Bring Cambridge Street Artists to Shanghai

There are many street artists in Boston/Cambridge. I always see them in the subway stations. Today Huiling was joking with me that American's primary education is so successful that too many good musicians can only end up in the street. Another idea strikes me: why not import them into China's booming pub scene in metropolitan cities like Beijing and Shanghai? At the moment pub performance is dominated by Philippinos - strange phenomenon in Asia. I'm sure Chinese locals will welcome performance by American artists. I can set up an agency company to arrange events/performances for those American. For the pubs in Shanghai/Beijing it will be easier to deal with me directly as I have an inventory of such artists and guarantee steady supply of good performances; for American bands/artists no doubt it will be easier to deal with me directly than the pubs. The beauty of this business model is it doesn't take much capital to run. I just need to have some connections. The problem is it doesn't take much education to do this either. So why me?

Private Movie Investors in China

Movie business is booming in China is the last ten years. Then-controversial directors like Zhang Yimou and Tian ZhuangZhuang now are able to produce movies within the perimeters the goverment allows. More and more movies are financed, promoted and launched by private companies. This is another industry that just fits perfectly with my interest. Maybe I can run a small company with a modest starting capital, find a good director with potential like the WKW in 1991, create some buzz through internet (blair Witch Project) or word of mouth through highly selected art-house cinemas (Sideways), and then lastly make some nice money. This is fun to do for me but the money and the connections in the circle will be good road blocks.

Sell Books by Pieces/Chapters

Another idea came across my mind when strolling with Huiling after Guggenheim Museum in New York. All the bookstores, no matter they are on-line or off-line, only sell books as a whole piece. Why not sell it chapter by chapter? The idea came from iTunes where you can buy songs individually instead of buying the entire album. If we can somehow image the entire book, we can break down the entire book into chapters and charge for each chapter. If readers only finish through chapter five, then they only pay up to chapter five instead of the whole book. For myself I rarely finish reading the entire book, but the book-buying so far is either not buy or buy all. If I grab a best seller, I probably shy away from $25 for the entire book but wouldn't mind paying $1 for reading chapter 1. If I don't like it fine my loss is floored. I believe the impulsive reading for those first few chapters are not captured anywhere in the market by the way books are being sold and it could add up to pretty substantial economic value. Having said that, it will require a change in people's reading habit. Some may like to start from the very last chapter to get a peek of the ending and some may like to jump around in the middle. Also tracking which chapter has been read could be a technological barrier as well. Well, who would expect ten years ago that songs could be purchased one-by-one from an album? In a sense that's tearing apart the traditional "concept album" experience and spoiling all the fun for the artist.