Chinese Lessons

This is meant for me – an intro to the enthralling nature of mathematics that starts with Sesame Street.

The series continues here, and here

Much has been made about Chinese cinemas dropping Avatar to make way for the new film Confucius (see here and here ). My own experience of trying to go see Confucius (there were only 2 screenings both at awkward times) made it clear that – in Shanghai at least -   if Avatar was pushed aside for anything it was to make room for 喜羊羊与灰太狼  ‘Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf’ (which has screenings every 15 minutes).

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Shanghai Daily on the hectic schedules of toddlers. I’d love to be a fly on the wall at the  class for kids under 2 on ‘Western etiquette and table manners.’

Amongst all the recent ipad news, this story on Steve Jobs and the ‘auteur model of innovation’ is probably the most relevant to China. Despite the fact that the shanzhai version of the ipad was on the market months before the original and that the Shenzhen company is, hilariously, said to be considering suing apple for copyright infringement, contemporary Chinese culture is agonizing over how to make the jump from ‘made in China to created in China’.

What Jobs, like Sony’s Akio Morita, who invented the walkman amidst widespread doubts that anyone would want a handheld stereo, or Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto (profiled here at NYT), who is behind practically all of the company’s creations,  make clear is the crucial role that individual genius plays in true innovation.

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From urbanatomy.com’s increasingly interesting series Why I Write? Peter Hessler on Chinese education and contemporary writers: (more…)