To Keep Its Old Glory and Still Chase Young Shoppers, the Luxury Industry Is Changing Fast
And 2017 was the year all those changes arrived at once.
QDaily in English
2310 completed translations from the archive. Articles retain their original publication dates.
Kinect Is Discontinued: Why Did the Device Built to Free Players' Hands Fail?
For players, what matters most is the thrill a game delivers. If losing the controller doesn't add to that thrill, it is pointless — but why, exactly, didn't it?
I.T Once Set the Trends. Why Does Its Influence Keep Shrinking?
Signing Kris Wu as its spokesperson, taking e-commerce seriously at last, launching cheaper brands and experimental store formats — Hong Kong's I.T Group has been busy. About to turn 30, it wants to catch a new generation of young shoppers.
Mu Xin of Wuzhen, Wuzhen, and the Museum That Wasn't Entirely Built for Him
Admission to the museum costs 15 yuan. Its director, Chen Danqing, says: “Ninety percent of the people who walk into the museum and the memorial hall ask, ‘Who is Mu Xin?’”
The Man Who Has Made 110 Flavors of Ice Cream Says Opening an Ice Cream Shop Is No Easy Thing Now | 100 People With Ideas
Making ice cream isn't the hard part, Li Yu says — you just have to break it down. Running the shop is the hard part.
The Four Biggest Automakers Say They'll Spend $100 Billion on Electric Cars — 9 Charts on What That Means for the Car Industry
It looks like electric cars are about to kill off gasoline cars. We are still a long way from that day.
Liu Wei Has Written 47 Million Characters. What Kind of Life Does He Live? | 20 Years of Internet Literature, Part 6
After a little over a year writing on Qidian, Liu Wei's annual income passed one million yuan — the first web novelist on the site to get there.
A Man Who Left Taiwan at 30, on How He Fled a Stable Life | Housing and Our Lives ⑧
Housing is the largest thing a human being ever buys, and one of the witnesses to how a life changes. QDaily is running a series of reports that follow housing as a thread, to see what happened over the years.
100 Books, Stories From 20 Countries, More Than a Dozen Scholars: Understanding National Transitions — Spain
**A year ago, we asked a question: [“Has this society been too good to young people?”](http://www.qdaily.com/special_columns/54.html)**
Zhang Da, a Fashion Designer Who Likes Blunt Truths, Talks to Us About Clothes and People
He wants to study how clothing design has changed over decades, even a century, to learn "how much has been carried off by time, and how much has stayed."
There Are Now 18 Kinds of Bad People You Can Name. Don't Trust Anything They're Good At | QDaily Research Lab
Today's bad people are better at packaging themselves than the bad people of the past. Armed with theories quoted out of context and "politically correct" declarations that smuggle in their own premises, they are harder to spot, faster, and more convincing.
Employee Well-Being Is a Competitive Edge, Too. How Is Office Design Supposed to Help? | Our Offices, Part 4
Whether the goal is to calm nerves, stoke enthusiasm or raise output, a cup of coffee — or a small corner full of plants with a good view, where a person can unwind — sometimes works better than a raise.
Bezos's Space Tourism Plan Is Delayed Again — How Many Times Has Space Travel Broken Its Promises?
At least it's possible in the foreseeable future.
Sogou Is Finally Going Public: 9 Charts on the Rise and Fall of a Generation of Old-School Internet Companies
They got their start with tools for personal computers, then gradually fell behind as the industry shifted to mobile.
The New iPhone Isn't on Sale Yet, but the Privacy Anxiety Over Facial Recognition Has Already Begun
By now, you can't do without the technologies that make your life easier and may also give your privacy away.
Feng Xiang, the Odd Professor: the Bible, Communism, and His Actual Field, Law — What's Going On? | Interviews ⑨
Plus a fictionalized dialogue based on a real interview. He calls it "A Keepsake for People of the Future — Answering QDaily."
Shigeru Ban Builds Houses Out of Paper, Mixing Humble Materials With Serious Questions | A Curious Person
Does architecture always have to assert authority?
Can't Raise Money, Can't Sell Themselves: Second-Tier Bike-Sharing Brands Ran Out of Options in Under a Year
Four companies have already announced they are shutting down, and four more have failed to return deposits on time.
