The Shared-Bike Bubble Burst, and Every Link in the Bicycle Supply Chain Was Hit
When an internet bubble that had reached deep into manufacturing burst, what vanished was not just numbers in the accounts of internet companies and their investors.
QDaily in English
2310 completed translations from the archive. Articles retain their original publication dates.
If You Like the Architect Kengo Kuma, Don't Miss His Exhibition on 10 Building Materials
Bamboo, wood, paper, stone, metal, brick and tile, glass, resin, membrane/fiber, earth.
Five Days With the iPhone XS Max: Mainly, It's Big
Another small-screen-to-Plus upgrade — except this time it's called Max
Why Are Books Getting Thicker?
It would not be an overstatement to say publishers mean to use pricier, thicker books to remake the industry itself, and reading habits along with it.
Two or Three Hundred Yuan Buys You a Gene Test, But That's Still Far From a Business
Can life be computed?
Dubbed "New Ugly" Because His Work Looks Too "Ugly": What Is the Appeal of Graphic Designer Yui Takada?
"Sloppily distorted typefaces, crude and rough images, and careless layouts make it hard to associate Yui Takada with Japanese design in the conventional sense."
The Man Who Documented the Wenchuan Earthquake: “If I Didn't Get to the Bottom of These Questions, I'd Think About Them for the Rest of My Life” | “Ten Years” ⑩
He worked it out. He could not change it.
Over $80 Billion in Market Value Gone: Why Do CEOs' Personal Scandals Cost Companies So Much Now?
Scandals come in all kinds, but what finally forces a CEO out is that investors lost money.
The Death of 34 Movie Theaters, and One Street's Past and Present
They once accounted for half of China's film industry. Today they have lost any reason to exist.
A Japanese Grandmother on the Student Movement She Joined 50 Years Ago: An Age of Idealism, Freedom, and Violence
This is the second piece in our Age of Utopia series.
Apple Launches Three New iPhones, the Cheapest at 6,500 Yuan
Consumers trading down? Apple doesn't think so.
At the 2018 Shanghai Furniture Fair, New Products Held Their Standard, and Designers Thought Harder About Young Urban Consumers
Two exhibition halls, more than 300,000 square meters, nearly half an hour's drive apart. Out of more than a thousand brands, we picked the freshest and most inventive things to show you.
Apple Is About to Refresh Its Entire Hardware Lineup. What Do We Still Not Know?
Got your seat ready?
Psychological Relief Work After the Earthquake Frustrated Her — and Changed the Course of Her Life | "Ten Years" ⑩
"One earthquake in Sichuan pushed the development of psychology forward by 20 years."
What Makes a Public Space Work? A Danish Architect Spent Fifty Years Watching Squares and Streets
Roads, squares, fountains — having them doesn't mean they work. Beyond building them, there's a layer of design you can't see.
Plenty of Tech Accessories Look Good. This One Hasn't Dated in 10 Years | 100 People With Ideas
How did they do it?
Song Nianshen: East Asia's Trouble With History Comes Down to How We Understand "the Modern" | Interviews
Starting in the late 19th century, East Asia gradually adopted a view of time built around the nation-state, flowing in one direction, driven by development. Song Nianshen argues that view is wrong.
Shanghai Has a New Crop of Ice Cream Brands. Can They Rewrite the Rules Häagen-Dazs Set?
With new flavors, new channels and new designs, a wave of young ice cream brands is going after the hold Häagen-Dazs and its peers have on the premium market.
"We've Been Here, and So Has Brother Xing": Three Entrepreneurs of Huaqing Jiayuan | This Is Wudaokou, Full of Young People ④
"This story feels very close to me — real, inspiring, get-rich-quick... Here, dreams feel within reach."
From Northeast China to Shanghai, From Life to Writing: Writer Jin Yucheng on His Past | Interviews
"A writer's world is actually very narrow."
Is Jack Ma's Retirement Bad News?
It is bad news. It deepens the slide in confidence in China's private economy.
Happy 90th Birthday, Mr. K, Who Gave Himself and the World a Dazzling Life
If you've thought of something, you don't need to say it out loud.
