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Explore Your Chinese Childhood with These Japanese Icons

Posted: 06/2/2014 4:11 pm

childhood memor japanese culture anime cartoon herosInternational Children’s Day took place this past Sunday, June 1, a day to raise awareness for important children’s issues like child labor, human trafficking and child abuse once the very important business of dancing and singing is first completed.

As we slowly wind down this Dragon Boat Holiday, we thought we’d share this Weibo post shared by none other than the People’s Daily Online in celebration of this day.childhood memor japanese culture anime cartoon heros

The People’s Daily Online said:

#Hello again, childhood: Come on and take a look; can you find your childhood in here?

The accompanying photo is a cool art poster consisting of a stellar line-up of several cartoon figures, and a quick glance reveals some top names: Doramon, Pokemon, Dragonball Z, Astroboy, Totoro, Initial D, Sailor Moon… everyone and everything that was cool for a kid in the last thirty years that also happened to be imported from across the sea.

Yes, it’s a pure nostalgia trip for many of the readers of the People’s Daily Online. With so many amazing Japanese anime and cartoons, it’s hard to imagine Chinese not getting sentimental over these childhood favorites.

You may not be Chinese, but can you find your childhood in here? Take a look!childhood memor japanese culture anime cartoon heros

* Note: We’re not entirely sure, but this page in Japanese may be pointing out the same thing. And if someone can help us identify the artist of this collection of childhood Japanese memories, we’d appreciate it.

Photo: People’s Daily Online via Weibo

Haohao

Shenzhen girls move audience with song about friendship

Posted: 05/28/2012 7:00 am

Many of us feel like the best friendships we ever have are ones from our youth. But few of us get the chance to appear on television to express this.

Two teenage girls from Shenzhen wowed the audience at China Dream Show on Zhejiang Television with a song about youth. The girls, Mai Jing Yan and Tu Li Ping, are best friends who claim to “do everything together.” However, they are in the second year of high school and are set to see a lot less of each other because Mai is about to move to Hong Kong to continue her education. They appeared on the show to sing the song “Those Years” as a celebration of their five-year friendship.

Despite Tu forgetting her second line, the song, originally made famous by singer Hu Xia, raised raucous applause. The lyrics express nostalgia for school days and the relationships we lose as we get older. Members of the audience wiped tears away as the girls embraced each other on stage. Before they left, the host urged them to make every effort to keep in contact and Tu’s entire face was covered in tears when it was announced that the audience had an overwhelmingly positive perception of their singing.

The video of the girls’ performance became popular online and they quickly became known as the “School Uniform Sisters” because of what they were wearing on stage. A microblogger named Lu Cha Together said the video made her remember her girlfriends in school, another exclaimed “Long live friendship. I support you.”

Many parents struggle to have their children educated outside mainland China because the education system has such a bad reputation. The Gaokao is particularly notorious, as we told you before.

Haohao

An American photographer takes Shenzheners down memory lane

Posted: 05/10/2012 2:42 pm

Shenzhen in 1980

An American photographer has inspired nostalgia among Shenzheners after publishing photographs of the city that he took in 1980. Leroy W. Demery Jr, who was born in 1954, travelled through China between 1980 and 1983, and his first stop after entering the mainland from Hong Kong was Shenzhen, then a fishing village.

The photos were taken with a Canon TX SLR camera, using Kodachrome color slide film, ISO 64 or 25 which Demery bought in 1976 and still uses today. After being uploaded to Sina Weibo by a user named Xiao Chen, microbloggers remarked on the vast differences to the Shenzhen of today. User Dafeng Haishang remarked, “The last one seems to be of Luohu, but the others are all unrecognisable.”

User Hou Junmou added that the images bring him back to a time so distant it might have been a century ago. Another user named Cengjing de Xiaolu Hai Zai commented on how blue the sky was, how clean the water was, and how things have changed.

You can view a selection of Demery’s photos in the latest Nanfang Studio album.

Haohao
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