July 2012

Does Chinese Internet Culture Exist?

This week I attended the inaugural “Chengdu Internet Culture Convention”.

Throughout my time there, meeting people and listening to speeches about the development of Chengdu’s IT infrastructure, I was plagued with a single thought: can Chinese internet culture exist?

In the TED clip above, a Chinese blogger goes into great detail about what the “Chinese internet” entails. Is the formula below accurate?

Chinese internet culture = block each and every international Web 2.0 service, and then clone it for a Chinese audience.

This is something that you will never hear inside China. It takes Chinese people traveling to far-away places like Edinburgh Scotland to make a case such as this, which undermines everything that the Chinese internet claims to be.

Fuji X100 Street Photography in Chengdu

Yesterday afternoon I got a Fuji X100 to take street photography photos in Chengdu. Today was my first day using it.

It has a fixed 35mm lens and an APS-C sensor inside a very small body. I love the fixed lens and 35mm is the perfect focal length for this type of camera so I decided to get it.

Nearly every day I miss opportunities to capture beautiful images of everyday life because I never want to take my SLR anywhere. It’s too bulky. That problem has definitely been solved now. Although this camera has it’s quirks and the learning curve is high – everything on the camera is manual – the feeling of using the X100 is not like anything I’ve shot with before.

This is the first time I’ve posted this kind of gallery on my blog, here’s the best way to use it: