Inside Foxconn: Exclusive look at how an iPad is made

Marketplace Shanghai Bureau Chief Rob Schmitz is only the second reporter ever to gain access to visit the factory floor at Apple's Chinese producer Foxconn. See highlights from his tour of the assembly line and the Foxconn facilities and connect to his full audio reports on your public radio station and at http://www.marketplace.org. Marketplace is produced and distributed by American Public Media. LINK: Youtube
Source Credit - American Public Media's 'Marketplace'. Reporter Credit - Rob Schmitz, Shanghai Bureau Chief

Portable Cities by Chinese Artist Yin Xiuzhen

Chinese artist Yin Xiuzhen created a series of artworks called “Portable Cities“, which start with the used clothing of a city’s inhabitants and are remade as three-dimensional textile models of their places of origin, sprouting organically from suitcases. LINK

Movable Type Rubik's Cube

Yu-Hsiang “Shaun” Chung is an artist specializing in typography. He made a movable wooden Rubik’s Cube that can be used as a stamp:

Chinese has a long history with the printing. In 105 AD, Cai Lun invented the paper. In 200 AD, the Chinese invention of Woodblock printing produced the world’s first print culture. In 1040, Bi Sheng invented the first known movable type technology. Therefore, I want to use a Chinese text for my cube. The text I used for my cube is called “Three Character Classic.” It is a traditional Chinese text that teaches young children to be a good person in the society. The text is written in triplets of characters for easy memorization, which is perfect for the cube since the cube is 3 by 3 on every side. The text is written by Wang Yinglin during the Song Dynasty, so I used a font called “Song,” which is correspond to the Song Dynasty when a distinctive printed style of regular script was developed.

Link, Via: Neatorama

Old Vase Left Behind in House Worth $85 Million

A brother and sister in Pinner, UK, cleaned out the house belonging to their recently-deceased parents. They figured that an old vase that they found might be worth a few bucks, so they decided to have it appraised:

They took it to the local auctioneer Bainbridges, in nearby Ruislip, who were in turn excited by the find and valued it at between £800,000 and £1.2m.

However, no one expected the reaction from Chinese buyers, who pushed the bidding up over 30 frenzied minutes to a world record £43m.

By the end of the auction, the price was increasing in £1m chunks as the final few bidders – understood to be mainland Chinese businessmen – vied for the vase.

The final selling price was about $85 million.

Link | Photo: Bloomberg, Via: Neatorama

Ark Hotel Construction time lapse building 15 storeys in 2 days

Level 9 Earthquake Resistance: diagonal bracing structure, light weight,
steel construction, passed level 9 earthquake resistance testing
6x Less Material: even though the construction materials are much
lighter(250kg/m2) than the traditional materials(over 1500kg/m2), the floors
and walls are solid with surefootedness, airtight and sound-proofing
5x Energy Efficient: 150mm thermal insulation for walls and roofs, triple
glazed plastic windows, external solar shading, heat insulation, fresh
air heat recovery, LED lighting, yearly HAVC A/C energy consumption
equivalent to 7 liters oil.
20x Purification: after 3 levels of purification, the purification efficiency
for fresh air reaches 95%-99.9%; air exchanged 1-2.5 times per hour, and
indoor air is 20x cleaner than out door air
1% Construction Waste: all components are factory made, construction
waste, mainly package materials, result from on site set-up only and
amount to 1% of the total weight of the building.
This is the first building in human history which combines almost all
environmental friendly, comfortable and secure elements. So, we call it:
Sustainable Building. LINK: Youtube, Via: Gizmodo

Incredible Chinese Paper Cutting Art

Chinese Paper Cutting or Jianzhi is the first type of paper cutting design, since paper was invented by Cai Lun in the Eastern Han Dynasty in China. The art form later spread to other parts of the world with different regions adopting their own cultural styles. LINK

Chinese farmer is local home-made guitar hero

A Chinese farmer, who has invented more than 100 unique instruments without spending a penny, brings fun to the countryside with his folk band. LINK: Youtube

Alligators Sing! (But Not to Attract Mates)

Chinese alligators like a good sing-a-long, but they don't worry about carrying a tune. They also don't much care what the opposite sex thinks of the song choice, according to a story on National Geographic News.