Twenty Years In, the Democratized Knowledge Google Championed Looks Like a Failure | QDaily Business History
Google once set itself a goal higher than "success."
What Counts as "Decorum" in the Age of "Because I Feel Like It"? Whatever It Is, Thinking Only About Your Own Words and Actions Won't Do
35 suggestions about decorum, offered for discussion.
Six Months Without Game Licenses: What China's Game Companies Went Through
In the 163 days since China stopped issuing game licenses, 600 million players have spent a summer with no new games.
Population Is a Problem | After Taking In More Than 500,000 People in Half a Year, What Has Changed in Xi'an?
Housing prices, the cost of living, traffic, education — wherever you look, discontent is building. Yet the same changes have left some people more confident than ever about Xi'an's future.
A New Crop of Consumer Companies Is Being Born in America — and They Mean Something Very Different by "Brand"
When there is not much innovation left in consumer goods, how do these new companies — the ones aiming for your bathroom, kitchen, closet or living room — make money?
What Do Artists Who Paint With AI Want — and Are These Paintings Art at All?
There may be no right answer, but the question is worth asking.
She Left the Place She'd Lived in for 66 Years, and Never Wants to Go Back | Housing and Our Lives #18
Gongyi Fang, at Lane 989, Sichuan North Road in Shanghai, was built in the 1920s. This is the story of one household there.
"Now That's What I Call Music!": 35 Years On, What Has This Compilation Witnessed in Music and Society?
Who becomes a star is, in some mysterious way, already decided.
The 2018 Summer Box Office Slowed Again. Is Chinese Cinema About to Hit Its Ceiling?
This time it's the audience's numbers and habits that set the industry's ceiling.
23 Ordinary People's Oral History of World War I: What Is "the Truth of War" Built On? | Interviews
"Though their fates differed, their roles differed, and they belonged to different nations, all these people can be united by one fact: what the war took from them — youth, illusions, hope, humanity, or life."
Coca-Cola Buys Costa: After 132 Years, the Sugar-Water Company Finally Commits to a New Business
An acquisition worth looking forward to.
Global Headlines Express | The Nation Revisits the Question People Asked 50 Years Ago — "What Is Freedom?" — and Other Important News
Global Headlines was QDaily's new column for 2018. It ended on August 3. Thanks for reading.
17 Scholars' Reading Lists: They Might Make Us Richer, or Better, or Just More Resolute
This is the final piece in the series "Living With the Future."
The Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale Draws Hundreds of Thousands. How Does It Help Revive Japan's Ever-Declining Countryside?
A hard fact: like every art festival, it can only bring attention and a brief flow of visitors — it still can't cure the countryside's decline at the root
Starbucks Is Getting Into Delivery. Can the Advantages of Its "Third Place" Move Online?
Finally.
Peking University Tells Incoming Professional Master's Students It Can't House Them All. What Happened?
The reason is unclear — and no one is sure what they are even entitled to know.
A Young Social Worker in Post-Quake Yingxiu: "They Don't Take Part, Don't Pay Attention, Don't Care What We're Doing" | "Ten Years" ⑧
Zhao Xiaokang discovered that social work heals — the people he served, and himself.
Global Headlines Express | 4 Million Indians Became Illegal Immigrants Overnight, and The Guardian Says the Free-Speech Panic Is a Crisis Cooked Up by the Right
Global Headlines is a new QDaily column launched in 2018. It's still a trial run, but it remains committed to helping you know more.
Everyone Is Doing "Retro," and Now the Luxury Houses Have Joined In: Sneakers Are Hot for a Fourth Year. What Is Changing in This Market?
Sneaker trends change faster and faster — and keeping up doesn't make you a winner.
A Film That Leaves You Baffled, and a Man Who Wants to Invent a World | How I Became a Director ④
A scene like this could probably only happen at something like the FIRST Film Festival — the problem is that once you step outside, the meaning left in it belongs to the director alone.
Ten Years of the "International Tourism Island": Who Does Hainan Actually Want?
After the property boom faded, Hainan still looks like an isolated island.
