassport.com as well as my other online activities. She said she didn’t want to write anything, but she did give me 3 sentences.

Ms. Pandapassport says:

In fact, I don’t have any interest in your site.

It’s your hobby. If you enjoy it, that’s ok.

But please clean up the house before you start.

No interest?!! That’s harsh…

Anyone else willing to give a few words to their significant other?
An essay, a few sentences, whatever.

So…

What does your girl/boyfriend think of your site, and how much time you put into it?

And while you’re thinking about that, I’m gonna go wash some clothes and clean the floor.

And maybe fry an Apology-egg or two.

Via the Problogger Job Board:

Looking for a writer/blogger with a craving for Asian food and culture! The candidate must be familiar with Asian cuisine and be willing to write about and share recipes, experiences, restaurants, news and events related to Asian food. Experience with wordpress is a plus, and they must be able to write a minimum of six time a week.

This is a paid position, starting with base pay plus bonus.

For details on how to apply, see the details on problogger.

Maybe someone out there will be interested.
Forward it along if you know of anyone who might fit the bill.