7 ms·

The village and the girl

135 points by ac2u 11y ago

ocdtrekkie 11y ago
I was going to read the article, but all the Verge-tastic CSS is too distracting.
- Nadya 11y ago
  Having CSS disabled doesn't help unless you go through the effort of removing images as well, as they are repeated twice (and sometimes 3 times). The paragraph structuring is also terrible.
  - ocdtrekkie 11y ago
    Firefox's reading mode is also confused.
    - jdmichal 11y ago
      For some reason Firefox reading mode starts about half way down the article.
      - Paul_S 11y ago
        I can't read it at all without just removing the style. Insane. Fascinating article though, worth the effort. Pages used to have a "printable version" button, whatever happened to those?
kelvin0 11y ago
Why do they feel the need to have stories with the scrolley page css of doom? I want to read the text, maybe with a few intersparsed pictures ... please bring back sane reading format of websites.
savanaly 11y ago
A living advertisement for browser extensions like Readability, Clearly, etc. that actually allow you to read articles like this.
- stephengillie 11y ago
  Or just disable Javascript. Everyone's trying to outdo "What is Code" and so we'll be dealing with this kind of journalistic showmanship for the next few months. Edit: The article is very well written and truly touching. It feels like reading The Good Earth all over again. In another way, it reads like a story about American Settlers from the 1800s. It's sad to hear about people abiding solely through subsistence farming, but it's heartening to hear they're surviving. And from the comfort of an office building, I feel obligated to reflect on my relative privileges. They are beyond realistic counting. This imbalance fills me with unresolved guilt.
  - savanaly 11y ago
    I just tried disabling javascript but it did not have the desired effect of removing the "parallax" type effect when scrolling. I tried one of the two browser extensions I mentioned, Clearly, and it worked well.
    - __z 11y ago
      In firefox: View -> page style -> no style.
  - steve-howard 11y ago
    "What is Code" was quite noisy, but I think the trend has been going on since at least "Snow Fall": http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/ http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/ I dislike the trend towards adding animations to articles, as I find it very distracting, but their continuing popularity makes me think I'm probably in the minority.
  - stephengillie 11y ago
    Sorry for putting the edit in this comment. I didn't realize how much it would detract from the conversation. Now that I've seen the downvotes, it's too late to edit.
patmcguire 11y ago
Wow, I really hope that brick-scroll doesn't catch on.
PlzSnow 11y ago
These "immersive" stories will disappear once the realization that the ROI on them doesn't work. Expensive to create, but no income generated because no-one reads them because they are annoying. The only companies left using them will be those with no concern about ROI such as here; the state-funded BBC. I'm sure it looks good on the designer's CV though. Who cares about the people who have to actually read the content...
- nfoz 11y ago
  That's what I used to think about all-flash websites. They did go away, more or less, but only because the Web became that same pixel-per-pixel full-designer-control application platform, with all the same obnoxious problems that made us hate Flash, minus the binary blob. The overwhelming majority of websites would be better served by simple HTML3 with no javascript at all. Or rather, their users would be better served.
  - thaumasiotes 11y ago
    > the Web became that same pixel-per-pixel full-designer-control application platform, with all the same obnoxious problems that made us hate Flash, minus the binary blob. Browsers now disable right click?
    - Paul_S 11y ago
      And disable copy&paste in really clever ways so you can't just edit an attribute on a textfield to paste your text. Browsers helpfully expose a on paste event that can be hijacked from various places and text manipulated during paste. I'm an embedded dev and I can't get my head around it so I'm happy for a webdev to correct me if I'm wrong.
    - lmz 11y ago
      > Browsers now disable right click? Hasn't that always been possible using JS? I know that Firefox in its distant past once had an option to not allow websites to catch right clicks, but it's been gone for quite a while.
- 11y ago
astrange 11y ago
I didn't have a single problem reading this article.
- metasean 11y ago
  Ditto. Normally Ghostery will block at least one script site that is necessary to view pages like this. But this one worked fine, even though Ghostery blocked ChartBeat, DoubleClick, iPerceptions, NetRatings, and ScoreCard.
- tomtang0514 11y ago
  Agreed. However I didn't find it makes the whole experience better either.
  - yitchelle 11y ago
    I had a difference experience to you. Although I didn't get much out of the embedded videos. The still photographs had more impact for me. Just my $0.02. It is a good article.
metasean 11y ago
> Built with Shorthand Site: http://shorthand.com/ http://shorthand.com/ I couldn't find a feedback link, but there is an employment email address - jobs@shorthand.com - It'd be interesting to hear their response to some of the feedback here.
bruceb 11y ago
