Middle Earth - China’s cultural industry podcast

Send us Fan Mail The 2022 Winter Olympics is about to start in Beijing, with around 2900 athletes and possibly zero spectators, yet the country now boasts 300 million winter sports enthusiasts. How did China’s winter sports industry grow so fast, and does it differ from other nations?  Featuring - Ban Tao : Eternal Star Ice & Snow Head of Branding - Liu Xia: Burton China Resort Business Manage...

Send us Fan Mail Finishing our “Dark Series” on China’s guilty pleasures, we tackle gambling, one of the key forms of spending among Chinese tourists overseas.  Did Covid-19 kill the gambling industry, or is it coming back even stronger?  Featuring   - Alan Robles: Journalist  - Ben Lee: Managing Partner at IGamiX  - Sebastian Strangio:  Journalist & Author  Middle Earth is distributed by The...

Send us Fan Mail In this special episode, we review our top 5 stories from this past year, and make a few predictions for trends in China’s culture industries in 2022.  Featuring   - Aladin Farré : Founder of Middle Earth Podcast - Hatty Liu : Managing editor at TWOC - William Ace Rowles, Miro Li, Juan Tan, Jerry Kim & Elaine Yau  Middle Earth is distributed by The World of Chinese ( www.thewo...

Send us Fan Mail  A mix between the boardgame Cluedo and LARP (live action role-playing), jubensha is the latest craze for over 10 million game enthusiasts in China. Played mostly by young white-collar workers, the industry has seen a massive influx of players and capital while entrepreneurs and scriptwriters want to offer the best experience for players. Where does this success come from and wher...

Send us Fan Mail Illegal drug usage among China’s adult population is one of the lowest in the world: 0.16%. But has it always been like this since the Reform and Opening Up period? And did you know there are plantations that legally grow cannabis in China?  Featuring   - Mathias Boelinger: Journalist at DW  - Dylan Levi King: Translator & Author  Middle Earth is distributed by The World of Ch...

Send us Fan Mail China had just 25 museums in 1949, and around 350 at the start of the reform era in 1979. Since 2000, though, over 4,000 new museums have been built in the country on a wide range of subjects, such as the history of every province and county, or the silly-sounding “Watermelon Museum” in Beijing. In 2019, China saw 1.2 billion museum visits. What’s driving this museum-building boom...

Send us Fan Mail Short-video app Quibi failed in just six months after launching in the US, so it’s too bad the company didn’t come to China, where hundreds of millions of people watch short drama series that bring you new twists every few seconds… all in vertical form. Why do Chinese audience love such high-speed storytelling and who are the people behind this new content format?   After all, as...

Send us Fan Mail  Pornography has been banned in China since 1949. Yet 80 percent of young men (18 – 29 years old) and 50 percent of young women, or 30 percent of the whole Chinese population, admit to consuming porn as of 2015.  So how do they access it? And are there actually local producers making and distributing this illegal content within China?   This is the first installment of a three-par...

Send us Fan Mail China may have 5,000 years of history, but now it has to compete for clicks and eyeballs with short videos on Douyin. From martial arts to Confucian classics to architecture, find out how businesses focused on Chinese traditional culture marketing themselves for young consumers in the modern day.  Featuring AJ Donnelly : Co-founder of Cultural Keys Chinese Culture Company Matthew...

Send us Fan Mail Though streaming is on the rise, film festivals are still an important channel for creators to showcase their work. If you’re an indie filmmaker in China, the Xining FIRST Youth Film Exhibition has become the place to see and be seen. Started in 2006, it is now known as the “Sundance of China,” and it is where directors like Wen Muye, director of 2018’s Dying To Survive (the third...

Send us Fan Mail A bonus episode where we will delve into the making of the movie Leap , which came out in September 2020 on the Chinese national women’s volleyball team. Director Peter Ho-Sun Chan and Academy governor-at-large Janet Yang , an award-winning producer, will talk about the incredible journey of the team, the evolution of China over the past few decades, and what it’s like working wit...

Send us Fan Mail The Communist Party of China celebrating its 100th year anniversary this year, driving up tourism to revolutionary sites around the country. The “red tourism” sector has seen significant growth from 140 million visit in 2004 to 1.15 billion in 2019, and now the “Gen Z” is following the trend. How do red tourism sites stay relevant for a new generation? Featuring  Dr. Mimi Li : ass...