What Mattered Over 40 Years? This Reform-and-Opening-Up Exhibition Has Unusual Answers
A scattered micro-exhibition, but the contents are genuinely interesting.
What Is the Standard for a Good Society? 16 Scholars Answer
Perhaps we should know: What is good? What is it we long for? What should we hold to more firmly?
Pinduoduo Went Public Three Years After Its Founding, With a Market Cap Two-Thirds of JD.com's. 40 Charts to Understand What Kind of Company This Is
The problems Taobao once went through, Pinduoduo is about to go through again.
Global Headlines Express | The First Liquid Water Lake Found on Mars, and Foreign Policy on How Conservation Became Ecological Colonialism
Global Headlines is a new QDaily column launched in 2018, dedicated to helping you know more.
Two French Women Are Fangirls of the “Auntie” — So They Made a Magazine Called Fan Girl | 100 People With Ideas
“Chinese aunties are really different.”
Shenzhen Has Reached the Age of No Doubts. One Observer Is Full of Them | Shenzhen at 40 ⑤
"When we talk about Shenzhen, we're also talking about what China's market economy should look like."
Global Headlines Express | Greek Wildfires Kill 74; The Economist on Netflix's Backing of Stand-up Comedy
Global Headlines is a new QDaily column launched in 2018, dedicated to helping you know more.
What Does Tibetan Identity Mean to Director Lhapal Gyal? | How I Became a Director, Part 3
The FIRST International Film Festival is bringing many previously unknown names to the surface. We'll introduce you to them.
450 Million Check-ups a Year, and Now Alibaba Is Muscling In — What Kind of Business Is the Health Check-up, Really?
A profit of 44 yuan per visit is no longer enough, so the check-up business has started telling an internet story
Fifty Years After the Utopian Age Ended, a Man Who Lived Through France's "May Storm" Recalls the Summer of 1968
"Today there is almost no corner of the world free of the influence and the legacy of the 1960s."
He Spent Eight Years Training a Computer to Be a Designer. What Role Is Left for the Designer? | 100 People With Ideas
The question Zhang Zhoujie gets asked most often is about how to define him: designer or artist? And if the designer is a computer, what role is left for him?
Global Headlines Express | Özil Answers the Football Association in Three Posts and Quits the National Team; Vanity Fair on the Media Giants' Urgent Merger Rush
Global Headlines is a new QDaily column launched in 2018, dedicated to helping you know more.
Calls for single women's right to have children are growing louder. What reality do we actually face?
The "ultra-single society" has arrived. Our ways of living, and the rules and protections around them, should change with it.
All of Singapore's trash ends up on this island, and it doesn't look like a dump
How exactly do they manage that?
40 Years of Reform and Opening Up: What China Got Right, and What It Still Has to Do | Living With the Future No. 13
In this installment: what the greatest achievement of reform and opening up actually was; what we got right; the path our achievements depended on … and, of course, the confusions and the problems still waiting to be solved.
Global Headlines Express | Trump Invites Putin to the US Again; The Economist on Singapore's Much-Suppressed Gay Pride Event
Global Headlines is QDaily's new column for 2018, dedicated to helping you know more.
Pre-Sold Homes Supply a Third of China's Property Development Funding — and the Practice Isn't Even That Old
The cancellation, it seems, was a misunderstanding
State-Enterprise Restructuring, Empty-Nest Elderly, a Vanishing Old City: What a 75-Year-Old Hohhot Photographer Has Recorded
A camera can change only so much. He keeps going anyway.
Sociologist Huang Yingying: How Should We Look at Sex, a Topic Both Everyday and Distant — and What Do We Miss? | Interviews
Her new book asks who tells the stories about sex — the everyday ones and the hidden ones — how they get told, and how they go untold.
"Noninvasive Prenatal Genetic Testing" and Its Flagship Company Are Under Fire. How Many Problems Are Tangled Up Here?
No technology can predict risk with 100% certainty — and in this case, the risk came from how it was sold.
He Zheng: You Have to Make Something About Your Own Hometown, Like It's a Sense of Mission | How I Became a Director ①
The FIRST Youth Film Festival has pushed a lot of previously unknown names to the surface. We'll introduce you to them.
