Middle Earth - China’s cultural industry podcast

Send us Fan Mail Children’s entertainment is a growing industry in China, with many opportunities for flexible and innovative creators to produce marketable content. Prospects are particularly bright for those working at the intersection of children’s entertainment and education, which has long been an important source of revenue in a country where 93 percent of families pay out-of-pocket for tuit...

Send us Fan Mail This week on the Middle Earth Podcast, Aladin sits down over a pint with Sun Yao (孙遥), the proprietor of his favorite local cultural venue-cum-cafe, to talk about the business end of the cultural industry in China. Like the owners of many niche bars and cafes across China, Sun seeks to turn a profit at his hutong establishment, Camera Stylo, by screening films, hosting live even...

Send us Fan Mail Podcasting is rapidly becoming the next boom industry in China, with approximately 80 million daily downloads of podcasts and a projected audience of 486 million total. When it comes to putting a number on the industry, however, things get less clear. Some estimate that China’s podcast industry is worth upward of $7 billion, citing a report by China’s State Administration of Press...

Send us Fan Mail Live art is one of the few mediums that hasn’t been radically transformed by the digital age. No screen is yet able to capture the magic of in-person performance, be it a comedy show, theater, or even Peking opera. The live performance scene is particularly vibrant in contemporary Beijing, where comedy and theater offerings are as diverse as they are popular. In this episode, Alad...

Send us Fan Mail Voices from China’s large but marginalized LGBTQ and feminist communities are increasingly making themselves heard in contemporary culture. In particular, artists and activists from these groups are creating content around the idea of “nontraditional love,” which is resonating strongly even with mainstream Chinese audiences. So how have the stories of creators from historically si...

Send us Fan Mail Clubs and live performances featuring international music started taking off in China in the 1980s. Initially, the scene was very focused on foreign diplomats, journalists, and students who rented out restaurants and other spaces on the weekends. Gradually, as policies governing public radio broadcasts underwent reforms that allowed the performance of international music, a broade...

Send us Fan Mail The stark cultural differences between China and the West are frequently identified as key barriers in productive professional exchanges. However, the mechanisms by which people can actually improve their cultural understanding — or “cultural literacy” — are less clear. How can professionals in China and the West bridge gaps in understanding ensuring that business can sail smoothl...

Send us Fan Mail China has found success in exporting domestic technology and consumer goods. However, its culture exportation has not achieved the same success. The language barrier may be an issue, yet South Korean and Japanese films and music have managed to overcome it and found success in exporting cultural products like video games, anime, and movies. So what gives? On this episode of the Mi...

Send us Fan Mail Before the Beijing Olympics, foreign media groups seeking to sell or co-produce science-themed media content in China had a difficult time finding partners. Paul Lewis, an independent producer and former president of Discovery Channel Canada, was nevertheless able to co-produce two science programs in partnership with Chinese state media outlets: "Daily Planet Goes to China&q...

Send us Fan Mail Virtual reality (VR) is a new medium that many a technology guru has predicted will revolutionize cinema—or would, if it weren’t for the pesky problem (among others) that VR interface still requires the viewer to wear what essentially amounts to a “head box.” Nevertheless, VR markets around the world are slowly but surely expanding. Many of the major film festivals (Sundance, Veni...

Send us Fan Mail Making a feature film can be a long and painful process — especially when you’re shooting an indie film in below-freezing conditions 16 hours per day for 14 days. But that is exactly what the creative team behind "The Last Sunrise" (最后的日出) was able to do, and along the way, they generated useful insight into China’s science-fiction movie scene and the realities of f...

Send us Fan Mail In case traveling to the nearest Chinese temple may be a bit inconvenient, modern-day Chinese astrologers still have you covered — inevitably, there’s an app for that! In this episode, astrologer Wen Jun explains how she works, the kinds of clients who seek her out, the differences between Chinese and Western astrology, and other aspects of fortune-telling in the modern age. 通过...

Send us Fan Mail When prodded to think about documentaries at all, most people imagine features films that are shown in festivals and cinemas. What this picture misses is the fact that the majority of documentary filmmakers make their living producing documentaries for television. Does this mean that documentarians in China are all but guaranteed to make money in the country, with its billion-stro...

Send us Fan Mail  China’s video-game industry is a hugely popular business in a nation where over half the population regularly plays. In 2015, the size of the video-game market in China officially surpassed that of the U.S., making the Chinese video-game industry the biggest and most profitable in the world. Featuring Ava Deng - translation manager Ava’s email Sebastien Francois : Overseas Operat...

Send us Fan Mail Until the 1990s, Hollywood movies were making the vast majority of their revenue in English-speaking countries. Nowadays, these countries comprise only half the market. The main reason for the change is the appearance of new markets, including the most important one of all: China. What problems do foreign film professionals and their teams face while vying to tap into the Chinese...

Send us Fan Mail Anthony Kuhn, who works at NPR, has been working on how China is using its soft power, and that’s actually one of the main reasons the Middle Earth podcast started: to investigate how politics and culture can be linked. The culture of a country doesn't come out of thin air. Rather, there is a political and business side to it. Featuring Anthony Kuhn : Journalist | 记者 Middle...

Send us Fan Mail This is the second part of a two-part series about how the internet changed the way to consume and create content. Last time, the panel comprised people who earn a living by creating only on the Chinese internet, but today we meet the other side of the fence, the more “capitalistic” one: those who make, sell, or deal with advertisements. Featuring Kenneth Cheung : Data and Brandin...

Send us Fan Mail China has only 55% internet penetration, but almost every person online is using a smartphone, therefore a lot of phone-optimized content (video, news, silly applications to make your selfies look beautiful) is created every day. As of this month of recording, October 2018, Bytedance, the Chinese company owning news aggregator Toutiao and short video app Douyin/Tik-tok, is now THE...