Far East Feature: Bubble Tea will change your world

When I heard Bubbleology, the original Taiwanese bubble tea was coming to Leeds for one day, I was so super excited I shivered and drooled for 2 days (stroke?). Bubble tea, also called pearl tea, is a traditional Taiwanese drink that became very popular in Asia in the 80s, and now world wide. An innovative drink combined with beverages and desserts.

"Having a cuppa." is such an important thing in British culture, in Asia, tea is also in our daily lifes, our bones, our blood, and our history. In Chinese culture, we create poems for good teas, we have wars fighting for them, we can say sorry, thank you, or good bye with the gesture of making a cup of tea, we need them in weddings, graduations, any occasion.

If you ever get to go to Taiwan, you will find little tea shops in every corner. In there, you get to customize your own favorite teas, from what kind of tea, warmth, how much sugar, to what do you want to add in there, including bubbles, jello, or even aloe vera and so on.

That's why when I went to Victoria Quarter last Saturday, and had my first drink of bubble tea for the last 15 months, I was so happy I could kick someone in the face(?). The Bubbleology's bubble tea is exactly how I remembered, the taste, the bubble, even the machine that packaged the cup! 

So if you're in London, you are very lucky as you can just pop into their shops. If you're in the North like me, join my prayers for them to expand here in the very near future. All hail Bubble Tea!

STP's Far East Feature: Kung Fu

Today I was kicked in the back of the chair by someone here in the Hebe Media office. It made me want to get my Kung Fu on! It also got me thinking of some of the great Kung Fu movies I used to watch as a kid. 

Kung Fu, played such an important role in the Far East movie movement. In 1949, a of bunch of martial arts academies put together a fund to shoot a film about a legendary hero Wong Fei-Hung with not just acting, but actual kung fu fights in it. Since then, Kung Fu movies grew in popularity. Every decade, there were new Kung Fu stars to take the genre to the next level. The greatest star of all was Bruce Lee, his brand new performing style attracted global attention. After he died, all the studios tried to create a different Kung Fu star to fill his spot, including Jackie Chan. But people weren't buying it, no one can replace Bruce Lee.

"After Bruce Lee passed away, the whole movie industry went down. Everyone thinks he is the best, no one wanted to watch other Kung Fu movies, I was very disappointed at the time." - Jackie Chan

Luckily, a few years later they found back into people's hearts: Kung Fu comedy. And finally, Jackie Chan's career took off from this point. In the 80s, Kung Fu became a great support for action films, a few action directors even made it to the Hollywood and are still playing important roles there like Yuen Woo-ping for Matrix, Charlie's Angel, etc. Jet Li became famous afterwards in the 90s by playing the legend Wong Fei-Hung. 

Some people think that one of the popular themes in Kung Fu movies, you know the one, where the Kung Fu master beats some foreigner, are a comfort for the memories of the Chinese being invaded by foreign intruders. For kids (like me!), Kung Fu characters were just like Superman for us, giving us the feeling of knowing someone out there with great power, is fighting the big man and protecting us. And also it is just a lot of fun to learn from the tv how to Kick people in the face with style ;)

STP's Far East Feature: What is 'beautiful'?

Japanese model Rinka (37) became the first Asian celebrity to participate for Marc by Marc Jacobs Nude Photo Charity

Yesterday I accompanied someone to a tanning studio. I told a lady behind the counter: “I have never been to a tanning studio before. ” Like many other Far East girls, I would like to be absolutely pale. During the three years I studied in Barcelona, I only went to beach to sunbath once, and I hide under an umbrella!

The models I showed today are all mixed races, and well known in Far East countries. Mix race models are very popular right now, they combine the best features from both East and West. A Japanese magazine called ViVi uses mostly mix races models as their regulars, and their circulation per month is 645,000 copies.

Since whenever, probably after western trends kicked in, girls in Far East want to look like dolls. It means having pale skin, big eyes with long lashes and a tall sculptural nose is the 'standard' of beauty. And no matter how hard some people fight, debate, there is a "mainstream" of beauty is Asia just like everywhere else in the world.

Tsuchiya AnnaFujii LenaHasegawa JunLeah Dizon

UK Observing Diary Update

Last month we gave a brief introduction to the UK Observing Diary project featuring our very own Shang Ting Peng. Since our last post a lot has happened with the page including the number of fans swelling to 56,000+ and various television and newspaper appearances for Shang Ting and her UOD partner Clair Liu.

After appearing in a post on The Guardian Leeds site, the media coverage around the project has been quite unbelievable. The Asian media picked up on the story and it spread like wildfire. The story made the front page of Yahoo, was ranked no.1 in the fashion category and no.3 in the arts category. The story appeared in some of the most influencial newspapers in Taiwan including Liberty Times, NOWnews, Apple Daily, Chinese Television System and China Times.

