"Tabuzone": Where do these yellow squares on the Rathausplatz come from?

Some mysterious yellow squares with signs saying "FKK" or "Tabuzone" appeared on Rathhausplatz(City Hall Plaza) and Königsplatz (King Plaza) in Augsburg.
In the past several days many visitors of the city have been anticipating what on earth are these squares? In the picture above you can see some with "W-Lan Free" and "picknicdecke", very funny.
Now the secret is revealed, it's an art work of two design students in the college. One is called Antonia Kern(left), 20 years old, another is Janina Hellmig, 21 years old.They are not making jokes out of boredom, it's part of their serious art projects in their course called "visual communication". The task is to redefine the boundary of open space without causing any damage.

Here they are, sitting in the "picknic corner", schoen!

They didn't do it at night, well, if I were going to do something like this, I'd definitely choose night, but these girls went there in the morning 8:30, spent 1 hour to stick yellow tapes on the ground, and they were actually spotted by police, but since the latter didn't say anything, they take it as permitted. Well done! 

Soon people took full advantage of their art work, started resting and hanging out there in the squares, the girls got a surprisingly good response and wide attention.

It's nothing like provocation, they just want to bring more color to the city, to the Rathausplatz they all love hanging out at. 

----loosely translated from Augsburger Allgemeine, written by Sophia Gandenheimer, 27 April, 2015,

http://www.augsburger-allgemeine.de/augsburg/Tabuzone-Wie-die-gelben-Baender-auf-den-Rathausplatz-kamen-id33865582.html

As you can see, even without the yellow squares, young people have always been sitting there in groups spontaneously, now these squares bring them more legitimacy and exclusively occupying feeling while sitting. Hey I want to sit there too, it's fun! Darf ich auch hierhin sitzen?      

Advantages and disadvantages of Crowdfunding |kickstarter| business startup

Advantages

1.Open a new source of funding, get money quickly without upfront fee and get things done especially when you struggle to get support from conventional big institutions and banks.
2.A successful campaign may attract big investors' attention and lead to even larger amount of funding

Non-financial benefits

1. Profile: gain a lot of attention from public, a compelling project can rise a producer's profile and increase its reputation especially if they succeed.
2.Audience engagement: the project initiator can create a forum in which he can communicate with the audiences. Your investors can often become your most loyal customers through the financing process
3.Feedback: offering the pre-release access to the content, or the possibility to use the beta-version gives the project initiator a good market feedback or we can say it's a good way to test the public reaction.
4.Crowdfunding is great for niche ideas that wouldn’t otherwise have access to a receptive audience or funds

Impact on society
1.good ideas, designs will come directly to the audience, skip distributors and retailers, increase consumer surplus and provider surplus.
2.created a place for dreamers to really make things come true. Isn't that awesome?
everyone has some dreams, fantasy, some of them might just be the next genius idea that could potentially change people's life, with crowdfunding, we won't be worried that these ideas would just die away.

Disadvantages

1.Small dollar amounts. If your crowd funding campaign is successful you will raise small amounts of money from a large number of funders. But for a small business, that's the problem. Instead of raising significant levels of capital from targeted investors the dollar amounts are much smaller. The most successful crowd funding projects don't come close to generating the kind of funds you need to really get your business off the ground.

On top of that, platforms will charge commission.

2.Ignores business models. One of the advantages of pitching your startup to traditional investors is that you gain important insights about your business model. Crowd funding enthusiasts usually lack the expertise and capacity to provide meaningful feedback about your business model. In fact, the limitations involved with listing your request on a crowd funding website make it impossible to adequately describe your company's business structure to prospects.

3.No long-term viability. It's one thing to use crowd funding as a vehicle for resourcing a one-time project or special event. If your company wants to fund a small study about the impact of cell phone technology on frogs in the Amazon, crowd funding is definitely the way to go. But as a long-term funding strategy it's just not a viable for the ongoing resource needs of a small business.

4.Risk of exposure. Crowd funding seems innocent enough. But it's possible that it could expose your business to risks you didn't anticipate. For starters, crowd funding requires you to expose project details on the Internet, potentially giving your competitors inside information about your business. Some people who have tons of money may copy your idea and get things done before you do. In certain situations crowd funding can even expose your company to securities violations. Be careful to protect your Copyright, Patent etc.

5.All or NOTHING: If you don’t reach your funding target, any finance that has been pledged will usually be returned to your investors and you will receive nothing and you may also suffer from reputation damage from a failure of funding

6.Donor exhaustion: if the same network of suppliers is used many times, it will eventually stop giving the necessary support

7.Public fear of abuse: concerns among supports that without a regulatory framework there's the likelihood of an abuse and incorrect use of the funds. This is often happened with something not so tangible such as charity funding.

8. Getting the rewards and returning wrong may cause too much give away to investors.

As a Chinese, what makes me feel we are isolated from the outside world?

Many people ask me, are you going back to China after study in Venice?
Well, I really hope I'm not. Here's the main reason:
When I'm in China, I feel a invisible wall between our boarder and outside world. This wall is built up by both sides.

