The Future Affairs Administration Wants to Build a "Three-Body Universe." Can It Make Science Fiction a Different Kind of Business? | 100 Entrepreneurs
Besides enthusiasm, what assets does this company have?
QDaily in English
2310 completed translations from the archive. Articles retain their original publication dates.
The "Father of the Boutique Hotel" Just Opened a New Hotel in New York. What's Its Selling Point?
This time he isn't trying to upend the traditional hotel business. He has aimed straight at Airbnb, the rival hotels now consider their biggest threat.
Cigarette Sales Are Falling. So What Is the E-Cigarette — the "New-Type Cigarette" — in China? | Market Inventors
It never became a substitute for cigarettes. It caught on as a toy instead.
AI Is Already Predicting Who Will Become a Criminal, and That's Not Good News | In AI, the Key Variable Is Still People ①
You see, it doesn't just play chess
Whose Business Is Toutiao Taking — Baidu's, or CCTV's? | What's Happening in the Advertising Market, Part 3
Advertising is going through a "structural" change: more and more brands want a better channel for showing ads on phones, and mobile advertising is shifting from sales-driven ads toward brand ads. This is the third piece in the series, and it takes up that question.
Why Did These Two Run a Restaurant for Seven Years That Served Only "Enemy Food" From Countries at Odds With America?
"Conflict matters. Before you can find a solution, you have to bring the conflict out into the open," Dawn Weleski says.
CES Put On a Very Technical Auto Show in Shanghai. Here's What Holds Up, and What Doesn't
Mostly, it's just autonomous driving
Game Makers Are About to Promise the World at E3 Again — Here Are the Changes and Games Worth Watching
E3 is open to the public for the first time, and it now has panel discussions where well-known figures argue about where the industry is headed. The show is starting to look like a fan convention.
The Arab World Has Cut Qatar Off. Beyond How Strange the Affair Itself Is, Here Are 6 Ways It Will Affect the World
For Qatar, this may mean giving up its strategy of playing all sides — and losing out, as a result, on opportunities in the Middle East and in the world beyond.
IKEA is working with streetwear labels, inventing new foods and moving onto third-party e-commerce. Will it be a better IKEA?
Cooperation, learning and innovation were the three words heard most often at this year's IKEA Democratic Design Days.
We Tried DJI's Newest Drone, the Spark: At Last, a Drone You Can Just Pull Out and Fly
Remember the Lily drone? The idea Lily never pulled off, DJI has now built.
What Does the New iPad Pro, Built for Work, Look Like? We Tried It at the Launch Event
10.5-inch iPad Pro + iOS 11
His Houses Missed America's Future, But They Were Riches Enough for America | A Curious Person
June 8 marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Happy birthday, Mr. Wright.
A Frenchman Found 850,000 Old Negatives in Beijing. Now the Interesting Question Is Who Gets to Interpret Them
The Beijing Silvermine project has been running for eight years, and Thomas Sauvin is still looking for more collaborators.
The SF Express–Alibaba Fight Has Quieted Down for Now, but the 6 Questions Behind It Are Still Unanswered
The user always gets the worst of it.
A Smart Speaker, a New OS, and Upgrades Across the Mac and iPad Lines: 33 Things Worth Knowing From Apple's Keynote Early This Morning
This was Apple's most crowded product keynote in years
Thirty Years Ago, a Curiosity About Aboriginal Australia Decided His Whole Life as a Painter | 100 People With Ideas
What might life look like for someone interested in "faraway things"?
Which Shanghai Film Festival Tickets Should You Fight For? Here Are 10 Films Worth the Trouble
Good luck.
Trump Says Leaving the Paris Agreement Serves America. So Why Is US Business Furious?
This willful decision won't hit every industry right away, but "renegotiating emissions targets is expensive, and it adds a great deal of uncertainty."
What does SPACE 10, the lab that developed eight meatballs for IKEA, actually do?
An innovation lab that refuses to be called an “innovation lab.”
They Say "One Round of Barbecue" Is a Unit for Measuring How Serious a Situation Is. There Are 18 More
Weight has units and length has units, so "luxury" and "awkwardness" need units too — invent enough kinds of minimal unit and you can describe any situation precisely.
