China

Shanghainese model Zhang Wen for H&M. I first met Kyle (Feng Jiaqi) in 2005, shortly after I'd arrived in Chengdu. There were a few local rock bands playing at the Shamrock, and being in my early 20s and fancying going out to a rock show as an opportunity to dress up, I was wearing my finest torn fishnet stockings and leather and lip ring, and he tapped me on the shoulder and complimented my clothes. I would find out that he was an English major at the Chengdu University of Information Technology who happened to be really into music and clothes, at the time and on the weekends he would come over and try on my black eyeliner and we would take snapshots in the mirror, and then he would wash it all off before going to eat dinner with what he describes as his "very normal, average family." In his senior year, he went to Beijing for an internship and said he didn't like the way people talked and that he missed Sichuan. So I was surprised when not long after he announced that he was moving to Shanghai. We mostly fell out of contact over the years, but once he mentioned he was taking photos and did we want to publish any in the magazine? "This is CHENGDOO magazine," I replied. "What do we want with Shanghai party photos? Contact the Shanghai magazines." Another few years passed and I heard from him again. "I'm in Chengdu. Let's meet at the Europe House." Not exactly my cup of tea, but it's conveniently located, so I went upstairs and took a seat on the rococo-inspired sofa chair while a white-gloved waitress poured me some hot water, and I ordered the most expensive coffee I've ever had in my life. Kyle arrived—he had ditched his plastic-framed glasses for a lip ring and he had a more worldly, confident air about him, but otherwise he looked more or less like the same kid I knew all those years ago. He ordered green tea ("Too cool for coffee, Mr. Shanghai?" I asked. "No, it's my stomach. I had spicy food last night") before filling me in on how he's become a big-shot photographer. The photographer in Berlin. So how did you get started in photography? I got interested because I always liked rock 'n' roll—it had been always part of my life. In university every week, I'd go to see what new CDs from Western rock 'n' roll bands the sellers had, and also to Little Bar. At that time I couldn't afford an expensive camera, so I just used a digital [snapshot] camera. Then in Shanghai, I contacted the expat magazine City Weekend. By then I had bought an SLR and was always going to take pictures of some underground rock shows. The third time I sent photos in, they were published, and every issue since then they send me to take photos of shows. I've been shooting for this magazine for almost 20 issues. I think that [gave me confidence] to try to work as a photographer. So then I went to the attached photography institute of Fudan University and studied for a year. At that time I did a lot of events, parties, birthday parties, corporate events, expos, some food exhibitions. So that's how I made money for a few years, and after that I started shooting models because I wanted to be in the fashion industry as a photographer. I love fashion—it's connected with rock 'n' roll as well, and now it's been two years since I started to do fashion. Now I do a lot of portraits for magazine editorials, maybe because that's what I'm good at and most of the magazines want that. I shot Guo Jingming, the writer, and the most famous Chinese football star and some CEOs for Harper's Bazaar and Numéro. I've also done some work for Elle Men, and a couple weeks ago for Men's Health I shot a photo of a renowned blood-transfusion specialist in his surgery room. It was very exciting for me. I love portraits—they can show the expression or the moment of the person's sense. How do you find work? Weibo helps, and if the editor likes your work they might introduce you to others from the same industry. One time I shot the singer from Massive Attack performi

While we're generally loathe to admit that other blogs are available, Marine Cabos's Photography of China is too great not to share. Gorgeous photos of the country, by both foreign and domestic artists, are accompanied by detailed information about their creators in English, French and Chinese. [ more › ]

A 19 year old LGBT activist, identified only as Xiang, was arrested on Saturday in Changsha, Hunan province, for organising an "illegal protest", according to a since-deleted report in the Xiaoxiang Morning News. [ more › ]

The fact that this disaster took place at an explosives manufacturer makes it somewhat less surprising but not any less horrific. An explosion occured Monday morning in Zhangqiu City. Twelve people have been confirmed dead and about 22 more missing as of writing. [ more › ]