When the Guardian post appeared the page had around 6,500 members and now as of writing this post the number stands at 56,816! The number of views on their posts has gone into the millions every month. It is a quite remarkable story that 2 friends who started a project as a hobby are now well on their way to becoming major published authors back in Asia, as a number of book deals are now in the offing.

Shang Ting has certainly been taken back at the response in her native Taiwan "It was a shock when we found out how many different news outlets had reported this story. Afterwards our UK Observing Diary email address has been full of invites to different things and proposals for new projects. It all happened so fast. We have now even been offered a book deal, and it is just so exciting."

Her partner on the page, Clair recently appeared on a TV show billed as an 'online buzz creator' something that certainly takes some getting used to " This was the first time for me to participate in a TV programe shot in the studio. I was so excited when the TV producer invited us to talk about our recent popularity on the internet. There are many interesting things on the show that I did not expect. I had so much fun there."

Clair continues, "I felt I was just like a little fan when I heard the other two famous bloggers who are going to join the panel. I used to read quite a lot of their articles. I am so glad to have had this opportunity to sit next to them and join their conversation. This was the day I found I was so proud of UK Observing Diary. Our page could be a real media connecting people who are interested in Leeds and London."

The girls are commited to their original vision for the page "We post everyday, and we try to answer fan's questions as much as we can. The relationship with them is very important to us. We don't want to change our style, which is fun and a style that people can easily relate to. We like to talk to fans as they are our friends, and perhaps one day they will become our friends for real!" says Shang Ting.

One really interesting dynamic of this project is the contrast it provides between the North and South of England, namely Leeds and London. While the capital may be high on tourist's and trend hunter's radars usually, Leeds is something of an unknown quantity in Asia. The UK Observing Diary provides an insight into the northern city and this has gone down well with a lot of the fans "Li Man Man said: This is so great~ Because most of the people know more about London, part of them don't have a clear idea about Leeds. So this observing diary is perfect~"

The content of the page is usually photos with a brief description. This could be an off-the-cuff photo of an interesting visual or it could be a photoshoot carried out at a particular event. The girls have also began to add deeper content in the form of interviews and articles which are presented more like a 'blog posts' in the page's 'notes' section.

The idea is to develop the content further with plans for more video content presented by Shang Ting and Clair currently on the agenda. It seems this is just the tip of the iceberg for this project and we should hear of more exciting developments (and 1000s more fans) over the coming months.

1. Jackie Chan 2. Jet Lee... 3. UK Observing DiaryApple Daily

Hebe Media Talks To: Buddy Ye

This week as part of Leeds Digital Festival, Marketing Leeds are presenting the fourth event in their ‘The business of’ series: The Business of Digital. This will be a question and answer style event on the impact of digital technology on businesses. One of the panelists will be Buddy Ye, and I spoke with Buddy yesterday about his thoughts on the digital landscape and his trip to Leeds.

Buddy Ye is the Founder, CEO and Producer of Shune River Media, a Shanghai-based independent production house that is quickly emerging as a bridge between the rapidly growing Chinese media market and the rest of the world.

Buddy studied for his MBA in the UK at the Said Business School in Oxford and explained some of the differences between the different education styles at the time “For my generation the learning environment in the UK was much more open. Students would be encouraged to ask questions and try new things. This was different to China at the time, although things are gradually changing now”

After returning to China, Buddy set up WangYou, one of China’s first major social media platforms. The site focuses mainly on music and a massive percentage of the user generated content is Karaoke. “Karaoke is very popular with young people all across Asia. We provide the technologies for people to upload, rate and interact on their own user-generated content” Behind the scenes work is taking place on the next steps for WangYou as Buddy explains “We are currently working on the transition from web to mobile based versions of WangYou”

As we talk further, Buddy and I begin talking about the future more generally and how things may move forward in the coming years “Over the coming 10-12 years there will be a high-speed development of digital technologies and I think over the next 3-5 years content will play a more important role” says Buddy.

Which leads us on to discussing some of the reasons why he is visiting Leeds: “There is a high demand in China for international content. I am talking about animations, documentaries, films, what I would call professional digital content. I am here in Leeds to speak with digital professionals about some of the opportunities in the Chinese market and how we might work together in the future”

I look forward to meeting Buddy on Thursday at the Business of Digital event. It seems there are some potentially very interesting relationships and collaborations that could take place. The more international relationships we can build for the already exciting Leeds digital scene the better.

For more information about Leeds Digital Festival and to register for the event click here.