I will differ from most of the comments here, I enjoyed they layout and thought it added to the story. I am on a desktop with FF. As for the story it is a solemn reminder millions of people work hard jobs and make life easier for others. I hope Xiao Zhang's life will continue to get a bit easier as the years go on.
- tokenadult 11y ago
  One of the things I liked best about this story is that it is based on reporting that has been following the same family over time for many years. That gives the before-and-after aspects of describing development of rural towns in China a lot of coherency and visual impact. I too had no technological problems viewing the story, using desktop Google Chrome on a Windows PC with a lot of script blocking running.
- p1esk 11y ago
  I loved both the layout and the article. This was one of the best webpages I've visited, ever.
- triplesec 11y ago
  Definitely following on from the format that the NYT pioneered. IT's wel done, if you have a high-res modern desktop interface. Reminds me of trying to read WIRED in the 90s. Actually worth the extra effort. I don't like the politically uncritical boosterish content, however.
  - cbd1984 11y ago
    It's impossible to read, though.
Menge 11y ago
Maybe the interface is misguided, but it is difficult to pull-off to this level, and I find that it does give an overall feeling of connection to the memory threads of rural chinese life. I am blocking the flash content; someone else must claim my great uncle's fortune. But it is still a great improvement on what was acceptable content degradation a few years ago. (edit- So overall I'd say there is far from anything wrong with this article, and it provides an important type of impression that we lacked when I was studying rural china, decades ago.)
rthomas6 11y ago
Could we stop talking about the fucking layout and talk about the article? China's culture, people, and most of all economy is opaque to most outsiders and I think it's fascinating. They built an entire city from nothing in just a few years, just... on a whim. Because the leaders thought that would be best for the country as a whole. It's fascinating and scary and amazing, and I can't think of another place that works even similar to this. Yet it seems that us westerners largely ignore China except in terms of imports and exports. Why? Is it the language? The lack of widespread cultural exports? I mean most people know very little about China as a country compared to how important they are on the world's stage. In fact you could pick almost any other country with a respectable GDP and I could tell you a whole lot more about it.
- blackbagboys 11y ago
  Well, it was probably also built because massive construction projects are an easy way to boost the GDP of administrative sub-regions and the career prospects of the CCP officials in charge of those administrative units depend upon whether or not they can show that they boosted GDP. The motivations and dynamics at play are not really all that alien.
  - derefr 11y ago
    > the career prospects of the CCP officials in charge of those administrative units depend upon whether or not they can show that they boosted GDP I would say, then, that it seems like this is a good idea so far!
    - blackbagboys 11y ago
      Well, the problem is that this does not really incentivize the sort of uniquely long-term thinking that the parent seems to think is at work here.
      - rthomas6 11y ago
        I did not mean to imply a motive to building a brand new, mostly empty city. Just that it's incredibly foreign, yet fascinating, and I can't imagine another country doing anything like that.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
analyst74 11y ago
A very well written article, but there was one line that struck me, yet seems totally brushed off by the author. "...his father killed himself by drinking rat poison after a family argument over money". I can imagine, but will never truly understand the kind of hardship and turmoil the family suffered between greed, family value and survival.
- oska 11y ago
  I don't think it was “brushed off”. The main storyline in the article was the differences in lives and outlook across three generations of women: the main character, her mother and her daughter. The husband was a part of this story. The story of his father much less so. It was already a long article; the writer can't afford to branch out into the stories of all the surrounding relatives too.
cbd1984 11y ago
Flagged as unreadable.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
letitgo12345 11y ago
If ppl are interested more in this topic, Last train home is a good documentary to look at.
placeybordeaux 11y ago
For those who want to read more: Earlier BBC article about the building of Wuix New Town: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/5103100.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/5103100.stm Looks like it's been a bit of a case study for the BBC.
sdrothrock 11y ago
> they're unwilling to invest any more in the house in case it's earmarked for demolition in the next phase of city development. This sentence stood out for me. It's interesting that China is pushing for urbanization for its people and that some of those people (like Xiao Zhang in the article) are impatiently waiting for the better life to come, but I wonder about the long-term consequences of this -- how many people will simply be conditioned to not improve/work on their lot in fear/hope that the government will provide?
cbd1984 11y ago
Is there a readable version of this article?