What Kind of Design Thinking Goes Into a Kindergarten Shaped Like a Beehive? | 100 People With Ideas
Architecture is not structure, and not decoration — it should be a pursuit of spatial order.
He Never Finished a Single Building in Shanghai, Yet This "Stateless" Architect Left a Deep Mark on the City
To look back on his life is to look back on the city's.
How Does a Sandwich-and-Light-Meals Company Make It to an IPO? React Fast Enough | Market Inventors
Scaling up while staying flexible and keeping its character is the biggest challenge Pret A Manger faces next.
"Develop and Release Games Slowly, Like a TV Show" — What Would That Actually Mean?
In one sentence: it means paying forever.
MP3 Reaches the End of the Line. A Technology Born for Telephones and Radio Ended Up Remaking the Music Industry | QDaily Business History
Its most important early backer was the European Union, an institution better known for its bureaucracy.
Android's Father Wants This New Phone to Take On Apple and Samsung. What's His Vision for the Phone's Future?
First Andy Rubin has to sell more of his product. Then more still.
Why Would a Designer Bother Designing a "Design Standards Manual"? | 100 People With Ideas
Jesse Reed thinks these manuals, with their endless detail on how to apply a design system, are a complete expression of "design thinking" — from before the phrase was worn out.
Taiwan's Road to Marriage Equality: What Did It Take to Get Here?
We interviewed people who were there, and tried to reconstruct the key moments and scenes along the way.
What working method led this design studio to put textiles on a speaker?
At the Mindpark Creative Conference, presented jointly by TOPYS and Yingtou Land during Shenzhen Design Week, QDaily interviewed the Danish design studio design-people.
Remember That Hypnotic Business-Card-Swapping Ad? We Talked to the Man Who Made It
Morihiro Harano's work brings grand spectacle to mind. What it actually attends to is the smallest detail.
These Foreigners Have Run a Lifestyle Media Outlet in Shanghai for 15 Years. What Have They Been Through?
Making good content in an age when everyone chases clicks.
SoftBank's $100 Billion Fund Is the Biggest in the History of Tech Investing. Has Venture Capital Changed, or Have the Companies?
Masayoshi Son made tens of billions of dollars investing in Alibaba. What has he set his sights on now?
13 Years After Dropping Out, Zuckerberg Went Back to Harvard to Teach the Graduates How to Live
Zuck says a sense of purpose is what brings real happiness.
Old-Fashioned Train Travel Is Hot Again — as a New Kind of Luxury Trip
Japan is adding two luxury train routes this year. China is adding one too.
Five players with seven world titles ganged up on AlphaGo. They still lost.
Tomorrow is Ke Jie's last game against AlphaGo.
DC's *Wonder Woman* Is Said to Be Different. Three Producers Explain the Five Things Behind It
It has reversed the DC universe's slide with critics — and it may bring in bigger box office, too.
1996: *Being Digital* and the Internet's First Steps in China | China in Bestsellers ⑦
We look back at the stories behind these legendary books — but the bigger question is why we ended up with the society we have today. What have we lived through? What have we gained and lost? What wealth and what consensus have we accumulated? How did we get here?
A Stagnant Economy Is Crueler Than You Think — Meet the Young People of Japan's Low-Desire Society
Young Japanese have lived through a stagnation no other developed country's youth has known, and it has reshaped how they think about spending. Their shrunken appetite for consumption may have little to do with being poor; it has become a matter of consumer consciousness.
A Forgotten Mansion Is Now a Creative Park. Could It Be Your Doorway to Rediscovering Shanghai?
Columbia Circle survives today as a baffling name on a wall along Shanghai's Xinhua Road. This old mansion is where it came from.
16.8 Billion Yuan Couldn't Stop the Stock Slide, and Now Jia Yueting Has Stepped Aside. What Moves Does LeEco Have Left?
There is no hope left in those businesses anyway.
How Does a Design-Led Boutique Hotel Become a Mass-Market Product? This Is the Story of W Hotels | Market Inventors
Take away either one — a taste for design, or a big group's global supply chain — and none of it happens.
