Advertising and Marketing

Artificial babe, robot soccer player

yangyuan0624s.jpg

Yang Yuan is a young woman who was recently disqualified from the Miss Intercontinental beauty pageant after the organizers discovered she had had plastic surgery. She said she was going to sue the pageant which caused little media storm.

But now it seems she has found a better way to make back the money she spent on plastic surgery: shilling for the company that put her under the knife in the first place. The pictured advertisement, complete with before and after photos, says that Yang is 'China's first artificial model' (click on the image for a larger version).

There's more on Danwei about Yang Yuan here and plastic surgery here.

Unrelated but somehow relevant: the turgid China Daily reports:

A rare, intelligent humanoid robot soccer player, currently the most sophisticated of its kind in China, will participate in the Ninth FIRA Robot World Cup this October in South Korea.

The Federation of International Robot-soccer Association Cup will be held on October 27-31 in Busan of South Korea.

FIRA has had venues for its annual FIRA Robot World Cup in Australia, Brazil, China, France and South Korea since 1996.

The "bi-ped" robot, developed by the Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT) in Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, won a championship at the five-day Fifth National Robot Soccer Tournament and 2004 FIRA Robot World Cup Soccer Tournament, which concluded on Tuesday in Wuhan Engineering University in Central China's Hubei Province.

This robot, designed by the Robot-football Player Research Group of HIT, bears the same name of its mother institute.

"Although China has more than 10 years of history in bi-ped robot research history, the experiment remained unsuccessful," said Dr Hong Bingrong, a mentor at the Computer Science and Technology Department of HIT and also a renowned forerunner in the soccer robot field in China.

More than one year's hard work finally paid off. Headed by Dr Hong, the group eventually made great breakthroughs in the arithmetic of walking and kicking of bi-ped robots and therefore solved the problem of keeping robot's balance while moving. Thus "HIT" was created.

"HIT" is about half a metre high,and consists of 17 joints. It is connected by hundreds of bolts. With two digital information processors installed in the middle, "HIT" can walk steadily on flat surfaces as well as rugged ground.


The article is on the China Daily's website here

Media Partners
Visit these sites for the latest China news
090609guardian2.png 090609CNN3.png
China Media Timeline
Major media events over the last three decades
Danwei Model Workers
laomo2008fpA.jpg
Recommended blogs and new media
Books on China
AXL091030storiesforthcoming.jpg
Princess Der Ling: Two Years in the Forbidden City: Two years in the Forbidden City is largely a reminiscence of the minutiae of life for one of history's most powerful women, by one of her court attendants, a Manchu noble's daughter by the name of Der Ling.
Carl Crow's The Long Road Back to China: In 1939 Carl Crow - an American journalist, advertising executive and author who had lived in Shanghai for 25 years until forced out by the Japanese - travelled up the Burma Road from Rangoon to Chongqing on assignment for Liberty magazine - 'the most interesting assignment I have ever been given'.
Front Page of the Day
A different newspaper every weekday
From the Vault
Classic Danwei posts
+ New Years Past: Other Spring Festivals by Geremie R. Barmé (2007.02): Sang Ye interviews two people about their experiences during Great Leap Forward-era Spring Festivals. Translated and annotated by Geremie R. Barmé.
+ Trend-spotting in online fiction (2007.06): An interview with Daniel Dan Fei (丹飞), publisher of Notes on Graverobbing (盗墓笔记), Rear Palace (后宫), and Those Ming Dynasty Things (明朝那些事).
+ China's 50 Most Beautiful People (2005.03): The Beijing News borrows a picture of Maggie Cheung from Cosmo for the cover of today's Entertainment insert, "50 Most Beautiful People in China". Ms. Cheung takes the top spot, with Takeshi Kaneshiro, Little S, Zhang Ziyi, and Liu Ye rounding out the top five in this exercise that is a conscious imitation of People magazine's yearly rundown.
Danwei Archives
Danwei Feeds
Via Feedsky rsschiclet2.png (on the mainland)
or Feedburner rsschiclet.gif (blocked in China)
rsschiclet2.png rsschiclet.gif Main feed: Main posts (FB has top links)
rsschiclet2.png rsschiclet.gif Top Links: Links from the top bar
rsschiclet2.png rsschiclet.gif Danwei Jobs: Want ads
rsschiclet2.png rsschiclet.gif Danwei Digest: Updated daily, 19:30