It’s kind of funny that it took an institution all the way from Italy to bring these awesome local Chinese inventions into a gallery, in China. Nonetheless, it was still a great thing, when Color went to Shanghai last year to present an exhibition to explore why and how individuals are inventing new ways of getting from A to B.

Wang Qiang in his Flying Machine. Photo by Mauro Bedoni

These inventions have been featured in many of those “bizarre China” news articles, and were also featured in a Chinese show explaining the engineering of these machines. It’s nice to see the inventors -mostly rural villagers- and their stories and motivations incorporated into the presentation for a change. All of a sudden they became culturally relevant works of art being presented in a collective with accompanying photography and captions. 

As most of my friends know, I am not a big fan of automobiles. This is one of the many reasons I love New York City, because I could try to avoid being in one as much as possible, usually walking, biking to where ever I need to go. But never have I thought about how automobiles would feel if they had human emotions. As tough and pompous as they look on the surface, could they also be vulnerable and frail? How would they feel about my obdurate prejudice against them? This is a few of the many questions Beijing Songzhuang artist, Li Hui’s massive automobile installations propelled me to ask. Transition, which features a car wreck salvaged by the artist and illuminated with over 13000 laser lights mounted on the museum’s ceiling is both haunting and beautiful. 

Transition

Another installation features three major pieces consisting of ‘amber’, ‘cage’ and ‘reincarnation’ from which the “skeleton” of the car is shown with laser and LED technologies. 

Who is afraid of red, amber and green?

The ability of Li Hui to raise questions of humanity by utilizing machineries and digital technology is quite impressive. Here’s a great interview with him on The Creators Project. 

As web-magazine and creative collective, Neocha represent and showcase leading Chinese creative talents.

Tagged China by Nato.

Graphic design by rubberpixy.

Graphic design by Wang Meng.

Illustration by Nanguazi.

Illustration by My Name Is Black.

Illustration by xiao longhua.

Illustration by I am white.

Fashion from xixi.

Photography by Ren Hang.

Toys by Graphicairline.

Some interesting photos from this year’s China News Photography Award (Golden Lens).

《粗暴拆迁》

A farmer in Hangzhou waving the flag and protesting against forced demolition of his house.

《无良小偷趁乱行窃》

While students raise their teacher up in the air to celebrate the end of the national exam, a thief took the opportunity to steal his wallet.

《7岁男子汉撑起1个家》

A seven year old boy who takes care of the household and his invalid father.

《留守儿童设障索取买路钱》

Children left behind telling the traveling journalists to stop their van and pay road money to cross. “Children left behind” are kids from the rural areas whose parents traveled to the cities to work as migrant workers.

《珠江水调查》

The Pearl River Delta have been extremely polluted due to extensive manufacturing in the region, especially for many multinational brands. Some fishermen are still trying to survive in this toxic environment.

From Vision Union.

The binding of the books read 张 (Zhang).

From designbrandchina blog.

Forum of Chinese Type Design & Awards Presentation of CHINESE KAISHU, 5th FounderType Chinese Type Design Competition

The old “new China”, inspiration for Chinese designers in the 21st century and collector items for western designers.

Chinese Graphic Design in the 20th Century: A Documentary - XIN Icograda World Design Congress Beijing 2009

RMB City, a city being built in Second Life by China Tracy (Cao Fei), is a condensed incarnation of contemporary Chinese cities with most of their characteristics; a series of new Chinese fantasy realms that are highly self-contradictory, inter-permeative, pan-political, extremely entertaining, and laden with irony and suspicion.

Inside the mind of Zhang Huan 张洹

Right. First establish the function and then the form. After decades of developing it’s economy, technology and other “hardwares”, China have created an international design industry basing from Beijing. Judging from the works already seen from Beijing design studios, the city will not only look prettier but become even more interesting then it already is.

The construction of China’s first design market was officially launched. Liu Qi, member of the Political Bureau under the CPC Central Committee and the secretary of the Beijing Municipal Committee of the CPC, participated in the inauguration ceremony of the China Design Market on June 29.

The China Design Market is expected to be put into operation in October 2010 and its total construction area is expected to reach 60,000 square meters including four areas—the transaction service area, the “Red Star Award” museum, the design investment area, and the brand agency area. It aims to create an efficient and convenient high-level international design market and service platform where recourses are gathered and people can trade actively. Efforts have also be made to gather more than 100 domestic and overseas famous design institutes and enterprises to promote the revenues of the Beijing design service industry to achieve 130 billion yuan in about three years. By continuously improving its level of internationalization, the design industry in Beijing has made considerable progress in recent years and has presented a picture of prosperity, said Fang Maotian, general secretary of the National Committee under the Chinese National Commission for UNESCO. He hopes Beijing can further promote the design industry development to become a solid foundation for Beijing to become a city of design worldwide via the construction of the China Design Market.Beijing currently has 20,000 various design institutes and enterprises with 250,000 employees. In 2009, the revenues of Beijing’s design industry exceeded 80 billion yuan and formed advantageous industries such as architectural design, planning and design, as well as design of integrated circuits.

By People’s Daily Online

Some images from Abitare International Design Magazine. They also have a Abitare China site, of course.

China Design Market, better known as CDM is a special project for the international design market undertaken by the collaborative efforts of the Center for Beijing Design Industry Promotion (BIDC) and Abitare Magazine. The main purpose of CDM is to create a platform for the Chinese industry to operate in the international design market. Partnered with Abitare group, CDM will be making history this spring by debuting Chinese designs at world’s most prestigious and largest design and furniture fair: Milan Salone del Mobile.