What Might the "10,000 Hours" of a Taobao Influencer-Store Designer Look Like? | Behind Influencer E-Commerce, Part 3
The "10,000 hours" rule holds that skill comes only from long practice and accumulation. In the last piece of our influencer series, we want to show you how a designer in this business is made.
To Gain 0.00007 Seconds, a Trading Firm Paid $14 Million for an Empty Lot | QDaily Data
For high-frequency trading firms, two-thirds the speed of light is still too slow
Google Launched 10 Products at Its Annual Conference — Hardware, Software, Services, and in the End All of It Is AI | Reporting Live From Google I/O
None of them can yet build Google a business to follow advertising. But investing in technology this steadily beats not investing at all.
Wang Bing, the Director of *West of the Tracks*, Has Made Another 15-Hour Documentary
He is willing to do the slow, unglamorous work of recording these things properly — enough to leave most of his peers behind.
Running Everything From the Farm to the Restaurant: The Opportunities and the Problems | How's the Organic Business Doing, Part 2
QDaily is devoting at least four articles to the state of China's organic business. This is the second: the restaurants that champion "farm to table."
In 1986, *The Great Tangshan Earthquake* Told Chinese Readers a Truth That Had Been Frozen for 10 Years | China in Bestsellers ⑥
In part this series looks back at the stories behind these legendary books; but the larger question, of course, is this: why did we end up with the society we have today, what have we lived through, what have we gained and lost, what wealth and what consensus have we accumulated, and how did we get here?
The "Wishful" Preservationists and the Villagers Who've Had Enough: Should This 500-Year-Old Village in the Heart of Shenzhen Be Torn Down?
It is a witness to history, part of the city's working machinery, and an unwanted slum.
In the Mobile Ad Era, How Did BlueFocus Get Its Shot at the 4A Agencies? | What's Happening to the Ad Market, Part 2
The advertising business is going through a “structural” change, and “mobile” is the force driving it. In three articles we explain what that change is, and how the roles and the balance of power along the industry's supply chain are shifting. Part two looks at the contest between Chinese companies and the 4A agencies.
The Regulators Have Arrived and the Licenses Already Handed Out Could Be Void Any Day — Can Internet Hospitals Still Be a Business?
In industry regulation, the only certainty is uncertainty.
"With Nothing But Fists and Attitude": How America and Hong Kong Each Received Bruce Lee, 40 or 50 Years Ago
With a new Bruce Lee film about to open, a look back at his past as a cultural icon.
This young man made a mystery film, and its release may already be the best chance this environment can give him
How did a man who was shooting promotional videos for the Mianyang Museum a few years ago get this far?
From Airbus and Bell to Silicon Valley startups, everyone says they're building electric planes. How far off are they really?
The 1957 prediction hasn't actually gotten much closer
Nike Went to Extraordinary Lengths to Run a Marathon in Under 2 Hours. What Was It Really For? (It Came Up 25 Seconds Short)
No question, this was a show of force — but one that was good for the brand and good for science.
He's Made Comics in China for 40 Years, But Never Had His Japanese Peers' Luck | 100 People With Ideas
*Manyou* tried to copy the Japanese manga model. Forty years on, he's still stuck in an awkward position.
Every Supermarket Is Doing E-Commerce Now. We Tested China's Top Five Chains
RT-Mart, Carrefour, Yonghui, Bailian and Wumart. (We left out China Resources Vanguard, which actually ranks second, and Walmart, which ranks third: the former's online arm barely exists, and the "online Walmart" started life as Yihaodian, which now belongs to JD.com.) Here is what we found.
Edison's 138-Year-Old Light Bulb Business Is Being Sold. Its Biggest Contribution Wasn't Lighting | QDaily Business History
Without the spread of the light bulb, home appliances could not exist.
The 800-Person "Factory" That Manufactures a Taobao Product Called the Influencer | Behind Influencer E-Commerce, Part 2
In three stories, we show you the people standing behind an influencer whose products sell out, and the industry changes they have lived through. This is the second.
Two Chroniclers on What Became of Two Old Neighborhoods, Before and After Commercial Real Estate | Shanghai's Nanjing West Road as a Specimen ②
“Culture is fundamentally about people. Once the people are gone, there is no value left.”
One Year In, What Is Zhihu Live Actually Worth?
