They can sometimes be scary, but they can also be a force for good. In this interview with Evan Osnos, who writes for the New Yorker from Beijing, Osnos talks about how his New Yorker pieces about China get translated more or less spontaneously as soon as they hit the press, by volunteers who coordinate themselves and post the translated work online. New Yorker pieces tend to be long — often up to 10,000 words — and according to Osnos, the translations are faithful to the original, an impressive feat. He also says in the interview that the entire weekly issue of the Economist magazine gets translated within a few days of publication and is posted online.

A few days ago, I discovered that a Reuters article about “ant people”, in which I was cited, had gone through the same process. Google my name, and you’ll find that a translated version of the article is everywhere, both on and off the mainland (in both traditional and simplified characters). I was interviewed for the article because I had written about the topic on my blog. I’m hardly an expert on the topic, but I had followed some of the news stories in Chinese media, and so I talked to the reporter about what I had read. I was actually misquoted in the article — the reporter asked me about living conditions, and I told him that reports from Beijing talked about 8-10 people sharing a room far outside of the city center, while the reports in Wuhan only talked about 2-3 people per room in several areas in Wuhan, including the area I lived in. In the article, I was instead cited as saying that Wuhan having 8-10 people sharing a room. By the time I had seen the article, it had already been republished across the world. And with that simple misunderstanding, this new “fact” went onto the internet, and quickly spread, attributed as first-hand evidence coming from me, on dozens of web pages. There was also a typo in the spelling of my name the second time it was written out, which some translations fixed and others decided to keep, staying as faithful to the original article as possible.

Mobs are powerful, but also notoriously difficult to control, and so it’s hard to say what the implications for all of this are for the people who want to use “netizens” for their own gain. Political commentators obviously hope that these “netizens” will push for increased openness and democratization, but the mob is just as likely to turn ugly in an outpouring of nationalism. Either way, there are a lot of people in China spending a lot of time online, and they’re a group to keep an eye on.

A recent report revealed that the going rate for such a campaign averages 50,000 yuan ($7,315). One firm boasted it has the most “experienced team”, with access to 100,000 freelancers, that can post thousands of articles on up to five popular forums and blog hosting sites, creating 200,000-400,000 visits. And they guarantee a quick sensation.

It seems the current pay for one posting is 50 cents. A typical job posting for this type of work says you can make 40 yuan a day by working two hours, which they say translates to 80 posts.

The Jia Junpeng phenomonon seems to have been an example of this type of PR campaign, and the rumor has it that the buzz over the Chinese Obama Girl was also created by on online PR campaign.

There are also allegations that PR companies pay people who have existing accounts on popular book and move review websites (like douban.com) to post positive reviews of upcoming movies, and compensate these reviewers based on how long they’ve had their accounts (since users can easily spot reviews inserted by PR companies if they all come from newly opened accounts which are only used to post positive reviews for one or a handful of movies). According to ESWN, there’s a very clear pricing scheme for reviews from different types of accounts:

Public relations companies are seeking to purchase used ID’s with the following requirements:
(1) registered prior to 2007
(2) written at least three movie reviews
(3) has no less than 50 friends
(4) able to maintain secrecy and have business ethics
(5) including but not restricted to Douban, Shiguang Net and other webites

The price card is as follows:
(1) Base price of 500 yuan.  One yuan extra for every day registered earlier than December 31, 2007
(2) Until December 3, 2009, each additional movie review from the fourth one will earn an extra 5 yuan
(3) Until December 3, 2009, each additional friend from the 51st one will earn an extra 2 yuan
(4) 100 yuan extra whenever the movie review appeared on the front page
(5) 50 yuan extra whenever the movie review appeared at the top spot of the movie review section
(6) 50 yuan for a positive review of the movie represented by the PR company
(7) 50 cents for a comment against a negative review of a movie represented by the PR company
(8) 25 cents for a personal attack comment against the poster of a negative review of a movie represented by the PR company.

I see these kinds of posts sometimes when I’m looking at reviews for hostels and hotels in China on websites like hostels.com — on English-language websites, their obvious Chinglish and over-the-top praise for the hostel in question (often places that have otherwise gotten overwhelmingly negative reviews) usually make them easy to spot, but it’s annoying nonetheless.

I don’t know if this apparent phenomenon of explicitly manipulating discussion forums and online reviews in order to promote a product is common in other countries as well, but to me, it seems like this is something that happens much more here in China than in other places I’ve been. And if that’s the case, it’s hard to say why. One guess would be that Western internet users seem to spend more of their online procrastination time in closed communities, where all of the people they interact with are people they have already met in real life, while Chinese users seem to spend more time (relatively speaking) on open discussion forums, and are more likely to accept friend requests from people they don’t know personally on social networking sites like renren.com. This wouldn’t apply to movie or hotel review websites, but could help to explain why creating an online trend by registering lots of fake usernames, or hiring people to post comments, might be more successful in China than in other places. Another possible explanation would be some sort of difference in codes of ethics among PR companies — maybe Chinese PR companies think that “fake” reviews are ok, while English-language PR companies are more worried about the backlash against their company or the product they’re promoting if/when people find out about the tactics.

