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Dear [[name]],
Happy New Year to you! Keep an eye on your inbox for our roundup of the 10 best Youku videos of a very eventful 2008. We'll be sending that out sometime in mid-January.
Meanwhile, keep up with us at the Youku Buzz (daily) or follow us on Twitter! And check out this article from PC World, which lists the top 10 search terms in Chinese on Google for the year. You'll see that Youku is up there at number 4, right after Sina, Netease, and Alibaba.
- Kaiser Kuo and Steven Lin
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 January 2009
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| Video Pick of the Month |
 Cop-blocked: An Insanely Cocky Chinese Trucker
This seven-minute-long video was captured by two guys who, by the dialect they're speaking, hail from Weifang in Shandong province. They apparently shot it driving south along the highway between Qingdao and Huangshan (Anhui). It's not clear why the truck driver is so determined to avoid being pulled over, though speculation in many of the comments suggests the truck was overloaded and the trucker wanted to get out of a hefty fine. It was viewed almost 850,000 times within two weeks of being uploaded, with commenters generally praising the audacity of the trucker and scoffing at the driving skills of the cop. |
| Youkulest |
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Oh, Say Can You Sing...
A Canadian netizen named Chris uploaded this video of himself singing the American national anthem, "The Star Spangled Banner," in Chinese -- a twist on the American Mandarin student calling himself "Red Foreigner" (Hong Laowai), who amused us all with his heartfelt renditions of Chinese pop songs and Party favorites. You can find a bunch of his songs here. This is clearly a very good time in Sino-North American relations. We tracked down the Chinese lyrics to "The Star Spangled Banner" on Wikipedia. This version is slightly different from -- and better than -- the one you hear in the video. |
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Parkour in Guangxi University
This user-generated video features some great parkour (also known as "free running") scenes shot on the campus of Guangxi University in Nanning. Some stupefyingly brave feats of athleticism here. A Youku user commented, "Finally, you girls know how your underwear disappears!" |
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| The Month's Most Viewed |
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Crazy Dancing in Henan
Caution: This video contains neither violent scenes nor strong language, but may nevertheless leave you feeling uncomfortable after watching it. There's no more information about the video except that the sequences were captured by a Youku user in a small village of Henan. Comment controversey centers on that by now tired issue of whether Henan gets unfairly picked on in other parts of China. We're not sure whether it's a funeral or wedding. A funeral, huh? Yep. In rural Chinese villages, funerals can be unbelievably noisy. Actually, it does appear to be a wedding, and the dancers were apparently hired entertainment and not drunken bridesmaids. |
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Internet Cafes Are Dangerous
Chinese parents are always warning their kids to stay away -- as far away as possible -- from Internet cafes. We all know that Internet cafes in China are sordid places filled with smoke, weird smells, half-empty ramen tubs, and thieves wandering around your seats. (One friend described them colorfully as "sh*t-holes and firetraps"). However, none of these dangers compare with the shocking violence in this melee, captured on a security camera. Participants in this brawl, which took place in Changsha, Hunan, are weilding bottles, sticks, and even kitchen knives, all because someone accidentally spilled water on someone else's mobile phone. |
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| Hot Topics |
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What Chinese Civil Servants Do in their Offices
As taxpayers, we're always wondering what civil servants do all day in their offices. Here's the answer for at least some of them, in Neihuang county, Henan. In the county's public service hall, a journalist from Henan Television caught some scenes with a candid camera: Local officials playing online cardgames, knitting, and napping in a chair just behind the desk. But commenters on Youku aren't terribly indignant about the behavior of these officials: many are lining up against the journalist, asking "Why does the reporter talk like a policeman?" and "How can the reporter be so cocky?" One commenter predicts "He will be beaten down by some gangsters tomorrow on his way home," as though it were his just reward. |
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Public Wooing: Fearless or Shameless?
Last week on the campus of South China Agricultural University, a boy staged a highly public wooing of his dream girl. With a bouquet of roses in hand, the desperate college boy asked his friends to set some striking banners reading "Silly girl, I miss you so much. I can't live without you!" under the girls' dorm. Most Youku users criticize the lovelorn boy's behavior as a pathetic farce: "Vanity and romance are different", "WTF can people learn from this video? It's doomed to failure", and "The saddest truth about today's college students is that they don't have the concepts of moral and shame". We just want to know, couldn't he have just held a boom-box overhead and played Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes"? |
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| Viral Ad of the Month |
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Video Ads from Microsoft China & Google China
Recently, you may have noticed some online video ads for Microsoft China and Google China on Youku's front page. No comment for the video clips which are... um... not exactly at the level of their counterparts in the American market. |
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| Youku Search Toppers |
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Top Searched Individuals
1. Steven Chow – Hong Kong funnyman megastar, who westerners may know from his chop-socky spoof "Kung-fu Hustle."
2. Guo Degang – China's most popular xiangsheng (crosstalk) artist, he still performs regularly in small venues in Beijing.
3. Dong Bang Shin Ki - The latest Korean boy band sensation.
4. Huang Guangyu - China's richest man, an electronics tycoon worth more than $4 billion, who is under investigation for alleged insider trading.
5. Chen Yunlin - The chairman of the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) who visited Taiwan in November.
6. Barack Obama - The President-elect of the United States.
7. Xie Jin – The Chinese film director who came to prominence in 1957 directing the film Woman Basketball Player No. 5 passed away in October.
8. Li Ka-shing – Hong Kong billionaire and idol to a generation of would-be moguls.
9. Run Run Shaw－ Hong Kong filmmaker-cum-philanthropist who has generously endowed a number of Chinese universities and donated a whopping HK$100 million for the Sichuan Earthquake.
10. Andy Lau – Hong Kong singer and actor who seems to be in every movie produced in the SAR.
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Top Searched Terms
1. Tony Leung – the Hong Kong actor who most recently starred in Lust, Caution.
2. College – Education's important to Youku users. What can we say?
3. College Students – As you may know from this newsletter, Chinese college students are a vital source of fun for Chinese netizens.
4. Torch – China's relay may have stirred up controversy in some Western cities, but it seems to have stirred up only patriotic passion everywhere it passed in China.
5. Terrorist Attack - A series of ten coordinated terrorist attacks occurred across Mumbai (Bombay), India's financial capital and largest city, on 26 November 2008.
6. Fuel Oil Tax - Chinese government intends to raise fuel oil tax, which will be renamed "fuel consumption tax", to replace road and waterway tolls and fees and some road charges.
7. Financial Crisis – One of the hottest topic in Chinese Internet is the ongoing crisis that started with mortgage-backed securities and is now in full meltdown mode. Everyone is wondering how it's gonna influence ordinary people's daily lives.
8. Chen Shui-bian - The former political leader of Taiwan, who was arrested on November 12 and faces a potential five-year sentence for his involvement in a money-laundering scandal.
9. Paralympics – Much more than just a denouement to the spectacular XXIX Olympiad, the Beijing Paralympics were an inspiration to many and greatly improved awareness of the need to provide better accessibility.
10. Cholera - An outbreak of cholera in Hainan province from October 18-27 was rapidly contained. A total of 30 cases were reported.
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