Fun and Games: The Internet in China

As a corollary to my last posting... A great article appeared in the New York Times recently about internet usage in China. While in America we use the internet primarily for information gathering, emailing, and, to a lessor extent, social networking, in China the net is primarily used as an entertainment gateway. The article talks in length about QQ, an instant messaging program that virtually everyone in China under the age of 35 uses. Rather than screenames, QQ users have long numbers as their identifiers. One of the questions I most get asked by my students is, "What is your QQ number teacher Zach?" I do in fact have a QQ number and I have used the program a few times, but honestly, I find it a bit maddening. QQ mirrors all the ways in which modern Chinese youth culture is quirky and nonsensical to me as a Westerner. It is flashy and filled with cutesy little do-nothing features as well as millions of different bleepy noises alerting you to everything from the fact that a buddy has just IMed you (a sound like someone knocking at your door) to a sound that can alert you when...well, I don't really know what it is supposed to point out, but it sounds like a llama giving birth to a toaster.

Also, I'm in Japan now for about two weeks, so look forward to some blogs about the land of the rising sun in the near future.