Hao Xiang

Shining a spotlight on the undercurrent of creativity and cool in contemporary China. (function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){ (i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o), m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m) })(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga'); ga('create', 'UA-60527163-1', 'auto'); ga('send', 'pageview');

[hao-xiang]

Top 10 luxury brands in China based on “digital IQ”

L2, a business intelligence firm that benchmarks the digital performance of brands, is reporting that 92% of the world’s luxury brands now have a presence on WeChat. For luxury brands, their digital presence is increasingly important given the volume of sales online and via social platforms and the emergence of key buying days like Single’s Day. Getting their omnichannel strategies right can be challenging, but is ultimately key to winning in the Middle Kingdom.

L2 provides a ranking of the top 10 luxury brands in China based on “digital IQ”:

1. Chow Tai Fook 2. Burberry 3. Coach 4. Cartier 5. Chow Sang Sang 6. Tommy Hilfiger 7. Gucci 8. Valentino 9. Calvin Klein 10. Louis Vuitton

Source: L2

[hao-xiang]

Yellow Mountain Yeezy

We’ve blogged about Kanye in China before, but it’s still not something we’ve quite gotten over yet - especially having now seen this new photo!

Here’s a young Yeezy taking a break after climbing the steps at 黄山 (Yellow Mountain) - stylish as usual!

Photo source

[hao-xiang]

Against the grain

With all the recent attention on the issue of diversity in the popular entertainment industry, we thought it would be a fitting time to highlight some of the not-so-typical industries where people of Chinese background are finding success.

Source: mochi mag

Joanne Chang has an honours degree in Economics and Applied Mathematics, earned from Harvard. What seems like a fairly solid formula for corner-office corporate glory actually ends in quite a twist: Chang is a world-class pastry chef, and was recently announced as the 2016 recipient of the James Beard award (”the Oscars of the food world”) for Outstanding Baker.

Having grown up in a traditional Chinese household, Chang’s earlier years did not immediately point to a career in desserts, with her recalling in a cookbook:

“I rarely had the chance to indulge my sweet tooth. Most Chinese meals end with nothing sweet [so] I wasn’t introduced to the idea of dessert until around 10[-years-old] or so, when I started going to sleepovers with my friends and eating at their houses more.”

We hear you, girl.

Congratulations on the win Joanne - we look forward to sampling your hard work at one of your Flour Bakery locations some day!

[hao-xiang]

China’s financial tourists go West

It’s not uncommon these days to find Chinese characters at major international airports, train stations and tourist sites across the West. However, bilingualism is now also permeating other aspects of Western life.

At this year’s annual shareholder meeting for Berkshire Hathaway (or as the New York Times terms it “Woodstock for Capitalists”), the presentations of Warren Buffett and Charles Munger were also translated into Chinese. From the New York Times:

Among the most striking things of the Berkshire meeting this year: It’s being translated into Mandarin. Interest in the event from Chinese investors has been high over the years, and increasingly bigger numbers have been coming to the event.

The translation likely reflects growing Chinese interest in investment and financial markets more generally. It also reflects the international appeal of Buffett himself and the transition of Berkshire Hathaway's annual shareholder meetings into a pilgrimage of sorts for financial tourists, including from China. While we at Hao Xiang are unlikely to be forking out the ~US$217,000 currently required to buy a single A share in Berkshire Hathaway, a few B shares at ~US$145 each seem like good value to get to see Buffett playing ping pong in person (he’s got some wicked spin!):

Source: NYT

[hao-xiang]

0 out of 1.3 billion

We’ve probably all become accustomed to those once-shocking images and videos of catatonic crowds occupying China’s cities, streets and tourist attractions on public holidays (or sometimes even just regular days).

In what seems like the near-impossible, one photographer has managed to capture scenes of China sans any of the 1.3 billion people who usually inhabit the country.

Hungarian-born Bence Bakonyi spent six months travelling alone around the Middle Kingdom, unable to speak the language and building a portfolio of photographs that show various landscapes and settings totally absent of people, which according to CityLab:

...reflects the process of trying to find his place in an unfamiliar world; he staged his photos without human subjects in order to allude to the isolating experience.

You can find the entire series, Segue, on Bakonyi’s website, however here are a couple of our favourites:

[hao-xiang]

Remembering China through artifacts

Bill Callahan, a professor at LSE, has compiled a short 7 minute film based on an exhibit at the university called “An Archeology of Modern China: Artifacts of Revolution and Reform”. The exhibit features collections of cultural artifacts spanning the 1970s through to today.

[hao-xiang]

”I’ve never had chewy tea before“

No matter where your US political allegiances lie, we are confident you’ll enjoy this video of Hillary trying bubble tea (珍珠奶茶) for the first time. She loves it!

[hao-xiang]

Stars descend on the Great Wall

Matt Damon. China. The Great Wall. Aliens. Matt Damon. In 3D.

Think the above is too good to be true for a movie? Think again.

The Great Wall, a fantasy sci-fi adventure-action film set to be released in February 2017, follows Matt Damon and some other people encountering mysteries around construction of the Great Wall of China during the 15th century. We don’t really know much more about the film beyond that, and quite frankly, we don’t really care because that already sounds amazing.

Source: Xinhua

The feature will be the first English-language project for Zhang Yimou, of Hero and House of Flying Daggers fame, and is the largest movie ever shot in China with a reported budget of US$135 million. Along with Matt Damon, the film will also star Andy Lau and Pedro Pascal, the latter of which those of us familiar with Narcos will be well acquainted with.

