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Archive for the 'Shanzhai' Category

Lies, Damned Lies, and Misleading Videos


Posted on Jul 20, 2009 by Steven Lin | Filed under: Shanzhai, Wild Wild China | 4 Comments

The Flowers (花儿乐队) is quite an infamous pop band from mainland China. Three years ago, New Century Weekly magazine (新世纪周刊) revealed that the band plagiarized 13 songs in 2 albums published from 2004 to 2005. Since then, the band have never quite gotten out from under that crowd. Last month, they announced that they were [...]

Chinese Brand’s Transformers Campaign


Posted on Jun 1, 2009 by Steven Lin | Filed under: Shanzhai, Viral Video Ads | No Comments

Wenzhou-based Meters/Bonwe Group, the down-market clothing brand who invited Wentworth Miller to star in their TVCs, now has Optimus Prime on their side. Here’s Meters/Bonwe’s latest video ad for their special edition of Transformers t-shirt product line. Hope this stupid clip doesn’t destroy any affection you might have for the Autobots.

HotForWords, Terrible Chinese Shanzhai Version


Posted on Jun 1, 2009 by Steven Lin | Filed under: Shanzhai | No Comments

Seriously, someone just started a copycat version of HotForWords. I think there’s no need for me explain why I call it “terrible” and “shanzhai”. It seems that the girl in the video comes from a cheap bar in Sanlitun or a store in Xiushui. As for her English… well, it makes her even more Xiushui [...]

Prison Break Star’s TVC in Chinese Market


Posted on Apr 24, 2009 by Steven Lin | Filed under: Shanzhai, Society | 6 Comments

This time it’s not a shanzhai ad.
Wentworth Miller, the British-born American actor who plays Michael Scofield in the wildly popular Fox series Prison Break, has made tons of money in the Chinese market. His latest TV commercial–one you can’t see on American television–was made for Chevrolet’s Cruze:

Before this, Wentworth Miller had already made unwitting appearances [...]

HTC Touch + iPhone = Lenovo’s OPhone


Posted on Apr 13, 2009 by Steven Lin | Filed under: Shanzhai | No Comments

Rumors about iPhone’s May 17 launch in mainland China have spread throughout the Chinese blogosphere. But before you declare game over and assume the market now belongs to Apple, don’t forget that Apple has failed to make a significant dent in India’s lucrative telecom market, as BusinessWeek has reported.
The biggest obstacle might not be the [...]

DRTV Commercial for Shanzhai iPhone


Posted on Apr 7, 2009 by Steven Lin | Filed under: Shanzhai | 1 Comment

The Meizu M8, China’s fabulous shanzhai iPhone, is finally available on shelves. Just as most shanzhai brands have done in the Chinese market, Meizu picked DRTV as their primary advertising channel.
In the 17-minute DRTV commercial, the hosts compared “an international phone model that starts with the letter i” (i某国际品牌) to the Meizu M8. At 01:15, [...]

The Brothers Zhao Build an F1 Racer from a Scrap Heap


Posted on Apr 7, 2009 by Kaiser Kuo | Filed under: OMFG, Shanzhai, Wild Wild China | 3 Comments

Witness that famous Chinese ingenuity applied to a most bizarre endeavor: creating a shanzhai Formula 1 racer out of scraps — a bed frame, a folding chair, some piping, a security door. These brothers, surnamed Zhao, live in the city of Tangshan, about 2 hours from Beijing, and this particular F1-type vehicle is the fourth [...]

Shanzhai Transformers: The Movie


Posted on Apr 3, 2009 by Steven Lin | Filed under: Coming Soon, Shanzhai | 1 Comment

Jeffrey Lau (刘镇伟), the director of A Chinese Odyssey (大话西游) and executive producer of Ashes of Time (东邪西毒), will release a huge shanzhai film this year.
Please directly jump to 3:35 of the video and watch the English trailer of Metallic Attraction Kungfu Cyborg (机器侠) - I don’t know if anyone on earth could come up [...]

Behind the Magic


Posted on Mar 17, 2009 by Steven Lin | Filed under: Shanzhai | 7 Comments

Spoiler alert: Magic secrets revealed, some material may not be suitable for those who want to maintain that miracle-and-wonder thing.

A Youku user who looks very shy, very (deliberately?) amateurish, and very shanzhai uploaded a video which revealed the secrets behind some mind-blowing magic tricks performed by Liu Qian, the fabulous Taiwanese magician.
While some magic tricks [...]

Chinese gamers caught up in CrossFire


Posted on Feb 19, 2009 by Kaiser Kuo | Filed under: Shanzhai, Video Games | 1 Comment

Call it a shanzai Counterstrike if you will, but CrossFire (or 穿越火线, chuanyue huoxian), developed by Korean game company Smile Gate, licensed by another Korean company called NeoWiz, and published in China by Tencent on QQ Games, has a huge following here in China. The game has ranked and continues to rank in the top [...]