Just a shuffle of titles on the overall bestseller list - nothing new that captures the interest of Chinese readers this week.

It's not that there's nothing out there - major literary authors from Yu Hua and Wang Anyi to A Lai and Jia Pingwa have all released new novels this year - but none of them are selling as well as international blockbusters and collections of edifying anecdotes.

The general non-fiction list, however, has seen some movement since the last time Danwei took a look at it. Pictured above is a new title on list this week. Porn for Panda (#10) by Shen Hongfei, is a collection of 80 essays originally written over several years for Shen's popular "Ideological Work" column in the magazine Sanlian Life Weekly. The titular essay discusses the "educational videos" shown to a panda in order to get her in the mating mood (see Danwei's post on the subject).

Also having to do with pandas is the series PandaMonium. This series of children's adventure stories is not on the bestseller list, but it is currently being advertised on the same page of The Beijing News. Essentially print versions of a popular television show now showing on CCTV's children's station, these books tell the story of the impending destruction of panda planet in far-off galaxy, some "magic beans", and a panda-angel who arrives to look for the "savior of the world." The pandas (watch the symbolism) are the product of joint venture between a Taiwanese company and a Japanese company, and the show is reportedly the first domestic Chinese cartoon to break through the Japanese market (most animation goes the other way).

No doubt this series will be appearing on the children's list in coming weeks.

Is it the summertime? Is it piracy? For whatever reason, "serious literature" is not selling well. The Beijing News quotes figures provided by the Beijing Book Building, one of the major bookstores in the city, showing daily sales of "literary novels." Yu Hua's new Brothers sells an average of 29 copies per day, while other novelists sell considerably less. Jia Pingwa's Shaanxi Opera (published in April) sells 15 copies per day, Pipi's Love Full Stop (pictured, July) and A Lai's Empty Mountain (April) sell 9, and Wang Anyi's new novel, published in May, sells just 2 copies per day despite the impending release of the movie adaptation of the author's bestselling Song of Everlasting Sorrow.

A Lai, whose award-winning The Dust Settles went from a first printing of 50,000 copies to current annual (legit) sales of 100,000, is philosophical about his new novel's prospects:

When Secret Shame, The Devil Soldiers I Know, and The Dust Settles were published, I said, "Don't talk to me about rankings. I want to see how influential they'll be in a decade." ..."I need the long term, not the short term."

His view of the market is, "China is a publishing superpower but not a reading superpower."

---

The general non-fiction list for the week of 8/13--8/19:

1. (1) My Normandy by Tang Shizeng: New work of photojournalism commemorating the 60th anniversary of victory in the war against fascism. (唐师曾, 《我的诺曼底》)
2. (2) About Going to Work by Zhu Deyong: See Overall List. (朱德庸,《关于上班这件事》)
3. (3) A Pitcher of Wine Among the Flowers by Li Ling. More anecdotal history. (李零, 《花间一壶酒》)
4. (5) Li Shutong Talks About Buddhism by Li Shutong: Early 20th century scholar, poet, oil painter, and musician. He lived in Tianjin, and became a Buddhist monk in 1918. (李叔同, 《李叔同说佛》)
5. (6) True Stories of the 12 Qing Emperors by Yan Chongnian: Popular history. (阎崇年,《正说清朝十二帝》)
6. (7) The Man Who Changed China by Lawrence Kuhn: The authorized bio of Jiang Zemin. (库恩,《他改变了中国》)
7. (4) Looking at the Moon From Honglou by Liu Xinwu: Essays on Dream of the Red Mansions. Serialized on Sina. (刘心武,《红楼望月》)
8. (9) Read Zen, Learn How to Live edited by Jin Yuejun. (金跃军,《读禅学做人》)
9. (10) 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff. Newly translated this year. Serialized on Luyuan Study. (海莲·汉芙, 《查令十字街84号》)
10. (-) Porn for Panda by Shen Hongfei. Chinese title is "Pandas watch movies." (沈宏非, 《大熊猫看小电影》)

The overall bestseller list for the week of 8/13--8/19:

