Just finished watching CCTV.com’s coverage of China’s 60th Anniversary Parade in Beijing on Chang’An Jie in Beijing. I was tweeting along with a number of other people in China (including @imagethief @granitestudio @davesgonechina @goldkorn @beijingboyce @kaiserkuo @christinelu @chjis and a certain Eric A.) – let’s say in not the most sombre of ways (i.e. lots of it was hilarious). Everything from the pink skirt wearing “fembot” female soldiers to the prepensity for rainbows to how much hairspray must have been used, to yes, tanks and such was…discussed. Continue reading “China’s 60th Anniversary Parade Twitter Coverage Goes Ballistic”
This is somewhat in response to Ben Parr’s Mashable article and the subsequent comment stream, and following up on a thought I had last night after hearing about Twitpic being GFW’ed. In case you haven’t heard, after yesterday’s explosion, Maggie Rauch posted a few images of the rubble and the police response to Twitpic. The images quickly made the rounds on Twitter and soon thereafter Twitpic itself was blocked in China. Continue reading “Is Twitpic the first Twitter app to be GFW’ed? And should anyone care?”
Ok, now I’ve done it. After 15 years of being involved in China one way or another – including living there for 7 years – I’ve finally decided to open up the cupboard, pull out the wok and all the spices, get some fresh leafy veggies and pork knuckles from the open air market and start blogging about China. I find myself for the first time in those 15 years with enough time on my hands (big thanks Wall Street and Main Street) to finally devote an hour or so a day to blogging about what 1/5 of the world’s population is up to (don’t worry, I’ll cover every single one before I’m done, I swear).
Many people that I really respect already write some pretty amazing blogs on China (see Top Chefs in the sidebar), and I’ve been following them for years. Over the last two years I’ve been interacting and commenting on China memes through Twitter, and I will continue to do so, but I’ve decided that I need more than 140 characters to ramble. While I already have a fully functional website/blog at chadcatacchio.com, it’s too scatterbrained an effort for anyone who is only interested in China discussions to follow, so Stir Friend China is born.
At this point, you’re probably thinking, “Yeah, yeah, swell, but what are you going to write about?”
Well, I’m pretty interested in the Internet, so there will be regular posts on what I hope you’ll find to be interesting news about what is going on on the web in China. I’m also pretty interested in everyday life in China, especially how the poor and emerging middle class deal with the slew of challenges they’re presented with day in and day out. Beyond that, the sky’s the limit, the world is my oyster, etc., – i.e. anything could happen. If anyone has any interest in any of this, or would like to hear about other topics, please let me know and I’ll try to get the first real post up here asap.
