I popped around the Chinese youtube / hulu site mentioned and linked to at the bottom of the article. Great fun, you should check it out. I have no idea what I watched. Maybe you can tell me?
Google’s decision last month to remove some of its operations from China has overshadowed a startling dynamic at work in this country, a place where young people complain that there is not a lot to do: the Internet, already a potent social force here, has become the country’s prime entertainment service.
Frustrated with media censorship, bland programming on state-run television and limits on the number of foreign films allowed to be shown in China each year, young people are logging onto the Web and downloading alternatives.
Young people in China say they are excited about the Web not because it offers a means to rebellion, but because it gives them a wide variety of social and entertainment options.
One of the more remarkable developments in the Internet in recent years has been the informal network of young people who volunteer to produce Chinese subtitles for popular American television series like “Prison Break” and “Gossip Girl.”
The Chinese subtitles are often translated within hours of the program’s showing in the United States, and then attached to the video and made freely available on Chinese file-sharing sites.
Chinese Internet companies have gleaned a lesson from this: entertainment trumps politics on the Web in China.
“The Web is really a reflection of real life,” says Gary Wang, founder and chief executive of Tudou, one of China’s biggest video-sharing sites. “What people do in real life is they go to karaoke rooms, they go to bars, they get together with friends and they shop. And that’s what they do online.”
**They also watch alien shows like this. Can’t for the life of me figure out what I’m supposed to be seeing.
Born Curious 
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