to be honest sometimes i'm just like you know what i just wished i opened a coffee shop [Music] welcome to mosaic of china a podcast about people who are making their mark in china i'm your host oscar fuchs this is the first full episode i've released in a long time so it's customary for me to start with a quick reminder about the format of these interviews if you're listening to this and thinking i don't need to hear about the format i've been listening to this damn podcast since season one you fool then you really should at this point be subscribed to the premium version of the show on patreon or apple podcast subscriptions internationally or on ifrdn in china if you were listening there you wouldn't be hearing any of this guff you'd already be into the episode by now but no you're here so you have to endure listening to me going on and on about subscribing to the premium version for just two dollars per month and how you get around 15 extra minutes of content in every interview and how all you have to do is follow the simple instructions and the premium show just pops into your podcast feed exactly in the same way as this version well you're here at least and that still makes me happy so let me get on with explaining the format the first part is a freestyle conversation starting with the description of an object that the guest has brought in which in some way exemplifies their life in china in the second part the guest answers 10 questions about their tastes and experiences in china and the third part is where they nominate someone to appear in the next season of mosaic of china the show has been designed to have lots of visual content to follow alongside the audio so make sure you're checking out the mosaic of china website or following the story at oscology on instagram or joining one of the listeners groups on wechat by adding me on my id mosaic of china and so today's interview is with eric leo eric is a technology expert so i have just two things to say about that firstly we start off talking about augmented reality which is often abbreviated to ar and then proceeds to jump from one technical topic to another if that makes you already feel like switching off then don't because the conversation should be enjoyable both to experts like eric and two idiots like me and secondly eric is quite a fast talker and i may have been over caffeinated because i mirrored his talking speed in today's interview so for both of these reasons it's a good excuse to remind you that there's a full transcript available at eric's page on the mosaic of china website or if you're watching this as a video on youtube then you can follow the captions there premium subscribers have special access to the full transcript of the longer versions too one final reminder before we start this time to wait until the end of the episode where there's a short catch-up interview with the person who referred today's guests from the last season of mosaic of china which in eric's case is the fashion journalist casey hall from season 2 episode 22. right that's finally enough from me let's begin the show [Music] hi eric hello oh it's a cheery start actually i am glad that i have a caffeinated coffee in front of me normally i just drink decaf but for this conversation i feel like i need to have my wits around you not just because of your perkiness it's also because of the topics we're talking about which is going to be quite technical i believe yes because how would you describe your role right now oh boy so i am cto and co-founder of digi twin technologies we do digital twinning of the real world so we bridge the physical with the digital world and especially these days there's a lot of talk of the metaverse right the digital twins makes it into an enterprise metaverse okay well before we dive into that the first question i ask you and anyone in that chair is what object did you bring that in some way describes your life in china i actually brought glasses because i think that in the very near future we're going to see the world in different lens and symbolizes the way that we will see things with augmented reality in the very near future and you've already said the words augmented reality and in the context of glasses you're making me immediately think of google glasses yes was that the point as well well it's actually the first step um because these days right everybody's talking about the metaverse so what does that even mean actually it's just the internet but the way that you interact with it will change so what if you wear ar and you can actually see around you you see the weather instead of looking on your phone to see what what is the degrees it actually shows you right let's say in the next couple years next time i'm on the show hopefully someday i'll wear some maybe apple glasses and i look at you and all of a sudden it'll pull up all the information that we talked about previously i mean it's a little scary right but the thing is this is inevitable because information is already there it's just the way it's presented to us this is the thing right because the equivalent obviously would be the encyclopedia where before the data was there at least in some form yeah and if you want to know something we just flick through the encyclopedia then it's on the phone all at our fingertips and then i guess this is just the next iteration of that it's going to be floating in the ether as we are walking through the world absolutely and it's something that you experience it's called spatial experiences it's very different right because the way that we learn as well when we read something right versus seeing it on youtube and then versus actually experience it live right that surrounds you i think that's going to change you know the way that we see the world and also how we retain information okay well these are the basics i'm sure many people listening are aware and familiar with these terms let's jump to what you are doing now so what is it that