Yan Feng Apple Regional Liaison: Asia (excluding Japan) November 2003

Hello everyone!

After being in near-silence for quite a lengthy period, I wish to reward the faithful and interested with a fascinating report on how things are going on this part of the planet. Actually, it's not that far at all. Just pull up your swimming gear and swim right across the Pacific, and you're in Asia. Small world after all - we're a mere 'pond' away. ;-)

1. The Chinese MUG World

My part of Asia is dominated by this one population giant called China, home to over 1.3 billion souls. (MacAddict August 2003 wanted us to get the whole population on Macs - believe me, we're doing it, one computer at a time.) And in China, plenty of things have been going on recently.

A group that is just taking off is the AppleFans Association at Beijing (Peking) University. It's just taking off but has already absorbed 60 members already. People from Apple China, and the founder of the largest, loosely-organised group nationwide, MacFans, came around and presented, but what was paramount was the fun. That's how the report was, anyway.

They say they are the first of their kind: a campus-based group in Beijing. They cater to a special market: instead of the general Mac populace (like BeiMac), they cater to universities. They're doing well, and I'll be consistently on the watch.

Meantime, BeiMac - the Beijing Macintosh User Group - has just re-elected its own executive board (retermed Central Executives Committee). Our group's most significant accomplishment today was the total remodelling of the website.

Once upon a time, when this disaster called SARS hit the capital of the People's Republic of China, university was called off - and I got a 3-month break, for free and for gratis. Given the Mac die-hard that I am and the unpaid but ever-loved President of BeiMac I was (and still am), I spent three months experimenting with a complete redesign of the website.

Getting it done in Dreamweaver was OK, but it focused too much on the GUI coding - even just the designing took too long. Don't even get me started on updating the site on a common basis - it was too hard. Eventually, in October, we got tired of featuring news in May 2003 on our website.

So our Newsletter Assistant Manager, Allan, followed by recommendations earlier on from our Vice-President, recommended I redo the whole site, big-time. Allan recommended XOOPS. I gave him the site's upload identification (and no, I'm not going to share this with you in open), and a day later, XOOPS was ready to go. (XOOPS is a new portal/content management system - it's web-based, meaning nearly an omnipresent administration system when you need it.)

Now the English part of the website is open. We're just beginning to redo our Chinese version, which will have a larger capacity because the online members will just use up that space - I've seen that too often. ;-) You can visit the site at http://www.beimac.com/ - a simple Online Community Membership (which on its own, oddly, doesn't grant you official Membership) will unlock everything.

Meanwhile, a new user group is starting off in Qingdao - according to my observation, the second such user group. This user group is Apple-recognised; it's the Sinomac Developer and Localisation group. Of course when it launched I sent my congratulations to them. They pretty much responded by temporarily switching the site graphics to the ones you traditionally see at Lunar New Years, which was very festive indeed. (Of course, they had a bigger reason for doing so - some folks behind the website were engaged in something more important.)

I'm hoping that the Qingdao localisation group will do more in the way in providing all of us on the mainland with localised software in Simplified Chinese, which actually is not too common these days - but is really picking up here.

Visit the group at: http://www.sinomac.com/

2. A More General Announcement

In the next few weeks all Mac user groups in Asia will be invited to join a new coalition of user groups, a new union. We have yet to decide on a formal name but they will also get a centralised Asia MUG Information Centre. We have contacted people, and we've gotten positive response.

We'd like to eventually make this all-Asia. We'd like to create a new website in all major local languages (English, Chinese and so on) and to create a site where people in Asia can come to learn more about user groups, and why they're so important and influential.

Of course, this is strictly not a one-man show. We will be relying a lot on partnerships with other groups. So please stay tuned for this exciting development.

3. Asian Insight

I'd like to round every dispatch off with an insight into Asia, in general. This will hopefully give you a better look at the continent.

East Asia, in particular, is dominated by China, a huge nation spreading itself from the Himalayas right down to the East China Sea, and as far north from the Gobi Desert area to scenic Hainan Island.

My experience with Asia is that it is a different world altogether. It has its own traditions, and nothing is more visible than in East Asia, where Confuscius left his mark. Variants of that famous teaching flowed down to places such as the Korean Peninsula and Japan.

The major difference in this is that the collective group is valued more than the individual. An individual with individualism is less likely to make a splash here than he would in the Western World. As a result the values are different. Community is far more treasured.

Running a user group in China is especially noteworthy in effort. I have heard from the locals that China on its own has a unique set of culture values. Here, big-bossism in user groups is not treasured at all. Far more valued is fitting into the community and washing away (or at least concealing) your individualism. Even when you're the elephant in the herd of zebras (so to speak), at least act more like a zebra than an elephant. Fitting in here is key.

Another major trick is to be cedive (nicked from the French word "cede"). Herein lies the implication that you should not be direct at all. Praise others when you have the chance. Ultimately, it's a two-way road. Your significance, no matter how noteworthy, should possibly be curtailed as much as you can when dealing with others. Appearing as "Boss Man Yan" will get you about an inch (at most) in Chinese society (so to speak), where if you appear even holding back a little, cedive, and more down-to-earth, this will get you a good mile.

That's how my part of Asia is doing. I hope you've enjoyed a look, and it will be my pleasure to supply you with more in the next RL Dispatch coming when there is a sizeable amount of news amassed.

Meanwhile I would like to remind user groups in Asia excluding Japan (which is my area) to submit anything you'd like to see published here to me. My email address is on the Apple RL website.

See you soon!
Yan Feng
Apple's Regional Liaison for most of Asia