Send us Fan Mail With a market that will quadruple between 2013 and 2025, China’s animation industry is getting more and more assertive with success stories like Ne Zha (2019), currently the third highest-grossing films in Chinese box office. But what challenges do Chinese animators, producers, and storytellers still face? And how can animated Chinese stories find an audience abroad? Featuring Lul...

Send us Fan Mail In February 2021 China’s cinemas sold more ticket than the USA—a result of the COVID-19 epidemic, but also of a population more and more eager to see quality movies on the big screen. Yet for every movie that comes to the silver screen, several others are released over the internet at the same time. Called e-movies, or wǎngdà (网大), they became a massive pop-culture phenomenon in...

Send us Fan Mail Not far from the Forbidden City lies Temple Dongjingyuan (Temple 东景缘), formerly knowed as the Zhizhu Temple. It was founded at the beginning of the 15th century, and the current buildings date from 1700. Centuries after it was founded, and decades after it was decommissioned for religious services in the 1950s, the place is miraculously still standing and is a center of culture...

Send us Fan Mail If you are on this side of the Great Wall, you might have seen their shops and vending machines in malls: Pop Mart. This public company worth 11 billion USD sells “mystery” toy boxes containing a single cute figurine from a potential set of several characters. Buyers do not know which figurine they have bought until they open the box. The company is widely successful in China and...

Send us Fan Mail Middle Earth is now joining The World of Chinese magazine podcast network. The World of Chinese (TWOC) is a bi-monthly English magazine and website dedicated to Chinese society, language, and culture. Every two months, both in print and online, the team at TWOC takes a contemporary issue in Chinese society and culture and looks behind the headlines to share how it affects people o...

Send us Fan Mail Ecommerce and short-video app Xiaohongshu (小红书 or RED), or RED,  has been booming in china. Yet what distinguishes this app from its competitor Douyin, how the nature of short videos has changed as a result of the pandemic? Featuring Miro Li : Founder of Double V. Consulting & CHINAble Academy Rose Zhu : Xiaohongshu/KOL lifestyle influencer Middle Earth is made by China Com...

Send us Fan Mail Last year, as COVID-19 cases spiked around the world, many thought cinemas would die. China’s box office sales from the past few months tell a different story. The country’s film market broke several world records in 2021, selling roughly $1.2 billion in tickets. Although theaters in the U.S., which are the primary competitors of theaters in China, have been closed, more and more...

Send us Fan Mail A few years ago, the stand-up comedy scene in China was largely considered to be alternative culture, with few venues for comedians and patrons. This stands in stark contrast to today, with over 100 comedy clubs nationwide, even outside of major cities like Beijing and Shanghai. Format shows like Roast! (tùcáo dàhuì 吐槽大会) have pushed stand-up into the mainstream.  Featuring An...

Send us Fan Mail China’s cultural industry is not often the topic of a book. However, the newly released Red Creative: Culture and Modernity in China tackles questions about how the government sees its cultural industry and how the domestic cultural industry has evolved over time. The book’s authors, Dr. Justin O’Connor and Dr. Xin Gu , joined the show to discuss their findings and to reflect on c...

Send us Fan Mail As much as everyone would love to claim that they enjoy “highly refined” art and movies, many people enjoy the guilty pleasure of watching reality shows featuring celebrities making a fool of themselves. China has a lot of these shows, and they drive an infinite number of online debates and memes. These cultural products are a vibrant part of China's entertainment industry an...

Send us Fan Mail Zhang Shiwen 张释文, the head of entertainment and a partner at the law firm Huiye in Shanghai, talks about her latest book, Guidance and Compliance: The Way to China’s Entertainment Market . She delve into her research on intellectual property protection in China’s film, music, and television industries, and they also discuss a few case studies from her own work in China. Middle...

Send us Fan Mail Long gone are the days when Chinese film directors could shoot their films and win awards abroad without complications back home. But even with stricter regulations regarding the shooting and distribution of films in China, some have not stopped creating unique stories for the big screen. Today's guests share their insights into the current scene of low-budget films and art-h...

Send us Fan Mail Meet Justin Sweeting , Hong Kong’s ultimate party organizer. Over the last decade, he has elevated Hong Kong’s music scene as a co-founder of the Clockenflap music and arts festival . Clockenflap has come a long way from its humble beginnings back in 2008 to become the city’s biggest festival, with over 30,000 participants per day during peak hours. Justin explains how Hong Kong,...