your company does yeah so we create digital twins like we're saying earlier um so we can i don't understand that so let's say right now we're in a studio right here right um so it took me a while to get here uh because of you know traffic but the thing is if i actually can scan this room to digitize this physical place and then i can actually add the digital elements like this microphone or anything that's connected the ac unit over there so we can actually put this into a 3d virtual world but it's connected to the physical world okay what you're saying is it exists in real life and you have this twin version of it exactly exactly so in that example what would be the point so then you can actually access it and interact with it wherever you are in the world right that's something that you can just fly down into sort of like a video game you experience it versus the 2d thing where you pull up and you gotta wait for it to stream in and say okay which camera is this uh oh yeah it's in my living room or is it my kitchen that takes a lot of time for you to process i have about 10 cameras around my house the problem is as soon as you access the app it actually has a a grid list of all the cameras every single time i open it i have to think about it i have to think about which room do i need to look at yes and how do i access it and i have to scroll through and try to process it and that wastes a lot of time every single day yes you're giving me the image of the archetypal security guard in a mall yeah you see that monitor with all the different blocks okay what you're talking about then is the human interaction between you and the image right yes so we call it human computer interaction yeah hci hci yeah and that's the thing right where basically we see the entire world the physical world spatially or in 3d so why can't we experience all of our data in 3d um recently we did something in singapore where it actually captured the entire water treatment plant right pub for the government um it's such a large site somebody can wear like a personnel tracker right in case they fall or get stuck they just press an sos button and on our 3d digital twin that looks like a video game it'll show up exactly where they are you click on their name it'll fly down and show the live cctv directly where he is and then the security guards say okay quick let's dispatch somebody over here okay so in that example it's not for security it's for something else right for safety safety right it could be for security it could be for safety um it could be for entertainment let's say sports you can actually run outside and there's a shadow there's a there's a avatar of somebody who already did it right physically in the physical world but it's just a you know an overlapping avatar that's replaying the exact steps you know exact speed that they did previously which helps you compete with that avatar exactly i mean yeah you're painting a very optimistic picture it must be who i am as a person but i always go to the negative but i'm sure actually most people when they heard this idea of metaverse they used the word that you said before it's an inevitability yeah but it's one of those things where is it actually going to be an improvement in our lives or is this going to have all kinds of weird unintended consequences your example of the person working in the plant in singapore he presses a button or she and it works that's the benign example yes the malignant example would be that there are cameras tracing all employees at all times yes where we can't possibly step out for one second to do a wii because there's someone you know there'll be an alarm and they'll count how many wees we do yeah that's obviously going to happen isn't it it's already happening we just don't know about it or we don't see it because i talk to a lot of factory owners about these things and they actually want that right the operators the management they want to understand the big data doesn't mean that they're going to act on it i think you're again taking the optimistic route because what you're thinking of is the anonymized version where you look at the big data and then you can extrapolate and work out what's going wrong you know then it's useful what worries me is when you personalize it yeah let's take another example actually retail stores right retail stores yeah you step into a retail store right it could be any brand they already have all this data on you for them it's not anonymized because you're in their property they have access to all your information saying oh you bought these sweatpants you know last season she's gonna be like hey would you like this new thing right i mean there's so much that they can capitalize in that example with the retail store i see only a small window where that's going to work it's where it's a new technology and the customer walking in doesn't necessarily know that the sales rep has this information and they feel like oh you know they feel like there's some genuine like memory and then they're like yes i feel some engagement with this brand i'm gonna buy that how the hell did you know that i wanted the sweatshirts right and so i can see it working in that area but then you know where i'm going right yes we all get used to it yeah it's going to become so inauthentic because of course we know that the sales rep has our data just leave me alone how do you see that extrapolating into the future if not what i've just said i think it's the way that we utilize our for example google services right or wechat it makes our lives easier it's more convenient and we know we're giving up our data we've already agreed to their licensing agreement or whatever right so the thing is you already know that you're given data to make your life easier and more efficient so in a way i think there's going to be two types of stores in the future right the ones that are fully connected have your access to information you go in you get out right you