It still isn't enough to carry Zhihu's revenue.
What Can Art Become in the Information Age? His Answer: Manufacture Dreams | 100 People With Ideas
At Mindpark, the creative conference that TOPYS and Yingtou Zhidi staged together during Shenzhen Design Week, teamLab's founder gave QDaily an exclusive interview.
Mobile Ads Took Just Six Years to Beat the PC and Become Digital Advertising's Main Act. What Happened to the Ad Market? ①
Advertising is going through a "structural" change, and "going mobile" is the force behind it. In three articles we will explain what the change is, and how the roles and the balance of power along the industry's chain are shifting. This first piece looks at where the mobile ad market stands now.
TED talks are free online. So why does a ticket still cost $10,000?
The most elite, and the most open
Can You Really Run Book Publishing on the Internet and Crowdsourcing? | 100 Entrepreneurs
Fiberead has genuinely made foreign books appear in Chinese faster. What the model can't fix is how good they are.
From 1980 On: Shen Changwen and the Hundred-Plus Books That Freed Chinese Minds | What Kind of China Do Best-Sellers Show Us? ⑤
Part of this is a look back at the stories of these legendary books. The larger question, of course, is this: why do we have the society we have today? What have we lived through? What have we gained and what have we lost? What wealth and what consensus have we built up? How did we get here?
This Psychology Professor Built a Museum of Failure: 70-Plus Flops From More Than 60 Famous Companies
In a year of upheaval and division, Samuel West thinks the habit of learning from failure and chaos matters more than ever.
How China's First International Hotels Became an Experiment in Architecture — and in Society
What did the first foreign investors, hotel operators and architects bold enough to try actually go through?
All Those "Most Livable City" Rankings, and Not One of Them Seems to Know Where Young People Want to Live | QDaily Research Lab
When young people define "livable," what they want in the end is something to look forward to, as little friction as possible, people like themselves, and a bit of respect.
A Few Chinese Companies Made Livestreaming Big in America. So What Are Americans Doing on It?
This is not at all what Silicon Valley had in mind.
Her Job: Using Her Own Curiosity to "Keep Challenging People's Preconceptions About Museums"
QDaily interviews Paola Antonelli, MoMA's senior curator of architecture and design, the woman The Atlantic called "the most modern curator."
Peter Chan on *This Is Not What I Expected*, *Soul Mate*, and a Market Held Hostage by "Small-Town Youth" Taste
Both films were incubated at We Pictures, the company he founded — and that is this director's answer to a changing market.
From Back Street to Shopping Mall: Four Kinds of Commerce on One 700-Meter Street | Shanghai's Nanjing West Road as a Specimen ①
What these 700 meters have been through over the decades, and what they mean.
This American Brand Has Made Suits for 199 Years. Now It Wants to Start Over in China
Getting younger, building a womenswear business, and working out the Chinese market — these are the problems Brooks Brothers has to solve.
China's Basketball Association Exits CBA Company. Yao Ming's League Still Faces These 4 Problems
The system, the national team, sponsorship, and a league that is still immature — all of it now sits in front of Yao Ming.
How to Prepare a Talk Worth the World's Attention: Secrets From TED's Speakers | TED 2017 On-Site Report
More time, tighter control. Both easy to say.
1996: China Can Say No, and a Bigger Wave of Nationalism | What Kind of China Do Best-Sellers Show Us? ④
Part of this is a look back at the stories of these legendary books. The larger question, of course, is this: why do we have the society we have today? What have we lived through? What have we gained and what have we lost? What wealth and what consensus have we built up? How did we get here?
The Oxford English Dictionary is the reference book in miniature: what it has been through, and what it will become
When was the last time you opened a paper dictionary?
Hawking Says Humanity Should Pause AI Research and Development
"In my lifetime I have witnessed profound changes in society. The most profound of them is the rise of artificial intelligence."
Why Are Most of the Faces at the Beijing Film Festival Web-Video Companies?
Will rapid expansion today produce a creative future?
Here's a Copy of Jiazazhi, the "Fake Magazine" That's All About Independent Photo Publishing | 100 People With Ideas
In February 2017, Jiazazhi opened a real, physical bookstore in Ningbo's Jiangbei District.
