This is one of those things I have to note down otherwise it’ll get lost to time. And you won’t see this mentioned during ‘Chinese Language Week’ here. In the old country (台山, or Taishan, China), when my father was a boy in the 1930s and 1940s, there were some whānau in the village […]
Category: China
Posts relating to China or the Chinese culture.
Have you driven a Ford … lately? Probably not
Ford’s Brazilian line-up, 2021. Once upon a time, there were locally developed Corcels and Mavericks; even the EcoSport was a Brazilian development. Today, it’s Mustang, a couple of trucks, and a rebadged Chinese crossover. We heard a lot about the demise of Holden as GM retreats from continents at a time, seemingly in a […]
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Can a no-name mouse take the place of a Microsoft Intellimouse?
I’ve occasionally had good luck with ultra-cheap Chinese mice. Years ago, I bought one, with very simple left and right buttons and a scroll wheel, and it proved to be one of the most comfortable I owned. The wheel didn’t run smoothly at first but a quick trim of the plastic, and it’s been fine […]
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A brief misadventure into the Chinese internet
When I was a kid and wanted to hit back at someone for being mean to me, my parents would often say that successful people, true leaders, would be 大方, which is roughly akin to saying that one should rise above it. I would say that goes with nations as well: you can tell when […]
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Time to abandon Meizu Music: 8.2 is a lemon
That didn’t last long. Within a day, this was what Meizu Music showed: The songs, all 1,229 of them that I had fed in manually, are still there, and they still play, but the question remains: for how long? If they don’t show in the list—I told you computing devices were forgetful—then how long […]
Facebook whistleblower gets fired; and a workaround for Meizu Music’s inability to find your SD card
This is a pretty typical story: find fault with Big Tech, try to alert the appropriate people in the firm, get fired. Julia Carrie Wong’s excellent article for The Guardian shows a data scientist, Sophie Zhang, find blatant attempts by governments to abuse Facebook’s platform, misleading their own people, in multiple countries. Of course […]
Brand, sub-brand or model? China’s getting into a confusing phase
The Dongfeng Aeolus AX7. But just where does Aeolus sit when it comes to indexing in Autocade? This is something that might have to come out in the wash, and it might take years. I think we can all agree that Ssangyong is a marque or a make, and Korando is a model. Never […]
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Like communist dictatorships, Google and Facebook threaten Australia
You know the US tech giants have way too much power, unencumbered by their own government and their own country’s laws, when they think they can strong-arm another nation. From Reuter: Alphabet Inc’s Google said on Friday it would block its search engine in Australia if the government proceeds with a new code that […]
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Autocade reaches 22 million, while Rachel Hunter appears in Lucire
As I begin this blog post, Autocade has just crossed the 22 million page-view barrier, at 22,000,040. I had estimated we would get there on Sunday, and as it’s just ticked over here in New Zealand, I was right. We have 4,379 models in the database, with the Bestune B70, in its third generation, […]
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From one émigré to the Lais, leaving Hong Kong for Scotland
This final podcast of 2020 is an unusual one. First, it’s really directed a family I’ve never met: the Lais, who are leaving Hong Kong for Glasgow after the passing of the national security law in the Chinese city, as reported by Reuter. They may never even hear it. But it’s a from-the-heart piece recounting […]
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