135 points by ac2u 11y ago

ocdtrekkie 11y ago

I was going to read the article, but all the Verge-tastic CSS is too distracting.

Nadya 11y ago
Having CSS disabled doesn't help unless you go through the effort of removing images as well, as they are repeated twice (and sometimes 3 times). The paragraph structuring is also terrible.
- ocdtrekkie 11y ago
  Firefox's reading mode is also confused.
  - jdmichal 11y ago
    For some reason Firefox reading mode starts about half way down the article.
    - Paul_S 11y ago
      I can't read it at all without just removing the style. Insane. Fascinating article though, worth the effort. Pages used to have a "printable version" button, whatever happened to those?

kelvin0 11y ago

Why do they feel the need to have stories with the scrolley page css of doom? I want to read the text, maybe with a few intersparsed pictures ... please bring back sane reading format of websites.

savanaly 11y ago

A living advertisement for browser extensions like Readability, Clearly, etc. that actually allow you to read articles like this.

stephengillie 11y ago
Or just disable Javascript. Everyone's trying to outdo "What is Code" and so we'll be dealing with this kind of journalistic showmanship for the next few months. Edit: The article is very well written and truly touching. It feels like reading The Good Earth all over again. In another way, it reads like a story about American Settlers from the 1800s. It's sad to hear about people abiding solely through subsistence farming, but it's heartening to hear they're surviving. And from the comfort of an office building, I feel obligated to reflect on my relative privileges. They are beyond realistic counting. This imbalance fills me with unresolved guilt.
- savanaly 11y ago
  I just tried disabling javascript but it did not have the desired effect of removing the "parallax" type effect when scrolling. I tried one of the two browser extensions I mentioned, Clearly, and it worked well.
  - __z 11y ago
    In firefox: View -> page style -> no style.
- steve-howard 11y ago
  "What is Code" was quite noisy, but I think the trend has been going on since at least "Snow Fall": http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/ http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/ I dislike the trend towards adding animations to articles, as I find it very distracting, but their continuing popularity makes me think I'm probably in the minority.
- stephengillie 11y ago
  Sorry for putting the edit in this comment. I didn't realize how much it would detract from the conversation. Now that I've seen the downvotes, it's too late to edit.

patmcguire 11y ago

Wow, I really hope that brick-scroll doesn't catch on.

PlzSnow 11y ago

These "immersive" stories will disappear once the realization that the ROI on them doesn't work. Expensive to create, but no income generated because no-one reads them because they are annoying. The only companies left using them will be those with no concern about ROI such as here; the state-funded BBC. I'm sure it looks good on the designer's CV though. Who cares about the people who have to actually read the content...

nfoz 11y ago
That's what I used to think about all-flash websites. They did go away, more or less, but only because the Web became that same pixel-per-pixel full-designer-control application platform, with all the same obnoxious problems that made us hate Flash, minus the binary blob. The overwhelming majority of websites would be better served by simple HTML3 with no javascript at all. Or rather, their users would be better served.
- thaumasiotes 11y ago
  > the Web became that same pixel-per-pixel full-designer-control application platform, with all the same obnoxious problems that made us hate Flash, minus the binary blob. Browsers now disable right click?
  - Paul_S 11y ago
    And disable copy&paste in really clever ways so you can't just edit an attribute on a textfield to paste your text. Browsers helpfully expose a on paste event that can be hijacked from various places and text manipulated during paste. I'm an embedded dev and I can't get my head around it so I'm happy for a webdev to correct me if I'm wrong.
  - lmz 11y ago
    > Browsers now disable right click? Hasn't that always been possible using JS? I know that Firefox in its distant past once had an option to not allow websites to catch right clicks, but it's been gone for quite a while.
11y ago

astrange 11y ago

I didn't have a single problem reading this article.

metasean 11y ago
Ditto. Normally Ghostery will block at least one script site that is necessary to view pages like this. But this one worked fine, even though Ghostery blocked ChartBeat, DoubleClick, iPerceptions, NetRatings, and ScoreCard.
tomtang0514 11y ago
Agreed. However I didn't find it makes the whole experience better either.
- yitchelle 11y ago
  I had a difference experience to you. Although I didn't get much out of the embedded videos. The still photographs had more impact for me. Just my $0.02. It is a good article.