Researchers with the Chinese Academy of Sciences ran some tests to see whether alligator "songs"--it's really more like sustained, extremely loud croaking, which the researchers compare the sound to thunder--attract mates to the singer. Surprisingly, it didn't work that way.

And yet, the alligators do seem to sing more during mating season. So far, the best guess is that the songs are really a way of saying,"Hey, I'm an alligator, too. And I'm over here!" Which, in the context of mating, is just the time-honored tradition of hoping the opposite sex notices that you exist. LINK: Boingboing

The Opium Museum

The Opium Museum is, at the heart, about the trade in rare antiques, since opium smoking paraphernalia was outlawed. Still, there are pages and pages of the history of opium and its use in countries all over the world, with many historical photographs.

Beginning in the 18th century, opium accompanied the Chinese diaspora: first to the Chinese quarters of Asian cities, and later to the Chinatowns of the West, particularly North America, where opium smoking in the Chinese manner and with Chinese-made paraphernalia became fashionable among non-Chinese.

Once the drug was banned and its paraphernalia outlawed, these illicit items were heaped into piles and burned in public bonfires. From Shanghai to Saigon to San Francisco, the means to smoke opium were destroyed along with the drug itself. So few examples of these relics remain that most experts on Chinese art are blithely unaware of just how sumptuous and opulent this art form had become during its heyday.

For serious collectors, there is information on how to identify genuine opium tools and have them appraised. Link -Via: Metafilter, Via: Neatorama

Chinese Artist Disappears

Meet Chinese performance artist Liu Bolin...also known as 'the invisible man'. LINK: Youtube

I just blogged some of his art a couple days ago. Hope you enjoy this video.

3D Animation of Chinese Ink Painting

"Chinese CG:气韵生动" (English Title: The Way )

Computer animation in Chinese ink-painting style. Created 2003 using Maya. The animation reflects an ancient Taoist view of the world as a constant changing process or metamorphosis of forms rather than seemingly isolate entities. And the law of changing is rather seemingly chaotic and spontaneous and yet under an elusive deterministic order which somewhat matches the notion of fractal in Chaos theory. LINK: Youtube

"Movement and Stillness (new version)"


The main research is focus on the simulation of hand-made artwork in 3D animation. The aim of my research project is to explore the methods and issues involved in the simulation of Chinese ink wash painting as a NPR (Non-Photorealistic Render) in 3D animation, in order to makes the rendering result likewise a hand-made artwork. The film, 'Movement and Stillness', is a 3D simulation of the Chinese ink wash painting. LINK: Youtube

Ju Duoqi’s Vegetable Art

Napoleon on Potatoes by Ju Duoqi.

Chinese artist Ju Duoqi, 35, specializes in a unique art medium: vegetables! (well, technically digital veggies - but who cares?). Behold her masterpiece above, the veggie Mona Lisa ("Mona Tofu") made out of rice, sea kelp, and tofu.

In The Vegetable Museum series, she revisits in a stunning way some masterpieces of the western painting. Making use of vegetables and food of China’s everyday life – tofu, cabbage, ginger, lotus roots, coriander, sweet potato… – and through digital manipulation, she presents a puzzling series of vegetable compositions representing world famous paintings like Mona Lisa, The Cene by Leonard Da Vinci, The Dream by Pablo Picasso or Marilyn Monroe by Warhol.

See many more at Paris-Beijing Photo Gallery: Link, Via: Neatorama

Chinese Winged Cats

Cats with wings? The pictures are making the rounds of the internet, but it’s not the first time. Link to pictures. Link to the explanation. Via: Neatorama

Chinese Police Practise Killing Drills On Segways

Chinese elite anti-terror police officers are wheeling into action ahead of next month's Beijing Olympics on Segways.

Members of the country's armed police unit practised on the Segway models that have been re-named 'Anti-Terror Assault Vehicles' in the eastern province of Shandong. LINK

CIRCUS SUNRISE Trio Diabolo Sisters Chinese yoyo

3 girl diabolo act. Working with the music from Bond, they have great timing with the tricks and acrobatics. LINK

Chinese Acrobats

Disney World Epcot's World Show Case
China - 2 young Chinese girl acrobats. LINK