First, western countries tend not to trust mainland Chinese that much, who ever wants to travel to north America or EU state must go through a whole lot of visa application and it's very difficult and costly. Since last year U.S open up a little for us, they extended the period of validity of their visa from 1 year to 10 years to us. It means, once you successfully obtained U.S visa, you won't have to apply it again in 10 years (for tourists), but it doesn't mean that you can stay 10 years long in U.S tho.
On the other hand I understand that it's tricky for EU countries to open up for us, after all we are a huge population, many people are willing to go out, one country in EU opens up, the whole Europe would be flooded by Chinese people, if you know Schengen agreement.
The situation has been improving little by little, more and more countries are offering visa-free entering, while western countries are loosing their restrictions. However, there's still a long way to go till Chinese passport becomes any competitive among all the other passports.
For this reason, I feel myself trapped in China, I feel myself not belonging to the planet, the earth, but only to my motherland, which sometimes can be depressing.

Second, it's from this side of the wall, the Chinese blocked ourselves from outside world. Heard of the Great Internet Wall? Yes, in China you won't be able to use Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google etc many main stream website which allegedly  conveying "western value which would corrupt good Chinese value and moral belief". Yes, the government blocked us from the major information from outside, blocked us from "corrupted things" along side with all the knowledge and events. People here are always one step slower than people from other parts of the world. Is it really worth it? I really wish someday something can be changed and the government can be more open about it, there's nothing to be feared, what about democracy, what about communism, who cares? People just want to be part of the world! If you are confident in your reign, don't be afraid of opening your people's eyes. (I would expect a change occurs one day, when some certain political issues are thoroughly cleared, no politicians in power are related to those scandals any more, then they would be okay to break the wall)

That's the two mean reasons why I don't feel like staying in China, thinking about going back to China would be like thinking about a bird goes back to the cage...it's fine to live in a cage, you have food and warmth, almost anything you need, it's just... you are in a cage. True feelings, for a Chinese person has a heart of freedom.

Recommend you some Chinese pop MUSIC

let’s take a tour of Chinese pop!

first of all it’s Jay Chou 周杰伦 , Taiwanese. definitely the king of Chinese pop, people born in late 80s and early 90s all grow up listening to his songs. Listen to his songs is a good way to know the feelings and emotions of this generation. He has been criticised throughout his early career that he doesn’t pronounce words clearly but that’s just his style. 

He made a music style very popular in China, it’s called 中国风 (Chinese wind), it’s a way to blend modern pop songs with heavy classic Chinese elements, either the lyrics or the instruments… oh many of his lyrics are excellently beautiful, written by 方文山, most famous lyrics writer in China. 青花瓷 千里之外 东风破 娘子  发如雪 those are his 中国风 songs, must try! 

highly recommend to listen to his music especially before 2007.

Also you can see his movie work: 不能说的秘密, a heart breaking love story

Secondly…  Leehom Wang 王力宏, he’s also in the category of Taiwanese artist but…. he’s an American, American born Chinese(Taiwanese), well, many people may not know that English is his first language and he only started learning Chinese seriously since he turned 18. He’s good at … pretty much every music instruments no matter western or chinese.  He created the music style he calls “chinked-out”. People accuse him of using the word “chink”, since it’s an ethic slur referring to Chinese. but apparently he wants to give a new meaning to this word. Anyway, you can also see many Chinese elements in his music such as 在梅边 花田错 盖世英雄 心中的日月, one of his most recent work is 火力全开, very interesting, people say it’s copycat version of ke$ha’s “blow”.  Personally I like him most now cuz he shows people a sunshine-like positive image. If you watch youtube a lot, you can find him working together with Wangfu production “the long lost member” etc. Also he’s been active on silver screen, romance comedy: 恋爱通告 etc.

JJ林俊杰, actually from Singapore, has very distinguishable voice, I used to listen a lot.

David Tao陶喆 .. hm… what can I say, he’s also American! He even worked as a police officer in U.S when he was young. Anyway, he’s always been compared with Jay Chou, but he’s quite different from him. He works on his music really slowly and carefully, his fans usually have to wait years for a new album… to me his music sounds more serious. He also does something like 中国风: 苏三说.  Anyway, he’s one classic character in Chinese pop, don’t miss it.

Now… some more that I didn’t mention last time:

陈奕迅

孙燕姿

S.H.E (three girls’ singing group)

方大同

苏打绿

……

honorable mention: 后弦

very original, doing almost all his music in a 中国风 way. His lyrics are using ancient phrases and words massively, pretty cool, too bad he’s never been main stream.

hm, in case you wonder are they “Chinese” Chinese music? because these artists are from U.S, Hongkong, Taiwan, Singapore, what about mainland chinese (all those I mentioned, only 后弦  is from mainland China, southwest)??? well…. that’s the problem, Chinese pop culture is dominated by Taiwanese and Hongkonger, people consider south as cool, north as peasant. I guess on the one hand it’s because south China and Taiwan is more open to the world, on the other hand it also due to the fact that southern dialect tend to be very tender and soft, while northern dialects and accents are very … either too formal or too vulgar.  

you can find all the music on youtube I think.

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this is originally a letter I sent to my friends who study Chinese. Considering I'm born in 91, my taste might be very different from other generations, however the selections here pretty much represented the majority of my generation.
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btw, see me singing Chinese pop and my friends guessing the emotion of the songs!
click here 

We feast with our best friend virtually

So, in China, we already came to a point where we have feast with friends virtually.

My best friends in China, haven't talked to them forever, hm... I'd like to have some beer now 

Hey Stevie |Good Mythical Morning |Rhett and Link | stevie wynne levine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgYWbZnIkJ8&feature=youtu.be

her youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/StevieWLevine