And then there’s the “50 cent Party” (五毛党), people who are allegedly paid 5 mao by the government for each pro-government comment they post, which seems like a uniquely Chinese adaptation to an internet society. In my experience, it seems like people dismiss these comments as soon as they suspect that they come from a 五毛党-ist, but maybe these people influence public opinion more than I realize.

Being a savvy internet consumer is tough. When we’ve lost all of our old ways of evaluating those with whom we come into contact (things like personal ties, social standing, even body language and facial expressions), how do we decide who to trust? To me, all of this strengthens the case for why media institutions, which have the training and resources to investigate and follow up on important stories, continue to be important in a world where the internet allows information to flow more and more freely.

Another story happened in Nanping, Guangzhou province. It is about a couple who had been together for 4 years. But after they started playing the game “Happy Farms”, their relationship was on the rocks. The boy called Xiao Ke had to work late, so he told his girlfriend to set the alarm and help him manage the farm while he was gone. But unfortunately, Ke’s girlfriend was pregnant, so one of the nights, the alarm didn’t wake her up. When the next day came, Ke found that not only did his girlfriend not harvest the crops, a lot of his crops were also stolen by other players. Ke got really angry and had a huge fight with the girl. In the end, they broke up and got rid of their baby.

Sounds pretty extreme. For those who haven’t yet been introduced to the game, it’s a pretty simple online game, where each player has their own farm plot on which to plant fruits and vegetables, kill weeds and insects, and harvest the fruits of their labor. That’s pretty much all there is to it — the more plants you grow and harvest, the more points and money you get, and as your points increase and you earn more money, you can expand your plot, choose from a larger variety of plants, decorate your farm, and sometimes buy farm animals to help you make even more money. You can also go over to visit your friends’ farms, and either help them to manage their plots by watering their plants and killing their weeds, or, if you prefer, you can steal a few of their vegetables (or both). The basic version of the game is free, and then if you’re willing to spend real money you can more powerful fertilizer, or dogs to guard your farm from thiefs.

The game is incredibly popular — when you walk around Wuhan, you’ll see it on random computer screens everywhere you go, from offices to milk tea shops. There are a few different version, but they all look pretty much the same. I started playing it a few months ago because my students told me it was the thing to do, and my farm is on 校内, a social networking site that looks suspiciously similar to facebook (it recently merged with 开心网 and 人人网, so now they all have the same version of the game). I actually have two games running, one on Happy Farm and one on Happy Farmer. Here’s a screenshot from Happy Farmer:

The game is pretty addictive for a week or two, especially if you already spend a lot of time in front of your computer and need a way to procrastinate. The story from ChinaSMACK about the game destroying a relationship is obviously extreme (maybe not even true), it’s not THAT addictive… but I guess I should watch out, I wouldn’t want to end up in a “Farmer seeks boyfriend” reality TV show. We’ll see what next month’s fad will be.

"I heard it was because he stole the boss's crops."

]]> http://www.fourseasashome.com/2009/10/%e2%80%98happy-farms%e2%80%99-game-destroys-chinese-jobs-relationships/feed/ 1 http://www.fourseasashome.com/2009/10/luo-ruiya-your-mom-is-calling-you-home-to-eat-mooncakes/ http://www.fourseasashome.com/2009/10/luo-ruiya-your-mom-is-calling-you-home-to-eat-mooncakes/#comments Fri, 09 Oct 2009 04:18:35 +0000 Maria http://www.fourseasashome.com/?p=31 The latest craze sweeping through the Chinese-language internet started with a simple sentence: 贾君鹏你妈妈喊你回家吃饭 (Jia Junpeng, your mother is calling you home for dinner). According to wikipedia, the sentence was posted in July on a forum for players of the online game World of Warcraft, and the body of the post simply said “RT”, short for 如题, “as the title suggests”. Others quickly responded, either puzzled by the very random post, or pretending to by Jia Junpeng’s mother or other relatives. Within two days the post had received more than 8 million views and 300,000 comments. The craze spread outside of the forum, as people photoshopped the sentence into various humorous backgrounds and posted their own variations on the topic.

It was later revealed that it was actually a PR company, KPMedia, that was behind the concept. Although they haven’t revealed who they were hired by, the purpose seems to have been related to online gaming, and the team took advantage of the fact that the online game World of Warcraft was down for maintenance by posting on forum for WoW users. They apparently spent two months designing the marketing plan, and used 800 online marketing members who registered 20,000 online IDs and responded to the post 100,000 times. However, once they’d gotten the fad started, the team pulled out, and theirs only accounted for around 3% of total replies to the original post.

In honor of the Mid-Autumn Festival, a friend sent me a link to a page with a series of pictures that all bear the message “Luo Ruiya, your mom is calling you home to eat mooncakes” (Luo Ruiya is my Chinese name), one of many varations on the Jia Junpeng theme. If you follow the link, at the bottom of the page you can enter your own name and create your very own version.

Luo Ruiya, your mom is calling you home to eat mooncakes

And then there’s another popular variation on the phrase, in honor of the recently celebrated Chinese national day: 台湾，你妈妈六十大寿，喊你回家吃饭 (Taiwan, your mother who is turning 60 years old is calling you to come home for dinner).