This past Saturday, I headed out towards the watermelon farms in rural Daxing district of Beijing for the grand opening of Woodward Beijing. While I missed the attendance of Beijing’s municipal officials and actor Yu Xia to inaugurate this special day, the real action started after all the prototypical Chinese ceremonial ribbon cutting was complete.

Woodward Beijing IS supreme. Situated on a four-star resort property, 410 acres of land is now home to indoor and outdoor ramps and bowls, with a gigantic outdoor skate plaza as the centerpiece. The 32,000 square foot outdoor skate plaza consists of skateable ledges, rails, hubbas, euro gaps, bank-to bank kickers, granite manual pads, steep banks and more. Escape from the sun and head into the 40,000 square foot indoor facility that features two different street courses with rails, banks, hubbas, and pyramids; a multi-level mini ramp; a wooden bowl with a spine and deep end; foam and resi pits; and a giant vert ramp with resi and foam pits attached.

Even if you don’t skateboard, you’d wish you did just by looking at the facilities. I was salivating and wishing it was all covered in snow the whole time (I’m a snowboarder).

While I didn’t see them all, I know I was present among many of the world’s best action sports athletes at the grand opening such as: Tony Hawk, Sandro Dias, Ryan Sheckler, Neal Hendrix, Pierre- Luc Gagnon, Dan Murphy, David Loy, Jaws, Andrew Cannon, Jimmy Carlin, Tom Asta, Chase Hawk, Chase Dehart, Dakota Roche and Olympic gold medal-winning gymnast and “Dancing with the Stars” winner, Shawn Johnson.

What caught my attention (other than Tony Hawk) were the gazes of the local Chinese skaters and audience members of the wicked skating before them (I am sure they didn’t really understand what they were witnessing). Interest in extreme sports has been growing amongst Chinese youth and the arrival of Woodward Beijing will not only stimulate this growth, but provide staying power. Education and training is an essential component to the development of extreme sports in China. Woodward Beijing is the new breeding ground for China’s future X-game competitors. And whether you’re a beginner or semi-pro, it is a space that provides access to skill development and professional training.

Woodward Beijing is the first international property in the U.S. -based Camp Woodward roster. For over forty years, Woodward has been providing premium-training facilities for both young amateurs and professional action sports and gymnastics athletes, including many Olympians. This camp will offer Skateboarding, BMX, Inline, dry land Snowboarding and Free Ski, Urban Dance, Digital Arts (Digital Photography / Video Production and Graphic Design), Music, Chinese and English language programs.

The camp is now OPEN. Check out their website: http://www.woodwardbeijing.cn/

From the beginning, Tudou has focused their efforts to support the UGC (user-generated content) online community of creative Chinese youth, and they plan to continue to expand these efforts. Gary Wang, Founder and CEO of Tuodou says: “Its what we believe in and Tudou’s role is evolving into the areas of investing, financing, producing, as well as distributing made-for-internet original video content.” Their commitment to support this unique online community of producers/bloggers is resulting in a large group of young Tudou brand enthusiasts.

The Chinese youth view sites like Tudou or Youku as a platform to showcase their creativity and thoughts, as well as an opportunity to gain recognition, and with enough luck, maybe even make a career out of it.   Remember our featured Pixie Tea with her song ABCD Said? She was there in her black and white checkered tights and red army boots, accepting her award for Best Music Video, expressing ” I never thought this would happen by doing something I like to do.”  While at a Tudou sponsored luncheon, video blogger, KEnnanZhou, told me, “In China ‘Everybody’ is really big, so to be special among ‘Everybody’ is really hard. But within the gaming or video sharing community, you have an opportunity to be recognized and be special within this sub-culture.”

Nominated content spanned many genres, from DIY horror special-effects videos and funny animations, to edgy, expressive and thought provoking shorts.  To highlight a few:

• It Seems to Rain is a poetic short about a high school boy’s journey of self discovery, and coping with aspects of life that can not be changed; namely his homosexuality. Directed by 25 year old Taipei native, Chen Shu Cai.
• Adventure of Li, Xian-Ji is an action-packed, adult animation featuring Li: a young man seeking the meaning of life, but gets caught up in drug-dealing. During his misadventures, Li bumps into a colorful array of characters like an Osama bin Laden look-a-like and a heroin that looks like Angelina Jolie. The movie’s director, 29 year old Beijing native Yang Li, was very popular with the festival attendees.
• War of Internet Addiction is 26 year-old blogger Changsha native, Sexy Corn’s hour-long video game movie about authority crackdowns. Interestingly, ‘War of Internet Addiction’ was temporarily banned on other websites while Tudou.com kept the video up from the beginning.

I was very impressed by how efficient these bloggers were, both in terms of time and cost. War of Internet Addiction took 3 months to produce and cost virtually nothing except for “broadband connections, electricity bills, cigarettes, beers and snacks to get through the long hours” says blogger, Sexy Corn. The Internet and video sharing sites like Tudou and Youku provide an accessible and cost-effective way to distribute content. “Compared with the year I graduated from school 7 years ago, young people nowadays enjoy a much more open, audience-driven, low cost channel to show what they got via the online video sites like Tudou.com.  It is almost impossible to dream about getting on TV,” said Hai-peng Sun, a Tudou video blogger who created a popular xiao-long-bao kung fu series and now has started his own animation studio.

Last year the annual Tudou Video Festival received 1,920 entries, this year the entries nearly tripled. According to Tudou, there are over 4,500 active independent video producers and production teams from first and second tier cities in China – Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Chongqing, Changsha, Hangzhou, Nanjing, etc. creating original made-for-internet content every day with the average age being 24.
Oh and if your curious, the Tudou hand gesture is done with using your left index and left middle finger and your right index finger to create what looks like a play button. Now throw up those hands and show your love for Tudou.