As often as we write about the need to register your trademarks in China, we have never written about how common it is for your China distributer to take your trademark and of how easy it is to prevent that.  I thought of this last week after receiving yet another phone call where this had happened. The “this” is something along the lines of the following: US SME wants to sell its product in China. Oftentimes the US SME is already manufacturing its product in China and it sees the China market as yet another market where it can sell its product. US SME seeks out someone in China to sell its product for it in China.  We have often written about how using distributers to sell your product can make good sense.  See Getting Your Product Into China Via Distributorship. A Legal Piece Of Cake and That’s Hot: China Distribution Contracts and Selling Your Product To China Through A Distributor. Just The Basics. Someone in China (oftentimes the company that is already manufacturing the product for the US SME) is brought on to sell the US company’s product in China. And the US company just stops there.  No contract.  No trademark registration.  No licensing of any trademark. Big mistake. If you are going to use a distributer of your product in China, you should have a contract with your China distributer that, at the very minimum, protects you from your distributer destroying your reputation in China (or even possibly subjecting you to liability) by providing a terrible product or terrible service and makes clear that you own your name and logo (and whatever IP is important to you) and are merely licensing it to your distributer.  You then must register that licensing agreement with the appropriate Chinese government authorities for it to be valid. We usually get calls from American SMEs to complain about how they are not getting paid for their product being sold by others in China.  Then when my law firm looks deeper into the situation, we learn that the American company never registered its IP in China and that someone else has — presumably the Chinese distributer.  We then try to get the trademark “back” for our client. If the Chinese distributer wishes to continue maintaining a relationship with the American company , we usually are able to persuade the Chinese company to assign over the trademark to our American client. This is usually the case when the real money is in the manufacturing of product for the American company for sale by the American company outside of China.  But in a few cases, the Chinese company has refused to assign over the trademark either because it does not manufacture product for the American company at all or because it views its ability to sell the product in China as more valuable than manufacturing product for sale by the American company elsewhere.  Oftentimes the worst thing about this is how the Chinese company now has increased incentive to sell “your” product outside of China as well. There is one easy solution to prevent your Chinese manufacturer or distributer from “taking” your trademark for China. Register it yourself in China and do not allow anyone to use it without a properly registered license to do so.  This is how to protect your trademark in China from your China distributer and if you do these two things, you should be fine. But, if you do not, you are putting yourself at risk of forever losing your name in China. What are you seeing out there on this front?

Just now I opened my latest ZGBriefs China news digest and found: “Rat meat and Chinese food safety” and “20 million taps (and not a drop to drink)”. Right as I sat to down to write this post I also checked my Weixin (?? – a Chinese social media thing). At the top of my feed was a post about someone encountering “gutter oil” ??? at lunch. Gutter oil comes from the kitchen slop that restaurants dump down the nearest manhole. Some enterprising (desperate?) soul scoops it out and skims off the oil, which he sells to restaurants and street vendors. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Or they drive around at night collecting it in barrels from the restaurants directly (I’ve seen that, too). And these aren’t the worst Chinese food safety examples I can think of; they’re just the ones that happen to be immediately on hand as I write this. This is truly just the muculent tip of a putrescent iceberg. Grooooooss! Anonymous Chinese chef uploads restaurant kitchen photo exposé Would you rather…? (Gutter Oil 2.0) Why am I bringing this up? I don’t want a blog full of expat whining. But I got this e-mail a few days ago from a couple who’s been in China for three months: Hello Joel! [...] I’m living with my husband in a town in the middle of nowhere called Neixiang (Hunan Province) we’d had tons of shocking experiences here… and now we’re mainly concern about what food is safe to eat. I’m not talking about eating cat or dog, but eating safe and clean. After reading news about food scandals in China we became more and more afraid of buying food on the streets and even at super markets. If you have time, could you please tell us your experience with Chinese food brands and give us some advice about what brands has more quality standards than others? How would you answer? If you live or lived in China, what specific things do you do to make your food safer? Here’s what I replied with (plus some links)… Other than spending tons of money and eating only imported products, I don’t know if it’s possible to eat safe and clean in China (and outside China, safe and clean is really just an illusion anyway, but that’s another topic). We’re less stringent than a lot of other expats, and I don’t think what we’re doing makes it safe and clean, but at least it’s something. Fruit & veggies: We wash all our fruit and vegetables really well. Photo Gallery: Our Neighbourhood Caishichang The Tianjin Chengguan Street Market Game Milk/dairy: Our girls drink/drank imported milk and formula for their first two years. We drink the major domestic brands, but not because we think they’re necessarily safe. Meat: Some meat vendors in vegetable markets are “certified” (so they claim, usually by displaying posters and/or certificates on the walls). We get our chicken at Metro ??? (a bulk import store, cheaper than regular import stores), but the beef and pork there is still too expensive. So we’re eating “certified” vegetable market pork and beef while still looking for better options. We also eat less meat than we did in North America. Packaged/bottled products: We don’t usually buy packaged products like bottles of vinegar or soy milk from the tiny window shops (???) or traditional vegetable markets (???), because things are more likely to be fake. In our first year our teacher pointed out some details of things we’d bought: labels glued on crooked and printed in slightly lower quality, caps were just plugs instead of factory sealed screw caps, etc. Packaged stuff has better chances at a supermarket. How to: Avoid consuming dodgy products in Tianjin Street food: We don’t eat tons of street food (about once a week for me). Chinese Breakfast, Tianjin-style In case you ever wondered what BBQ’d silk worm tastes like Water: Our drinking w

Great moments in Western-Chinese conflict, from The Fragile Bridge – Conflict Management in Chinese Business:

The other day I was sitting at the gate at Pudong Airport in Shanghai, downloading a couple of newspapers to my iPhone that I hoped to read during the flight. Of course, I’m keenly aware that use of phones of … Continue reading →

Martial-arts choreographer Yuen Wo-ping is set take over from Ang Lee in directing the sequel to 2000's tremendously successful film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, with returning actress Michelle Yeoh joined by kung-fu star Donnie Yen. [ more › ]

I'd love to write something witty about Zhang Yuqi's choice of dress at the 66th Annual Cannes Film Festival, but I keep getting distracted for some reason. More photos here. [ more › ]