Global Headlines Express | Trump's Helsinki Summit Stirs Controversy Again, and France Is Accused of Using Football Success to Mask Deeper Tensions
Global Headlines is a new QDaily column launched in 2018, currently in a trial run. It is still dedicated to helping you know more.
Yuan Geng the Administrator, and the Shekou He Ran as a Model of Reform and Opening-Up | Shenzhen at 40, Part 4
"Yuan Geng was the brain of Shekou." Today, most people have forgotten him.
A Strange Property Market, and the Hainan Real Estate Agencies That Collapsed Overnight
Created by policy, and destroyed by policy.
The World Cup Is Over, and the Tech Squad Led by VAR Has Never Stolen This Much of the Spotlight
From the arc of a ball curling into the net, to how players perform, to the calls that decide a match, to the way a game is enjoyed — technology shapes every World Cup
Ingmar Bergman at 100: His Assistant Director Remembers the Details of Their Last Film Together
"I noticed that even after 45 films, he still couldn't sleep at night, anxious about ideas for the next one"
Economist Chen Zhiwu: Without a Globalization of Ideas, Business Is Just a One-Off Deal | Interviews
“A big reason China's capital markets and stock market don't work is that engineering thinking still plays the lead, not financial thinking or market thinking.”
Talent Shows Are Restricted Again. What Keeps Them Alive as a Product?
What is it, exactly, that "the people love to see and hear"?
100 Personas for Everything: The Label Performance Nobody Escapes | 100 Big Questions About Life
Every time you hit post, you are putting out an image. You want to perform your best side for other people — but in their eyes it may look like something else entirely.
The 10 Days Douyin's Ads Vanished, and the Advertisers Who Turned Cautious
The 10-day suspension is still being felt, and Toutiao isn't the only one feeling it
Photojournalist Tsuzuki Kyoichi Documents Ordinary Lives — and Keeps Getting Called "Fringe" | Yoshii Shinobu's Second Round
"Yoshii Shinobu's Second Round" is a QDaily column by Yoshii Shinobu, a Japanese writer who works in Chinese. A "second round" (nijikai) is what Japanese office workers call the optional follow-up gathering after the first round of after-work drinks — the party where the talk loosens up.
Collectivist Housing From the 1950s Shouldn't Be Studied Only as a "Legacy Problem"
A utopian vision, a complicated present — more than sixty years on, it still shapes the cities we live in
Global Headlines Roundup | All 13 of Thailand's Trapped Soccer Team Are Out; The Atlantic on the Emotional Cost of Sperm Donation
Global Headlines is a new QDaily column launched in 2018 and still in trial run. As ever, it is here to help you understand more of the world.
Every Policy Became an Incentive to Buy: How Hangzhou Arrived at a 17-Million-Yuan Deposit, Step by Step
A 17-million-yuan earnest deposit: buying a home in Hangzhou has become something close to incomprehensible.
Global Headlines | Britain's Foreign Secretary Quits; Science Exposes the Drug-Money Ties Behind FDA Reviews
Global Headlines is a new QDaily column launched in 2018. It is still a trial run, and it is still committed to helping you know more.
Hupu's Male Aesthetic, and the Presence of a Community's Persona
“Come to Walking Street to see male aesthetics — if you're a man, this is the community you have to visit!”
Chaumet Opens a Jewelry Show in Tokyo, With Some Explanation of the Treasures and the Life They Stood For
We spoke with the show's two curators — the former director of the Louvre and the director of the Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum
If Your City Sprays Pesticides on Its Green Spaces, How Much Do You Know About the Risks?
With no real standards and no real oversight, the pesticides used in urban greening are putting the environment and public health at risk. A few people are trying to change that.
Amsterdam Dug Up a River to Build a Metro Line, and Stumbled Into a Journey Through Urban Archaeology
The stories behind 700,000 objects add up to Amsterdam
Tian Yimiao Has Spent Years Popularizing Classical Music. Here's How She Thinks About It, and How She Listens | The Study
The Study is a new QDaily column for 2018. What it cares about is how people's knowledge is put together.