Stage Actor Liu Chang: Don't Stop Thinking, Don't Forget Yourself | Interviews ⑧
"When you watch a play, don't ask me what I'm trying to express. Think your own thoughts. I've already spent more than an hour performing in order to say it. If I could say it in a sentence or two, why would I go to all that trouble to perform it?"
Writer Liao Yimei: "I Don't Want to Repeat Myself, I Don't Want to Stay Inside My Own Framework" | Interviews ⑦
She says the truth about people and the world is the core motivation behind her writing. But she also says that the only way anyone can get along with the world is to accept that it is a flawed one.
From Buying Hollywood to a Junk Rating: Wanda Swelled With Policy, and Shrank With It
"We could have arranged the financing ourselves overseas. We just didn't want to become a company that breaks the rules."
The American Historical Association Named This Year's Prize Winners — Look at All These Good Books
Here's hoping the Chinese editions come soon!
The First Artificial Satellite Reached Earth Orbit 60 Years Ago. What Did It Change for All of Us?
From the political space race to the commercial space economy, it all began with the string of beeps Sputnik sent out after it reached space in 1957.
After a String of Acquisitions, Why Is Coach Renaming the Whole Group?
The renaming sums up three years of Coach chasing growth beyond a single brand, and formally declares its turn into a multi-brand group — but none of this will be easy, and not only because of a new arms race.
Born in 1969, He Caught the Best Years of Foreign Companies. His Way of Coping Was to "Study" | Housing and Our Lives ⑦
Housing is the largest commodity a person can ever consume, and it is also a witness to the changes in an individual's life. QDaily is running a series of reports that use housing as a thread, to see what happened over the years.
After the Hutongs Were Sealed Up: What a Chinese Woman, a Dutch Woman, a French Woman, and a Malaysian Man Set Out to Do
"We never set out to change the world," she said, looking me in the eye. "What matters is that you acted."
Startups Are Out — Why Has Co-working Become a Big-Company Business?
That seems to hold whether you run the space or rent a desk in it.
How Do You Dig Up Real Curiosity About a National Park? | 100 Entrepreneurs
"Interpretation" looks like a trivial detail. It decides how an ordinary person comes to know a piece of land.
Alibaba's Market Cap Is Closing In on Amazon's Again: 16 Charts on Its Three Years as a Public Company
Two companies that dominate retail in China and the US are both using that dominance to “tax” everyone else
One Year of China's Ride-Hailing Rules: The Policy Isn't Fully in Place, and the Growth Is Already Over
22.7% fewer users open Didi every day, and on average they open the app just 5.5 times a month
The PowerPoint-Driven Product Launch: One Giant Home-Shopping Show? | QDaily Research Lab
PowerPoint! A whole discipline of office life, the business world's beauty-filtered seller photo, the star of every internet launch event, the script of professors who can't teach… These days there are few problems in the world a few slides can't solve. If there are, a hundred slides will do.
100 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Martin Margiela
A documentary called *We Margiela* comes out in October 2017, with premieres at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, the Rotterdam arts center LantarenVenster, the Antwerp fashion museum MoMu, and 10 Corso Como in Milan
Writer Chu T'ien-hsin: I'd Rather Stay Outside the Mainstream — Never Absorbed, Never Co-opted | Interviews④
"I've seen a lot of weak people. Everyone assumes the weak are at least harmless. But because there is so much a weak person cannot do, he attacks pre-emptively, he lies, all sorts of things… he can be very dark."
Beyond Advertisers' Anger and Tech Companies' Zeal to Sell Ads, What's Left Is Mostly Confusion Among Ad People | Advertising Week New York
On site, you could feel it firsthand: tech companies are competing harder as advertising media, and traditional ad agencies are struggling to change.
“Deleted — Including Your Loves, Hatreds, Joys, Sorrows, Stories and Time”
The board’s founder hoped to gather everyone back together. What he faces instead is a scattered space for talk, and demands that no longer line up with his own.
If "a good exhibition is no different from a good magazine," what can this company teach us?
Its founder believes all your attention should go to the audience first.
The First Queer Film Festival, and Its Week on the Run in Shanghai
"Queer," in English, first meant strange, out of the ordinary — a synonym for "odd." In the 20th century, because of where the word came from and the climate around it, it turned into a slur for homosexuals. Radicals later took it back as an umbrella word for everyone who isn't heterosexual, keeping its ironic edge.