know exactly what you want there actually won't even be a sales person they'll be executed yeah it's inevitable but that's you see this is where i think about darwin you know i think we all have a misconception of darwin because we all think oh it's all about progress for the better but actually darwin himself he did see species that either flatlined or they retrograded you know it's not always about progress for the right reasons this is where we all don't understand darwinism properly we can go backwards you know and for some reason this technology is where i get really scared i'll give you an example so out and about in the city in shanghai there was a time i'm not even sure if it's still happening i haven't seen it for a while but if you as a pedestrian walked across a crossing and it was a red light then it would have your picture yes it would ping up your name because it has your photo id and it knows who you are oh yeah and it gives you a scare saying hey you've just crossed the road and you shouldn't have is that a twin world is that a good example or is that something else that is twin world that is twitter right yeah because all this data already exists right and it's just how you interact with or how we or how businesses or governments interact and see it and visualize it well then let's zoom out then because the examples you've given so far have gone from home to factory to retail mall but then now we can talk about society as well yes like as a company are you working with cities absolutely yeah yes we worked on smart cities on various ones in china it's for different departments right so we see ourselves as potentially almost like a operating system so let's say it could be for fire emergency response we did a project where basically it was geo-locating a lot of their fire stations on a 3d map as soon as one of the fire departments would get a call it would actually pop up on the map on the 3d map so all of the fire department's information is linked together and they can see exactly what's going on they can try to optimize it as well oh they see fire truck one in google bay it hasn't been maintained maybe we need to stop you know sending it out at the same time maybe we can dispatch this car in let's say jing yan that's a little bit further away but maybe it won't break down one of the projects was actually with this shopping mall called global harbor um i think it's one of the largest malls in the world from my understanding it's here in shanghai yeah yeah it's huge okay we're about to scan the entire mall so that they can actually say okay if something happens at uh h m for example right and there's an emergency that happens what's the closest path to get out as well as for the the fire people to get in outside of the mall there's these fire hydrants that are actually also on this 3d plane right so they can say okay well if there's a fire happening in h m how many rolls of the fire hose do i need to bring so all of this can be calculated and which hydrant to use exactly how many fire trucks from which station should be deployed yeah if it's actually the fire commander they have access to sort of the whole smart city uh region right then you zoom into the fire brigade right the team that actually is dispatched to go to the mall for example maybe they have an ipad where they can actually access that information like the fire hydrants and then when the actual fire fighters get in so this is something that we haven't actually done yet because this is for the future uh one day firefighters can actually have ar so then they actually know exactly where their colleagues are where their other firemen are um because they can actually see through walls almost right yes or no it's smoky yes they have full visibility as though it's just exactly small in real time exactly so i mean using technology this is where sort of the two-sided things happen right i would like to actually see our technologies help the world save lives yeah this is it when i talk about technology to people like you at some point we always end up talking about morality and efforts absolutely like do you think about it or do you just have this inevitability mantra in your head where you're like look if i wasn't doing it somebody else would so i absolve myself yeah you know that's the thing like i try to do good with the technologies that i work with um and i try to be the thought leaders in these new industries and show people that hey you know what we can gamify things we can make it better we can improve people's lives you know the younger generation right especially in china that grew up with wechat they don't really care about privacy that much because they just grew up with it this is all they know so the thing is um what i try to tend to do is saying okay well maybe in the future right maybe maybe that's something that they can choose to do or not i think when it comes down to it right um if we're actually the thought leaders if we're in the lead we can actually try to dictate where it can potentially be going right in some way influence yeah some way influence as long as there's influence because like you're saying there's always going to be dark side but if i see like if i'm still in power and i see that this is happening i will try to remedy that right because this is who i am there's other companies that i don't know about that maybe they want to say okay i just want information let's sell it et cetera i mean that's a business model because they want money right yeah but for me right it's really not about becoming a millionaire and doing all these things looking elon musk he is guiding almost humanity towards mars it's ridiculous i understand i understand what you're saying i'd rather have people who are thinking about it than people who are not who are just selling that to everyone and i know that you're thinking about it at least but then at the same time i'm thinking about you in the situation of mark zuckerberg when