**Drum Roll**

And the awards went to:

Water Brain by Ani7me (Best Short Feature)

Chicken Flowers Escaping by Miss Bowl of Rice (Best Team Work)

Give Me 5 Minutes by KEnnanZhou (Best Actor/Actress)

Ke-en Brother -Sister Movie Show (Best Creativity)

It Seems to Rain by Love Vacation (Best Director)

Adventure of Li Xian-Ji By Tank Driver (Best Animation)

ABCD Said by YanXuan Zhang (Best Music Video)

War of Internet Addiction by Sexy Corn (Best Video of the Year “Golden Tudou”)

On Friday, January 29^th, 360quan.com hosted their 90后潮流先锋榜 (post-90’s generation pioneering trends list) awards ceremony in Beijing. Actor Li Chen emceed the event featuring stars such as Jade Liu Li Yang and Yico Zeng, who came to receive their award and perform for the cheering crowd of Chinese teenage fans from all over China.

These same cheering teenagers and their peers voted on actresses, actors, artists, bands, brands, musicians, and works of art of various types for their influence and pioneering abilities in their respective industries. In collaboration with Mogo, 1626.com and YOHO!, 360quan.com invited their post-90’s generation members to vote within two categories, one for most ‘pioneering spirit’ and the other for ‘must have’ product or brand.

eno won the award for ‘must have independent brand.’ Among the list of ‘must have’ were: HP (notebook), Samsung (mobile phone), ONLY (women’s apparel), Adidas (sports apparel), New Fei Fei 新飞飞 (Netease’s 3-D online game), YOHO! (e-commerce site), Twice (jewelry accessories) and Mito Xiu Xi 美图秀秀 (image processing software).

Here’s who they voted for pioneering spirit: Jade Liu Li Yang 刘力扬 (singer), Xiao Song Jia 小宋佳 (actress), Lucky Monkey 跳猴乐队(fusion punk band), Shi Yan Fei 施艳飞 (up & coming actress), Chang Si Si 常思思 (up & coming folk singer), Zhang Xiao He 张小盒 (online character), Chen Chen 陈晨 (written work). And here’s who they voted for the pioneering spirits of the post-90’s generation (meaning they were actually born in the 1990’s): Yico Zeng 曾轶可 (singer), Li Chen 李晨(TV host), 杨紫 Yang Zi (pop star), BY2 (Singaporean music duo), Caffiene (band), Ai Shui Shui 艾水水 (TV & Film work).

360quan.com is China’s fastest growing social media network for post-90’s generation youth. With close to 25 million registered users, 360quan.com is devoted to providing an online home for people with similar interests, online clans, and super-connectors. The platform provides all the basics of an SNS, including personal space, blogs, music, videos, photo albums, games and other multimedia services and content. Their users have a distinct urban youth culture; they are the hip-hop artists, the make-up stylists, the snowboarders and the parkour clubs that  are leading China’s youth revolution.

Once again thank you 360quan.com and special thanks to our post-90’s generation fans!

]]> http://enovatechina.com/blog/post-90%e2%80%99s-chinese-youth-vote-eno-as-a-%e2%80%98must-have%e2%80%99-brand/feed/ 1 http://enovatechina.com/blog/move-on-over-baijiu-beer-more-wine-is-here/ http://enovatechina.com/blog/move-on-over-baijiu-beer-more-wine-is-here/#comments Fri, 30 Oct 2009 10:18:02 +0000 Karen http://enovatechina.com/blog/?p=1355

As I visited the various types of retail outlets that sell alcohol in Beijing, I started to notice something. An increasingly amount of retailers are dedicating shelf space to grape wine.  Don’t get me wrong, wine still lives in the shadows of bai jiu and beer in terms of consumption in China.  However, wines are definitely making their presence known in the aisles and shelves of supermarkets, convenience stores and specialty shops.

I especially took notice of this in my neighborhood, Wudaokou. Wudaokou is located in the Northwest part of Beijing, where there is a high concentration of universities. Within kilometers, we have Peking University and Tsinghua University, often compared to as the Harvard and MIT of China. I suppose Wudaokou’s US equivalent would be Harvard Square? A year ago, I had to trek across town to find a bottle of wine. Not anymore.

Every neighborhood in China has a local convenience store that is within walking distance and is stocked with all of your basic needs. Up until now, my local shop only carried bai jiu and beer. Now they offer 3 local brands of red wine. Though, had I not been in the beverage aisle, I would have mistaken it for soy sauce.

The two main supermarkets in my neighborhood might have carried wine but if they did, I didn’t see it. Now, its hard to not notice the shelves of wine sharing an aisle with the shelves of bai jiu.

The specialty tobacco and liquor shops typically carry more tobacco than liquor. And the liquor is often limited to just bai jiu. The Changers Tobacco and Wine shop located at the south gate of Tsinghua University, has remodeled and built a wine corner with Wudaokou’s largest collection of imported wines.

Even the 7-11 in Wudaokou has decided to carry grape wine, both local and imported brands. As a matter of fact, you can now place your order for this years harvest of Beaujolais Nouveau at 7-11.

What is even more impressive than the selection of wine I now have at my disposal. Is the dedicated sales staff in these aisles. I applaud the effort local brands and their distributors are making to train staff, so they can inform consumers and make recommendations. Even the cashier at the 7-11 was able to highlight the uniqueness of Beaujolais Nouveau. I was impressed with the pitch but not the price.