21.8.09

Hudong

Ever heard about Hudong? Well, it's yet another web encyclopedia - you know, like Wikipedia.
I suppose, you have heard about Wikipedia, actually just some time ago, I would even think - "who would care about another web encyclopedia - Wikipedia rules them all!!"
But I tell you, why you perhaps may care about Hudong - actually Hudong has as many articles as there are in the English wikipedia (which is comparable, as Hudong is just monolingual.) - that is, some three million. OK, these are just official data and may be misleading, however just a quick browsing at Hudong will probably convince you, that there are many articles (even on general topics) much better (or at least longer) than the equivalent Wikipedia ones.
OK, Wikipedia is nowadays pretty well covered even in mainstream media, one would expect Hudong to be as well. Yet there is one thing I haven't mentioned yet - Hudong is in Chinese. Now what seems striking to me - who have ever heard about it here? I mean, apart from a few China aficionados. I'm not surprised little people in here are interested in Chinese encyclopedias, but actually if you are interested, you can't even get to know it exists (I found it by chance, when browsing Chinese pages).
Try searching Czech pages. Now have a look at the Wikipedia article about Hudong - almost a stub article, just by the way mentioning, Hudong has some 3000000000 articles... Just for some variety - have a look at the Hudong article about Wikipedia.
Btw there is also a Chinese edition of Wikipedia, but it's rather a desperate project. Actually, I have read an opinion column, China is so special that it deserves an encyclopedia of its own (it was phrased in the way, that Chinese shouldn't participate at Wikipedia - anyway Wikipedia is even blocked in PRC these days).
When I talk with people, and we sometimes get to me learning Chinese, they sometimes mention, often seriously, China is going to become the major world power :) No matter what you think about it, if this ever happens, we won't even notice... :(

2 comments:

kriza said...

Interresting, but this is more, i think you'll love it:
http://jspurny.sweb.cz/Heebicka/komixy.html

eeris said...

Long Live the Dada. I assume your comment has no relation to my post whatsoever ;) :D
No matter, you're right. Heebicka is absolutely cute :D :D