Whilst the production of this film may be symbolic or preemptive of much larger themes around China’s role in the global film industry, for example this recent US$3.5 billion acquisition by Dalian Wanda, we at Hao Xiang are content for now with the fact that this is even happening. 17 February 2017 - mark your calendars.

[hao-xiang]

First time to march in ANZAC Day parade

ANZAC Day, the national day of remembrance observed in Australia and New Zealand to mark the anniversary of the landing of ANZAC troops in Gallipoli on 25 April 1915, is an event which many Antipodeans commemorate with much pride and respect.

This year, for the first time in history, a group of Chinese will be joining the ANZAC Day march to the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne to honour their relatives who fought in the Sino-Japanese War in WWII; an event which last year saw around 100,000 people brave the brisk autumn dawn temperatures to witness.

Source: The Age

After learning about and sharing last year’s unveiling of a monument to commemorate Billy Sing, a Chinese-Australian soldier who was one of the best snipers in the ANZACs, we are proud to see more Chinese inclusion and involvement in this very significant aspect of Australian and New Zealand history.

[hao-xiang]

HKWalls

Hong Kong’s annual street art festival, HKWalls, was held in late March this year. The festival features local and international artists bringing their talents to the streets of Hong Kong, transforming the concrete jungle into an urban canvas.

Some of our favourite HKWalls works from prior years are featured below:

Source: HKWalls

[hao-xiang]

Hu Sheguang makes a splash

One of our favourite Chinese designers, Hu Sheguang (who we profiled around a year ago), has made another splash at Beijing Fashion Week 2016. This year’s creations were blood red, potentially resembling an evil character from a Studio Ghibli animation and likely not out of place in the final scene of a blood splattered Tarantino thriller. We’ll let the photos speak for themselves.

Source: Daily Mail

[hao-xiang]

Nail a picture to the wall

The Shanghaiist is reporting that the owners of an ‘illegally constructed’ building in Shanghai covered it with posters of Xi Jinping in a bid to save it from demolition. This certainly is a unique defence strategy among other ‘nail house’ situations that we’ve followed here on Hao Xiang (here and here). It’s clear that the defenders believe that the act either i) will draw attention from the central government who may intervene or ii) the demolishers fear President Xi enough that they will be dissuaded from knocking it down.

As unrealistic as these outcomes are, perhaps the greatest positive side effect from this will be enhanced focus on the root issues underpinning the ‘nail house’ phenomenon (e.g. corruption, inadequate compensation, lack of clarity around urban planning regulations etc.).

Source: Shanghaiist

[hao-xiang]

Chinese crop circles

Farmers from Jiangsu to Hubei to Sichuan are apparently trying to out do each other. A series of photos circulating Chinese media highlights the creativity of a number of farmers across the country who are using their land as a canvas upon which to etch their art. We’re not sure what this means for agricultural yields, but we salute their creative endeavours nonetheless!

Source: CCTV

[hao-xiang]

I feel your pain

Sometimes in life you encounter a thing that you like in principle, but you cannot even begin to fathom who that thing came to be.

CCTV is reporting that earlier this month in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, six men participated in a labor pain simulation to better understand the pain their wives would experience during childbirth. Unsurprisingly the reaction was:

“It’s like my stomach was ripped apart”

It is not clear how exactly the pain was simulated. What is equally unclear is how this experiment came about. Did one of these husbands lose a bet? Were all the men drunk and trying to outdo each other? Is this a new central government gender equality policy?

We will probably never know.

Source: CCTV

[hao-xiang]

Middle Kingdom Matriarchy

In a country where the sex ratio at birth is arguably one of the highest in the world, an ugly side-effect of the one-child policy, it seems counter-intuitive that it would be home to one of the world’s last remaining matriarchal societies. And yet, located deep within the Yunnan and Sichuan provinces of southwest China, is where you will find exactly that - the Matriarchy of the Mosuo tribe ( 摩梭).

Source: The Guardian

This short clip from Broadly explores this unique and curious community, where women are free to take as many (or as few) sexual partners as they desire, and words for “father” and “husband” are extinct from the lexicon.

[hao-xiang]

Can money buy love?

A 32 year old Chinese man, Ma Caojun, recently proposed to his girlfriend of three years, Qin Jiaojiao, at an industry conference in front of 600 of his colleagues. The twist? He proposed with a bouquet of flowers formed from one hundred 100RMB bank notes.

Ma was on stage to accept an industry award and surprised his girlfriend with the 10,000RMB proposal. Who could refuse such a romantic gesture?

Source: Mashable

[hao-xiang]

Andy Warhol and Ai Weiwei

In what is a major collision of the 20th and 21st centuries; and China and the West, the National Gallery of Victoria (”NGV”) in Melbourne, Australia is currently home to a combined exhibition of the works of Andy Warhol and Ai Weiwei. The exhibition is developed by the NGV in conjunction with The Andy Warhol Museum and with the participation of Ai Weiwei himself. If you’re in the area, it looks well worth the visit.

Presenting the work of both artists, the exhibition explores modern and contemporary art, life and cultural politics through the activities of two exemplary figures – one of whom represents twentieth century modernity and the ‘American century’; and the other contemporary life in the twenty-first century and what has been heralded as the ‘Chinese century’ to come.

Source: NGV