Flat Design Is Everywhere Now. Does It Really Make Pages Slower to Use?
"It isn't flat design that lowers efficiency. It's bad design that lowers efficiency."
Does Smart-Home Thinking Belong in the Office? | Our Offices ③
Labor-intensive companies trying to reinvent themselves, large multinationals, and a new kind of creativity-led company are all driving this wave of intelligent office design.
Healthy light meals keep winning over young Chinese. Why hasn't the pioneer, Wagas, expanded?
The founders don't trust franchising, and they won't take outside investment.
Hou Li, Child of the Oil Field, Born in 1973 | Housing and Our Lives ⑥
Housing is the largest commodity a human being can consume, and one of the witnesses to the changes in a person's life. QDaily is running a series of reports that use housing as a thread, to look at what happened in the past.
HTC, the last of the old guard, has sold its phone team too — how did the first generation of smartphone brands die? | QDaily Business History
Almost every one of them was dragged down by the baggage of its own past.
A New Director Wants to Capture "the Dark Parts of Youth, the Lost Parts, Something Destructive"
He says "an extremely boring aesthetic system" has blotted out much of what youth films could show.
How Did Every Word and Photo You Leave Online Become an Internet Company's Property?
Users bear all the liability; the platform alone enjoys the rights
The Sudden Death of a Viral Bakery, and Six People's Wretched Summer
Everyone tells the story of how bad it was a little differently. No one can explain why it happened.
A Week With the Apple Watch 3: Faster, and It Makes Calls — But Still an iPhone Accessory
Battery life and call quality both held up well. We also ran into the network problems.
More and More People Talk About Type. How Many Have Traced Its Connections to Social Reality?
A group called Type is Beautiful is trying to dig up those threads.
Ticket Subsidies Burned Too Much Cash: Maoyan and Weiying Merge, and Movie Ticketing Loses Another Player
The e-commerce platforms' attempts to change the film industry either came to nothing, or worked only through one device: ticket subsidies.
Seven Norwegian Artists Came to Beijing for the First Time. Their Picture Books Run on a Very Different Imagination
They also explained how their country supports picture-book making, a business that barely earns anything.
iPhone 8 Review: Glass on Both Sides Again, But the Camera Changed Most
Worth the upgrade if you are on an iPhone 7 or older — assuming you are not buying an iPhone X.
Seven Days Into Pre-Orders, the iPhone 8 Is Selling Badly — the Real Problem Is Apple's Product-Line Strategy
Does Apple want more iPhones, or pricier ones?
Born in 1968: "Growing Up Was a Process of Being Overturned, Bit by Bit" | Housing and Our Lives ⑤
Housing is the largest thing a person ever buys, and one of the witnesses to how a life changes. QDaily is running a series of reports that follow the thread of housing to see what happened in the years behind us.
17 Years of Theater Posters: She Is Both a Participant in Chinese Theater and Its Chronicler
"A poster is an art of three seconds. It has to jump out at you. Nobody stands there studying it — it's one glance, and maybe a second look over your shoulder."
Eight Years and $1.1 Billion Later, How Did Google's Self-Driving Car End Up Playing Catch-Up? | QDaily Data
Google underestimated how fast autonomous driving would reach the road, underestimated what it takes to build a new car, and underestimated how hard its first business model would be.
Alibaba and JD.com Are Opening Convenience Stores. What's the Plan?
In the end, it's about finding an entry point for the wholesale business
Three designers call their first 10 years “dumb.” How did that happen?
They didn’t want to be tied to any one field; they wanted to try everything. That drive is what they call being “dumb.”
Poets Go Online: What Kind of Jianghu Lay Behind the “Seven Days and Seven Nights” Flame War 17 Years Ago? | 20 Years of Internet Literature, Part 4
The uproar that shook the entire poetry world — where did it come from, and how did it vanish?
Wang Xiaobo's Letters, *Love You Like Life*, Are Back in Print — Li Yinhe on Wang Xiaobo, Fiction and Much Else
"I asked him what was the worst thing he was capable of. He thought about it and said: killing a cow."