he was like let's say 10 years ago and he was saying the same thing like it's all about good it's all about connecting people to university and then suddenly you know he's in a situation where he's got a lot more power and has he asked himself these moral questions or not and i don't think we really know all of these tech giants you see the genius and you see the ambiguity when it comes to morality as well in your situation have you had an example where you could have sold your technology to any kind of organization and you decided not to yes yes absolutely let's just say it was for defense yeah and then what about risks on a day-to-day basis like how do you mitigate risks when it comes to you dealing with big data and dealing with very high profile clients so this is the thing where it's not like we're collecting the data we're not facebook the data doesn't actually come from us the data is actually theirs our customers but we're just giving them tools to access it and visualize it better to just be more effective at their daily jobs well i've been quite mean to you because i want to talk about your technology and i've made you talk about all these bigger topics but you've been very kind to humor me in my questions it's super important right yeah because you're absolutely right oscar as we sort of move towards the next generation of the metaverse or information right we should be talking about this and we need to educate people to say this is potentially the right path forward let me take a shift in the conversation and play you the recording of the person who invited you onto mosaic of china which was casey hall yeah let's hear what she had to say i would recommend you interview eric leel who is the cto of a chinese tech company his company does a lot with technology big data i should also say that my husband works there so that's how i know about them hello to casey hello tell me then how much interaction do you have with her what's your connection i guess through her husband yeah yeah through her husband mike um what's really interesting is that mike told me last night that uh for the first time in his life casey understands what he's doing which is the metaverse oh because now it's becoming more known and certainly we have the vocabulary to talk about it but apparently even the fashion industry the metaverse is huge so this is the thing where metaverse is spanning across every single industry now the reason i wanted to play that was because she described your company as a chinese company yeah and she described you as a cto so i just want to find out about that story so yeah would you say that this company could be run just the same elsewhere or is it a very chinese company i would say it's half half right and that's the uh the pros and cons i'm being over here in china because i come from silicon valley so i try to bring a lot of the management style as well as the way that i see things right how things should happen so you know we heard the whole 996 right uh nine to nine and six days a week i mean that work ethic is pretty crazy like we all heard with huawei etc these chinese companies i don't see that as a requirement right we should actually make employees enjoy what they do and if they enjoy what they do and they see the vision in the future and the potential for the technologies that we work on they should be happy to work extra hours themselves it could be at home it could be anywhere in the world which sounds like what a silicon valley company would be the culture is that the culture that you have at least for the engineering staff yes you're a cto you're a co-founder so why are you cto not ceo so um in 2015 uh actually i started a company called unisol technologies and i was ceo at the time or just me actually and uh it was really interesting um got up to about 50 employees and then the trade war hit and i realized real quick in china that um especially being a u.s citizen if i want to work in smart cities that's going to be harder so that's why i partnered with a with a chinese partner yes yeah so this is why digit twin technologies is today what it is is that why you didn't continue with your previous company because you realized there was a certain limit that you could get as a ceo from america absolutely that's smart so i think for me you know moving forward i'm going to be helping more with our sort of international approach as well we actually have a singapore hub called ver spatial technologies it's a different branding that is the company that will actually start making this technology more realistic for outside of china as well okay and then um we're gonna see where else we can actually expand it to yeah you did say that you worked in silicon valley what's your back story oh wow so originally i worked in uh the mortgage industry right outside of college um the key turning point for my career was working for the video game industry oh this all makes sense now right so then i went to nvidia this video they did virtualization right yeah so they have these uh graphics cards right gpus and they they invented the term gpu which is basically faster processing exactly exactly so i worked there and actually did a lot of product management as well as business development met with a lot of video game executives when we were party we'd go to vegas uh you know we would get the best tables and the night best nightclubs i don't think i would have liked eric leo back then [Laughter] you would have been like this alpha well i mean um maybe i don't know you can ask my friends back then but the thing is i try to bring humanity back right i mean this is who i am as a human being right okay and so you were on a roll obviously at that point but then here you are in china what happened well so um i was on my honeymoon [Laughter] and uh i was doing actually international travel quite a bit i quit nvidia and i did a two month backpacking tour of europe and i realized the world is actually a lot bigger you know utilizing this 3d technology i can actually do better for different industries not just a video game space and this is where i started going back and forth between the u.s and