1. (1) Modern Chinese Dictionary (fifth edition), published by The Commercial Press. (《现代汉语词典》)
2. (3) The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown: For the past few months this novel has been a best-seller shared by the mainland, Taiwan, and the United States. Digital Fortress is a perennial on the fiction list, too. (丹·布郎,《达·芬奇密码》)
3. (2) Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling: British version. (J.K. 罗琳, 《哈利·波特与混血王子》)
4. (4) Wolf Totem by Jiang Rong: Another long-running best-seller, this loosely-plotted novel is being made into a movie (mentioned earlier on Danwei). (姜戎,《狼图腾》)
5. (8) A Night With No Adults edited by Liu Haitao. (刘海涛, 《没有大人的夜晚》)
6. (9) Light for a Book-Dream edited by Liu Haitao: subtitled One hundred stories to motivate middle school students. (刘海涛, 《书梦的灯》)
7. (5) My Normandy by Tang Shizeng: New work of photojournalism commemorating the 60th anniversary of victory in the war against fascism. (唐师曾, 《我的诺曼底》)
8. (7) About Going to Work by Zhu Deyong: The author is a cartoonist from Taiwan whose earlier work was the inspiration for the incredibly popular television series Pink Ladies. A sample of Work is available on Sina. (朱德庸,《关于上班这件事》)
9. (10) Rush to the Dead Summer by Guo Jingming (Danwei previously translated the title as 1995-2005 Not Yet Summer Solstice): Novel is serialized on Sina. (郭敬明,《1995-2005夏至未至》)
10. (6) Short Stories, Great Truths complete set. Classic parables with wisdom for today. (《小故事大道理全集》)

Bestseller rankings are taken from the Friday Book Review section in The Beijing News, which compiles its data from the city's major online and brick & mortar bookstores.

在程序设计的时候，事件处理通常有两种方式：1）轮询；2）订阅。 轮询：是以一定的时间间隔不断的去查询某个事件是否发生，这是需求者主动的行为，需求者需要付出艰苦的劳动 ； 订阅：是供给者在事件发生的时候，主动向订阅了这个事件的需求者发送通知； 从整体效率角度来说，订阅模式要比轮询模式节省资源，没有额外的消耗。 我想网络也是一样，可能也会从一个Pull的时代过渡到Push的时代。 在《RSS Support in Longhorn》中，有这么一句： Browse, Search, Subscribe 当信息量大到我们无法更好的浏览，搜索应时而生，之后呢？恐怕就是订阅了吧。 在Pull的时代，我每天会去看很多新闻网站、BBS、校友录。这个过程中，很多毫无更新的页面不说，即使更新，也有很多我不想看到的内容，不想看到的广告。而现在如此之火的Search Engine更是Pull时代的极致之作，它帮我们从海量信息中找到我们需要的。 在Push的时代，我们所需要的就是订阅，订阅新闻源，订阅关键词，甚至订阅自己的习惯，:-)。我现在每天所做的第一件工作通常是检查我的订阅的更新。当然，这些还仅仅是我订阅的新闻源和关键词的推送，将来还可以根据你上网的习惯和近期活动进行更加主动的推送。 举个例子，我在Google Alert订阅了"许巍"，因此他会每天把相关的新闻发送给我（目前还是通过Email，RSS只支持英文版）。 说起根据上网习惯的主动发送，就首先能够拿到用户的上网的第一首资料。让用户心甘情愿贡献自己的隐私，当然需要有Killer Application，我觉得，Google应该是最有发言权的 。我和朋友们讨论过Google为什么一直对RSS的支持粒度不大。我却始终觉得Google肯定不会对这个技术漠不关心的。Google擅长什么？擅长的是信息挖掘，然后根据挖掘的结果配给你相应的广告。看看现在，Google通过GMail拿到你所有的邮件，通过Google Web Search History拿到你的搜索历史列表，通过Google ig拿到你的订阅，通过Google Web Accelerator拿到你的上网偏好，甚至通过Google Desktop Search拿到你桌面的文档。这些已经很大程度上可以分析一个人近期的网络动向和需求了。这样，就完全可以通过RSS将你最近感兴趣的东西主动的推送给你（对了，Google前一段将RSS中的Adsense申请了专利 ) 。 比如，如果最近能够把关于"许巍"，"绝版青春"的乐评、观感，甚至当当网的"收藏许巍"纪念CD推送给我，该有多酷！（这样的广告，我不抵触）。 才发现，我竟然已经把自己的一切隐私交给了Google，想想，有点儿可怕。 Tags: Tech, RSS, Subscribe Tags: Tech, RSS, Subscribe