Toyo Ito's Shanghai retrospective explains the architect who builds public space inside disaster camps
Seven years after 3/11, they built 14 Homes-for-All for survivors. Is it a performance, or does it work?
79 Industry Insiders Got Together. On These 12 Questions About the Future of Food and Drink, Nobody Is Sure
Drawing on three days of forum talks and QDaily's continuing coverage of the food and beverage business, we've pulled out 12 observations the industry might learn something from.
LVMH Is Buying Dior for 6.5 Billion Euros. What Is This 70-Year-Old Brand Really Selling?
Two Dior businesses, kept apart for half a century, are finally being put back together and folded into LVMH.
A Theater Festival Just Ended in Rural Weifang — Young Artists' "Experiment" to Change the Countryside
The festival's own participants are wrestling with a question: how do you tell "self-indulgence" apart from "creation"?
"Products That Look Different" Are Winning Shoppers Over. What Are the Designers Behind Them Thinking?
Solving a problem is what counts. So how do packaging designers find the problem — and how do they solve it?
An Organic Farm That Began With "China's Most Beautiful Pigsty" | How Is the Organic Business Doing? ①
QDaily will run at least four stories on the state of the organic business in China. The first is Sun Commune, where the farm is the foundation of the business but not the source of its profits.
The Shanghai Auto Show Is as Crowded as Ever. What Will the Industry Fight Over Next? | 2017 Shanghai Auto Show
New energy, new technology — but what carmakers care about most is still how to sell more cars in China's enormous market.
*Meteor Garden* Is Coming Back After 16 Years. Can Taiwanese Idol Dramas Still Catch Fire?
In the 2000s, Taiwan's "idol dramas" bloomed. But a thin, repetitive production line soon burned itself out in Asia's much larger market for girlish romance.
Behind WeChat's Shutdown of Tipping: Apple and the Internet at a Crossroads
A conflict between two monopolists.
McDonald's China Has a Mobile Ordering App Now. We Tried It First.
The app is already on version 4.8.21, but McDonald's says it is still a trial release, so don't expect too much.
Concept cars carry the industry's imagination of the future, and carmakers love to show them off — so what was worth seeing at the Shanghai Auto Show? (Photo-heavy warning
One impression: concept cars no longer look like they came straight out of a science-fiction novel — but they still don't feel quite real.
Street Shops Keep Disappearing. What Kind of City Does Shanghai Want to Be? | The Vanishing Shanghai, Part 3
What street-level shops do for a city's charm goes far beyond "small business." At the current pace, it is hard to imagine how open and varied Shanghai will still be 20 years from now.
Who's Putting On Shanghai Fashion Week?
What can a team of 26 do to make some noise outside the Big Four fashion week system?
From Guangzhou's Shisanhang to Taobao's Influencer Shops: This Is How the Clothing Business Changed ①
In three stories, we'll show you who stands behind an influencer selling hit products, and what changes they have lived through in this industry. This is the first.
Playlists Are Drawing More and More Attention. Will They Remake the Music Industry the Way Singles Once Did?
From how artists are made to how music travels to how people listen, the playlist has changed every link in the chain.
JD.com, Alibaba, Amazon: Why Are the World's Biggest E-Commerce Companies All Going Out to Buy Supermarkets?
The e-commerce sites that used the internet to beat big supermarkets and department stores have turned around and started running stores of their own.
Hey, Young People Who Make Clothes — What Exactly Are You Thinking? | Shanghai Fashion Week
Then again, from 2007 to 2017, what they think has never quite lined up with what everyone else thinks.
Yu Baimei, Who Made "Bad Movies" With Deng Chao, on Stephen Chow, High and Low Taste, and His Own Work
In the late 1990s, when Yu Baimei was knocking around online, he wrote an essay called "Dissecting Stephen Chow." Chow later answered it: "...Mr. Yu Baimei understands me quite well. I'm not afraid of people saying I have no ideas, but I am afraid of people not liking me."
Tech Giants Hire Star Architects to Build Their Headquarters. What Do They Want Besides Vanity?
For companies like Alibaba, Tencent and Samsung, architecture is an essential part of the corporate image — but these buildings are no longer just "a landmark."