china and realized that hey a lot of industries they need this technology to help them improve the way that they do business or access information right so i thought hey you know what on the honeymoon i remember i said hey honey do you want to give up your district attorney job and uh let's go to china wow did you have any family connection to china at that point so i was actually born in china in nanjing but i moved to the states when i was five i see okay so you speak chinese i do growing up i spoke with my parents in chinese so when i first got here in 2015 uh my chinese was pretty much an elementary level right like yes yeah exactly but uh over time i started talking uh more uh being more confident with myself uh with business chinese et cetera so these days i can actually like my whole launch event uh the past weekend i did in chinese well this is why it's hard for me to research your company because a lot of your pr is done in chinese yeah and my chinese is okay but it's a lot of language that i don't understand so it's very hard for me to connect with what you're doing unless i talk to you personally in english yeah well that's hopefully changing soon because i'm going to start uh making it bilingual so there you go right because that's so funny because most people who start their own companies who come from the states or anywhere around the world that i talk to on this show they always start by being very much focused on the expat community that's who they know that's their network they see the niche in their community and then they go bilingual meaning they go more chinese language unless you've gone the other way around yeah yeah i can see why you've got a long runway ahead i guess this is not a quick make money and run kind of project now sometime but but to be honest sometimes i'm just like you know what i just wished i opened a coffee shop oh my goodness right no well that's why i'm impressed with someone like you because like i said it before on this podcast but my company when i was a headhunter was just me a phone a laptop yeah that was basically what i needed so when i think about you and the engineering skill and talent you need then the connections with government and then some kind of like how how do you even embrace this ever-changing technology you haven't made life easy for yourself yeah but uh you know we're still here um still surviving and actually really enjoying it to be honest well please continue because as we've talked about i would rather have the likes of you doing what you're doing pushing us forward in this direction in this inevitable direction than anyone else you know and i've really enjoyed not just hearing about the technology but how you interface with it on a personal basis so thank you very much eric sure thank you so much oscar and we're gonna move on to part two all right let's do it all right eric all right it's the ten questions i have high expectations let's do it question one which comes from shanghai daily what is your favorite china related fact in 2011 25 of all construction cranes in the world were in shanghai right so i thought that's really interesting right because it specifically shows the development of china 10 years ago i mean this is how fast things move over here and this is another reason why i'm here um i wonder what it would be now i don't know how much construction is happening right now in covered world yeah that's true but i i feel like it's still happening in certain i mean did you know that there's only two countries in the entire world that are starting cities from scratch china and saudi arabia and that's it it's saudi arabia going to be one of your clients then yeah actually um i'm scheduled to go over there um sometime in the new year and uh we're we're potentially working with some major enterprises right there there you go funnily enough there's a connection because there is one person from mosaic of china season one who is now in saudi arabia oh and that is the ex-ceo of disneyland shanghai oh wow he's now helping to build one of their big entertainment parks in saudi arabia so mosaic of saudi arabia coming right up question two which comes from rosetta stone do you have a favorite word or phrase in chinese yeah so that means so that means basically saying like it's actually like this right right um i don't know if that's the actual translation yeah but every single time i ask something i hear somebody say honda it's as if you know you're wrong and i'm going to tell you what's right and i hear this everywhere especially with know it all engineers i guess oh yeah oh yeah question three which comes from naked retreats what is your favorite destination within china so um because i haven't been to too many places in china unfortunately too busy i'm too busy i haven't even been to the great wall i mean i think i went a long time ago when i was younger you know but uh so today's answer is actually oriental springs it's in ming hong district it's here within shanghai yeah sadly but min hung is about as far out as you can go yeah yeah i don't consider shanghai anymore but the thing is let me try to paint a picture here have you ever heard of like mgm uh you know in vegas where they have pool parties okay this is going back to nvidia yes yes my party days basically people during the day party in a pool like a shallow pool and would be drinking alcohol and then all of a sudden there's a foam party yes okay i've seen those movies with like frat boys yeah so i go with family now and there's a lot of kids there um it's a shallow pool everybody's having fun there's like these you know blow up uh you know whales or whatever and then at four o'clock all of a sudden oh foam boom and then there's music going on it's like a vegas club obviously for family yeah