Trump's $5 Trillion Tax Cut Is Coming — What He Wants, and What It Means for Different Kinds of Companies
Trump is copying Reagan again, and this time the cut is bigger than Reagan's famous tax reform.
Crayfish Keep Getting More Expensive. Who Is Actually Driving Up the Price?
And what does the business look like for the people who went into it?
Murong Xuecun: From Internet Novelist to "Public Intellectual" | 20 Years of Internet Literature ③
Or, more precisely: a critic by conscious choice.
The Year's Biggest Furniture Fair Opens: 15 Takeaways on the Push to Go Younger
Few brands stand out. Most original furniture design here is steady — or, put another way, similar.
iOS 11 is almost here: 30 changes worth knowing about
Apple has pushed out the iOS 11 GM build, which is all but the final release. Barring surprises, this is exactly what you'll get when iOS 11 arrives a week from now.
iPhone X Hands-On: The Biggest Change to the iPhone in 10 Years — and It Costs 8,388 Yuan
Face ID is surprisingly good. Apple has reinvented facial recognition.
After All the Leaks, 10 Big Questions Still Hanging Over Tomorrow's Pre-Dawn iPhone Event
There's still a lot about the iPhone X we don't know.
Selling Wine, Flowers, Fashion and Ideas: How a Frenchman Named Louis Has Made a Living in China for 20 Years
"There are just too many opportunities here — a long history, a huge country, a new language, new business openings. It's all of it together."
Born in 1984, He Became the Third Generation in China's First Workers' New Village | Housing and Our Lives ④
Housing is the largest commodity a person can buy, and it also bears witness to how an individual life changes. QDaily will run a series of reports that use housing as the thread, to see what happened in the years behind us.
More Than 8,000 People Are Moving Into Ant Group's Headquarters. How Many Needs Does It Have to Cover?
Apart from not providing housing, this place is no different from a city, or a very large residential community.
Bestselling Author Ma Boyong on History, the Writers He Likes, and Modern Education as He Sees It
We put a number of questions to "Prince Ma." Some he declined to answer; on others he told us what he thinks. Take what's useful to you.
Animator Pi San: "When We Fight Something, We Usually End Up as Ugly as the Thing We're Fighting" | Interviews ③
Independent animator Pi San, and his 18 years of making animation.
Three Years of Trying: What Would It Actually Take for Google to Move Its App Store Into China?
If Google Play comes back, an app store isn't all that has to come back with it.
From 1999 to 2016, How Did “Hongxiu Tianxiang” Find a Way to Survive? | 20 Years of Internet Literature ②
The process looks ordinary from the outside. The choices and the hardships inside it are not something an outsider could imagine.
Open-plan offices keep spreading. What do you do about privacy? | Our Offices ②
The three solutions in this piece share one thing: they scrap fixed desks, and they give employees more choices.
"I Came on June 9, 1992. Twenty-Five Years of Working and Raising a Family in Shanghai" | Housing and Our Lives, Part 3
Housing is the largest commodity human beings consume, and one of the witnesses to how individual lives change. QDaily is running a series of reports that use housing as a thread, to look at what happened in the past.
Toutiao Is Copying Zhihu's Q&A Too. Whose Business Will It End Up Taking?
Wukong Q&A is, in the end, one more place for Toutiao to produce and consume content.
A Hong Kong Ceramic Artist Has Run a Pottery Workshop in Jingdezhen for 12 Years. The Rules She Tried to Set Barely Work
Twelve years there showed her what in traditional craft deserves reverence — and how much chaos comes with watching a tradition disappear.
Writer A Yi: If You've Worked Out What You Want From Life, Move a Little Faster | Interviews ②
He has no time for WeChat's “100,000+” articles either: “Almost all of it is slop — a 100,000+ read count is just a measure of how much slop it is.”
Seesaw wants 100 specialty coffee shops. How far off is it?
A specialty coffee chain has to make every store feel new and expand efficiently at the same time. How do you do both?
Sushi vs. Sushi, Donut vs. Donut: Why Is This Food Show Such a Hit?
Food videos are far more fun than they are useful — which is a big part of why they took off on social media.
