Youku Buzz Newsletter - 优酷视频

Youku Buzz (newsletter) | November 2008

Dear friend,

Thanks again for subscribing! Here's the latest Buzz from Youku, China's leading Internet video site. We're very pleased to announce that the launch of our English-language Youku Buzz (daily), where we'll be putting up new selected videos from Youku every day Monday through Friday. Subscribe by RSS to have the Buzz Daily sent to your favorite reader. You can also follow us on Twitter for links to cool videos throughout the day. Please let us know if you have any suggestions!

Best regards,
Kaiser Kuo & Steven Lin

November 2008

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Video Pick of the Month

Parkour in Beijing
Parkour, sometimes called Free Running (though purist Parkour devotees draw distinctions between the two), is an increasingly popular physical activity that originated in France. With its popularization through films like the Daniel Craig Bond flick Casino Royale and Bruce Willis's Live Free or Die Hard, Parkour now has adherents and practitioners the world over — including in China, where it's known as "Pao Ku" (跑酷－ literally, "running cool.") This video from the Beijing 360 Parkour Club features some truly amazing feats of acrobatics.

Youkulest

Live Action Street Fighter
This very amusing stop-motion homage to the classic video game Street Fighter was shot by students at the China Central Academy of Fine Arts. Some real imagination – and evidently a lot of time – went into making it.

The Thousand-Handed Bodhisattva Guan Yin – the guys' turn
One of the big hits from the CCTV Spring Festival Extravaganza in 2007 was the Thousand-Handed Guan Yin, which was rather beautifully executed. It naturally spawned some imitators, including this pretty good one done at some anonymous company function. The one I personally find most amusing is this low-rent college dorm version from some months back. Check it out!

The Month's Most Viewed

Performance Art in Songzhuang, Beijing
Songzhuang is a well-known art colony outside of Beijing, one of several areas now vying with Beijing's famous 798 art district for the attention of the international art market. The village is apparently home to some 3000 artists and 3000 farmers. It's not clear who does better financially. And you have to wonder what the farmers think of these wacky performance artists. This isn't the most shocking or disturbing performance art I've seen in Beijing, but the WTF quotient is high enough here, and most of the comments seem to agree. A half-naked masked man with plastic bag over his head dances in mud, a man in a suit crawls along a stretch of pavement, and another artist listens to heartbeats with a stethoscope while his collaborator draws an electrocardiogram on paper. Go figure.

A Horrible Accident Captured on Video
Warning, this one contains some disturbing (though not graphic) images. If you think driving in China's major cities like Beijing and Shanghai can be a harrowing experience, try getting behind the wheel in a provincial town sometime. This traffic camera capture illustrates one of the perils all too well: dangerously overloaded trucks moving at high speed. This one was viewed almost a million times after it was first uploaded on October 10.

Hot Topics

A Talk Show Descends into Chaos
If you've watched American talk shows like Jerry Springer, you're accustomed to watching people shamelessly air their dirty laundry to national television audiences and occasionally go at each other violently. It's far more rare in China. In this Hunan Entertainment Station show called "I Disagree"—this episode evidently was never broadcast—a discussion on the culpability of the media in spreading bad information descends into a highly personal shouting match between the guy, Li Xiang, and the woman, Xin Ran, over his alleged marathon mahjong games and visiting less-than-reputable KTVs and nightclubs, and her near-nightly visits to bars. The producer feels it necessary to step in a couple of times when things really get heated up. This was viewed over 2 million times in five days, and commented on over 9,500 times.

Speed Dating Shanghai Style
Man, I'm glad to be married sometimes. 3,000 white-collar residents of Shanghai are looking for love in what's gotta be the worst possible place. Crippling depression and panicked desperation have to be more frequent outcomes of these things than true love, or even a decent hook-up. At least the people interviewed in this clip aren't exactly setting high expectations.

Viral Ad of the Month

Intel + Counter-Strike
This Intel ad for the annual ChinaJoy game conference, held in Shanghai, is a few months old, but it's a must-see.

Youku Search Toppers

Top Searched Individuals

1. Bruce Lee – The American-born martial arts actor is all the rage again recently because of a new Chinese TV show called "The Legend of Bruce Lee."

2. Guo Degang – China's most popular xiangsheng (crosstalk) artist, he still performs regularly in small venues in Beijing.

3. Steven Chow – Hong Kong funnyman megastar, who westerners may know from his chop-socky spoof "Kung-fu Hustle."

4. Jay Chou – Taiwanese musician, singer, producer, actor and director who released his annual pop album this month.

5. Dong Bang Shin Ki – The latest Korean boy band sensation

6. Andy Lau – Hong Kong singer and actor who sang next to Jackie Chan at the big Olympic send-off

7. Xie Jin – The Chinese film director who came to prominence in 1957 directing the film Woman Basketball Player No. 5 passed away this month.

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. Lin Miaoke – The little cute little girl who lip-synced her way to notoriety in the Opening Ceremonies.

Top Searched Terms

1. Tony Leung – the Hong Kong actor who most recently starred in Lust, Caution, has been in the news for marrying his longtime sweetheart, the singer/actress Carina Lau, in Bhutan in July.

2. College – Everyone's back to school now, and young Chinese are trying to figure out what this whole "college experience" is supposed to be about.

3. 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.

4. College Students – Maybe our teenage viewers want to watch how other people of the same age live?

5. 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.

6. Sanlu Milk Powder – The biggest scandal to rock China in years is naturally near the top of searches on Youku this month. Suppliers to one of China's largest infant formula manufacturers added melamine to make protein levels test higher, but it's caused kidney stones in infants, and so far six have died while over 52,000 are reported ill.

7. Wanted – Yet another Hollywood action movie about professional assassins. Why does it seem like everyone's a professional assassin these days? Starring Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman.

8. 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.

9. Shenzhou VII –China's third, successful manned space flight blasted off September 25 and featured China's first space walk.

10. The Olympic Games – They brought an unprecedented level of international scrutiny and no small measure of controversy, but in the end XXIX Olympiad was a smashing success, with China taking 100 medals, 51 of them gold.

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Youku Buzz (newsletter) | November 2008