How Do You Cultivate Civic Consciousness, and How Do You Build a Sound Mechanism for Public Discussion? | Living With the Future No. 12
Posing the question matters as much as solving it. Sometimes thinking the question through is the only road there is.
From Delivery to Heat-and-Eat Meal Kits: How Are Wangxiangyuan, Xibei and Their Peers Courting Chinese Diners Who Increasingly Don't Want to Eat Out?
Behind it all is the industrialization of production at Chinese restaurant brands.
Relationship Guides May Not Help, But Social Media Forces These 12 Questions on You | 100 Big Questions About Life
No intimate relationship means 100 percent honesty, and phones and the internet have made that even more complicated.
Global Headlines Express | Poles Protest the Purge of Their Supreme Court, and The Atlantic Asks Whether #MeToo Has Grown "Too Big"
Global Headlines is QDaily's new column for 2018, still in trial run. As ever, it is here to help you know more.
Papi Jiang got famous on short video. Can the company she founded do the same?
The shift in media formats gave papitube room to survive — and created every problem it now faces.
An Academic Conference No One Wanted to Publicize, and a Subject Growing More Urgent by the Day
Is it the elephant in the room, or a generation's fate finally taken seriously? Even that starting question is unsettled.
Guo Shixing: When Living Things Are Challenged by Lifeless Ones, Alienation Is Inescapable | Interviews
Born in the 1950s, Guo Shixing did not start writing in earnest until the late 1980s. Perhaps because of the violent, unstoppable experiences of his past, he has always been wary of things without life.
Trump Moved Foxconn to America. Why Is Manufacturing Coming Back?
Moving technology-heavy manufacturing back to a developed country is no longer a problem — as long as it hires fewer people.
Global Headlines Roundup | A Left-Wing Party Candidate Wins Mexico's Presidential Election, and National Geographic Asks What Comes Next for Latinos in America
Global Headlines is a new QDaily column for 2018, still in its trial run. As ever, it is here to help you know more.
Every Method Is Failing: With the False Boom Over, Advertising Goes Back to Creativity | Cannes Lions 2018
The reality of digital advertising today — strip away the fashionable dressing of precise segmentation and retargeting, and digital advertising is simply this dull.
Global Headlines Roundup | Russia reaches the World Cup quarterfinals; The Economist asks whether Netflix can escape the "techlash"
Global Headlines is a new QDaily column for 2018, still in its trial run — and still committed to helping you know more.
"Young People Are Supposed to Stir Things Up and Have Some Fun": Club Life for 9 Young People | Wudaokou Is Full of Young People, Part 3
The eleven universities around Beijing's Wudaokou hold together the curiosity and the wish to be around other people of some hundred thousand students. The hundreds of club events held every week are one outlet for that.
How to Loosen Class Rigidity and Build an Upwardly Mobile Society | Living With the Future ⑪
What this piece can tell us is which mistakes to avoid in the future. As a huge economy, China can now be damaged far more by one small mistake than it could back when it was weak.
How the 1940 System Made Japan's Miracle — and Then Destroyed It | A Brief History of Things
In the 1950s and 1960s, when both resources and capital were scarce, the 1940 System made sure resources went first, and strategically, to the industrial sectors the state had chosen, helping Japan achieve postwar recovery and industrialization.
Self-driving convoys, remote control from outside the cab, all-electric engines — Volvo Trucks shows off several new freight technologies
Volvo Trucks demonstrated a series of new commercial-vehicle technologies at home in Gothenburg, Sweden.
Without Zhan Hongzhi, the man with 200-plus business cards, "there would be no Taiwan today" | Interviews
Zhan Hongzhi talks about his reading habits; how Hu Shih shaped him and what he makes of Li Ao; why literature, music and film all flourished in Taiwan in the 1970s and 1980s; and why breaking the existing social structure has become urgent.
Global Headlines Express | A Gunman Shoots Up a U.S. Newsroom, and The Atlantic Says the Trade War Is Hurting Bourbon
Global Headlines is a new QDaily column for 2018, still in its trial run. As ever, it is here to help you know more.