metasean 11y ago

> Built with Shorthand Site: http://shorthand.com/ http://shorthand.com/ I couldn't find a feedback link, but there is an employment email address - jobs@shorthand.com - It'd be interesting to hear their response to some of the feedback here.

bruceb 11y ago

I will differ from most of the comments here, I enjoyed they layout and thought it added to the story. I am on a desktop with FF. As for the story it is a solemn reminder millions of people work hard jobs and make life easier for others. I hope Xiao Zhang's life will continue to get a bit easier as the years go on.

tokenadult 11y ago
One of the things I liked best about this story is that it is based on reporting that has been following the same family over time for many years. That gives the before-and-after aspects of describing development of rural towns in China a lot of coherency and visual impact. I too had no technological problems viewing the story, using desktop Google Chrome on a Windows PC with a lot of script blocking running.
p1esk 11y ago
I loved both the layout and the article. This was one of the best webpages I've visited, ever.
triplesec 11y ago
Definitely following on from the format that the NYT pioneered. IT's wel done, if you have a high-res modern desktop interface. Reminds me of trying to read WIRED in the 90s. Actually worth the extra effort. I don't like the politically uncritical boosterish content, however.
- cbd1984 11y ago
  It's impossible to read, though.

Menge 11y ago

Maybe the interface is misguided, but it is difficult to pull-off to this level, and I find that it does give an overall feeling of connection to the memory threads of rural chinese life. I am blocking the flash content; someone else must claim my great uncle's fortune. But it is still a great improvement on what was acceptable content degradation a few years ago. (edit- So overall I'd say there is far from anything wrong with this article, and it provides an important type of impression that we lacked when I was studying rural china, decades ago.)

rthomas6 11y ago

Could we stop talking about the fucking layout and talk about the article? China's culture, people, and most of all economy is opaque to most outsiders and I think it's fascinating. They built an entire city from nothing in just a few years, just... on a whim. Because the leaders thought that would be best for the country as a whole. It's fascinating and scary and amazing, and I can't think of another place that works even similar to this. Yet it seems that us westerners largely ignore China except in terms of imports and exports. Why? Is it the language? The lack of widespread cultural exports? I mean most people know very little about China as a country compared to how important they are on the world's stage. In fact you could pick almost any other country with a respectable GDP and I could tell you a whole lot more about it.

blackbagboys 11y ago
Well, it was probably also built because massive construction projects are an easy way to boost the GDP of administrative sub-regions and the career prospects of the CCP officials in charge of those administrative units depend upon whether or not they can show that they boosted GDP. The motivations and dynamics at play are not really all that alien.
- derefr 11y ago
  > the career prospects of the CCP officials in charge of those administrative units depend upon whether or not they can show that they boosted GDP I would say, then, that it seems like this is a good idea so far!
  - blackbagboys 11y ago
    Well, the problem is that this does not really incentivize the sort of uniquely long-term thinking that the parent seems to think is at work here.
    - rthomas6 11y ago
      I did not mean to imply a motive to building a brand new, mostly empty city. Just that it's incredibly foreign, yet fascinating, and I can't imagine another country doing anything like that.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

analyst74 11y ago

A very well written article, but there was one line that struck me, yet seems totally brushed off by the author. "...his father killed himself by drinking rat poison after a family argument over money". I can imagine, but will never truly understand the kind of hardship and turmoil the family suffered between greed, family value and survival.

oska 11y ago
I don't think it was “brushed off”. The main storyline in the article was the differences in lives and outlook across three generations of women: the main character, her mother and her daughter. The husband was a part of this story. The story of his father much less so. It was already a long article; the writer can't afford to branch out into the stories of all the surrounding relatives too.

cbd1984 11y ago

Flagged as unreadable.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

letitgo12345 11y ago

If ppl are interested more in this topic, Last train home is a good documentary to look at.

placeybordeaux 11y ago

For those who want to read more: Earlier BBC article about the building of Wuix New Town: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/5103100.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/5103100.stm Looks like it's been a bit of a case study for the BBC.

sdrothrock 11y ago

> they're unwilling to invest any more in the house in case it's earmarked for demolition in the next phase of city development. This sentence stood out for me. It's interesting that China is pushing for urbanization for its people and that some of those people (like Xiao Zhang in the article) are impatiently waiting for the better life to come, but I wonder about the long-term consequences of this -- how many people will simply be conditioned to not improve/work on their lot in fear/hope that the government will provide?

cbd1984 11y ago

Is there a readable version of this article?