A Film Made Entirely From Surveillance Footage Asks What "Real" Means
"What is real? In a film built entirely out of real footage, where does the sense of reality lie? And a film that is wholly arranged and performed — how far from reality is it, really? These are questions well worth thinking hard about."
Writer Zhu Tianxin and Friends on Their Literary Memories of the 1980s
Excerpts from the conversation follow.
The Cassini-Huygens probe's 20-year journey is about to end — it taught us to see Saturn all over again
Burning up in Saturn's atmosphere is its final fate.
Amap and Baidu Are Again Pitching Maps as a Gateway to Local Services. Why Hasn't the Same Pitch Worked in Ten Years?
Finding good food and a restaurant still isn't a map's business.
Zhenkungfu, Yoshinoya, Yonghe King, Ajisen Ramen… Why Are All These Fast-Food Chains Stuck in Such an Awkward Spot?
Neither big nor small in scale, neither high-end nor low-end as brands — how did these chains, glamorous not so long ago, end up here?
Living With Xiaomi's and Alibaba's Smart Speakers: the Next "Entry Point," or Just Toys Like Siri?
We lived with Alibaba's Tmall Genie and Xiaomi's Xiao AI for a few days.
Secondhand Sneakers: A Subculture and a Business You'd Never Expect | QDaily Anthropology
Nike spent 29 years building this secondary market. Now it is changing fast.
Companies still want everyone in one place. How do you design an office that works? | Our Offices ①
All three cases here deal with the same question: how to work more efficiently.
How Christopher Nolan Made Dunkirk, "One of the Best War Films Ever"
Nolan brings what he is known for — a narrative that breaks time apart, an immersive visual experience — to the war film.
"Back then I felt the house was translucent, and everyone was translucent too" | Housing and Our Lives ②
A home is the largest thing a person ever buys, and one of the witnesses to how a life changes. QDaily is running a series of reports that follow housing as a thread, to see what happened in the years behind us.
How Did "Chinese Valentine's Day" Become a Big Test of Online Selling for Luxury Brands?
They all want to know the same things: on online platforms, where do consumers like to shop? And what kind of marketing actually works for luxury goods?
How Rongshuxia Opened the Era of Web Literature — and How It Fell | 20 Years of Web Literature, Part 1
In the internet's earliest days, Rongshuxia gave China's literary young people what they wanted. But it grew too fast, and paid the price every pioneer pays.
Shichahai at 55 Decibels: What Is Ruining the "Atmosphere" of a Historic Beijing District?
A bar district that grew up with the government's tacit consent has been told, in the name of "comprehensive rectification," to stop using sound systems and microphones and to keep ambient noise under 55 decibels.
Ele.me Buys Baidu Waimai: 9 Charts on What the Last O2O Business Standing Has Changed
Tens of millions of people now spend differently. But set against the whole restaurant industry, food delivery is still tiny.
What Made naked Stables' Resort Business a Hit in China?
Its founder is happy to remake himself to fit Chinese culture: he knows fengshui, banquets and baijiu — and how to shape the middle class's longing for nature.
The Emissions Scandal That Cost Volkswagen $70 Billion Is Still Unfolding. How Did It Start? A New Book Tells the Story
A $70,000 test run by university students exposed Volkswagen's cheating scandal.
“We did it step by step, on our own — from the shikumen, to the new public housing, to the big apartment we have now” | Housing and Our Lives ①
Housing is the largest commodity a person can consume, and it is also a witness to the changes in an individual life. QDaily is running a series of reports that take housing as their thread, to look at what happened in the years behind us.
Why Was NetEase the One to Build Yanxuan?
Brand-name suppliers, a mature e-commerce infrastructure, consumer demand moving upmarket — the opening was there for almost everyone. Why did NetEase take it?
How Did Socks Become Fashion's Seasoning? | Market Inventors
Designers now rank socks with sunglasses as a small item with lethal impact — "they make runway looks less unattainable, without making trendsetters feel it's beneath them."
The "Formidable Creator" Li Jing Says Today's Chinese Have a Busy, Feverish Madness | Interviews ①
"I wish everyone, at this critical moment in history, would do their best not to go mad and not to turn stupid. Above all, don't fish in troubled waters by playing mad or playing the fool."
Silicon Valley's Giants Silenced the Far Right. But Is That Their Call to Make?
Where does a big company's power end?