and and the cool thing is it's unlimited beer oh god there's a there's a tab for you just to pour yourself so i hope there's a good lifeguard yeah yeah i mean this place is ridiculous yeah oriental springs yeah shout out to oriental springs yeah if you left china what would you miss the most and what would you miss the least so the most is actually the late night ulama deliveries uh-huh yeah i mean we're talking like any time of night anytime at night you know i'm working um i'm drinking a little bit and i'm like you know what i need some korean fried chicken and this is like comfort food right yes and then what would you miss the least every single day i step outside there's smells oh like just like wait that's smoke okay now it's garbage and now it's oh it's a bakery oh wait like it literally just it just hits you in the face you didn't say poo i wanted to be a little more pc here oscar definitely in this rainbow yeah you're right and smoke is an interesting one because the amount of times i'm walking down the street and i have to walk through a cloud of smoke yeah every day okay is there anything that still surprises you about life in china yeah so um new places popping up left and right all the time um because every single time i go around the corner every month there's something new or something old that just disappeared right it's amazing how they're gonna keep rebuilding i mean how much of that is actually real versus uh if you peel back the layers of the quote-unquote marble and see foam inside that's besides the point but the point is like every single time i go outside i see something new and it's incredible next question which is from smart shanghai what's your favorite place to go out to eat or drink or just hang out so this is where uh my wife and i we escaped to this place called bar central oh yeah yeah i think it's owned by the same people of alimontari yep um so we usually set the bar and we drink our popolo spritz and try to reminisce the days when we're in italy yeah getting wasted that's right because actually the other person who has said the group elementary was an australian italian called simon mignetti he said the same thing in season one oh wow it does have good produce when it comes to cheeses and sometimes right exactly you can kind of squint and you're in italy-ish yeah yeah a little bit i mean it is close to where we live these days so it's a little bit more convenient um but yeah it's escape for us that's the thing and i think it's not just for foreigners but it's the shanghainese themselves who can't travel to italy exactly like all of these places that has some real authenticity when it comes to the food at least right they're the ones that people flock to to get this experience of kind of being outside of china when not being yes yes i totally get it all right what is the best or worst purchase you've made in china uh the worst purchased it's actually a tv stand okay um why is it so bad because first of all it's a cheap thing right my wife and i thought hey we can just buy just any cheap old tv stand and the chemicals smell literally um for weeks we couldn't get rid of it and i actually got headaches and then so one day the hell was that i don't know this is cheap stuff right and but the worst part is and i'll show you a little bit later is that when we tried to get rid of it it scratched my leg and it's been over a year and it has left a mark on me and possibly for the rest of my life so that's almost symbolic of coming to china experiencing the good and the bad but sometimes a bad will definitely leave a scar for you oh yeah okay and how big is this scar are you gonna show me now yeah i can show you now if you want go on let's have a look okay oh there it is [Laughter] it's not too big so at least it's it's cool enough that you can see it yeah the cheap tv stand i'll never forget uh because you've said it had a chemical coating yeah now i'm worried that it poisoned you when it exactly right that's skin maybe maybe what is your favorite wechat sticker so this is exceptionally hard i i think oscar quite possibly the hardest question anyone's ever asked me all right well send me your favorite nice you know when i talk to friends it's like oh yeah that's great i like to send that it's hilarious the other one um i forgot what her name is uh oh yes the actress rebel wilson is that her name i i i don't know but uh basically it says my body is ready and she's ripping apart her blouse um exposing not all the way her chest with with clothes on but she's so expressive as well which means you would use this when every day i'm saying you know somebody say see are you are you ready for coffee my body is ready [Laughter] beautiful and then um the last one it's a very awkward stair that zooms in to a very burly man and this one yeah and he just nods at you the thing is i like to make people uncomfortable sometimes um especially when in china they're getting a little too close you know they're already staring at me and i like to stare back and then oh you do that oh i did that too yeah oh that's me being quite passive aggressive though yeah exactly and do you usually win the staring competition um i've won most of the time but i've had some worthy opponents that's true right yeah they do not get embarrassed if you stare back yes and then and then then you have an expression right and then it depends on if you can go dark or light you can smile really big or you can be like just open your eyes more and more but uh yeah wait open your eyes totally recall recall yeah ah it's a good movie what is your go-to song to sing at ktv usually i would sing sort of old school 90s stuff um so you're showing your age right now yeah so usually i go with oasis like wonderwall oh hello yeah i'm speaking my language yeah i love i love oasis i grew up with that the other one is actually um circle of life by alan john okay i love disney obviously these days with kids but even without kids i love disney stuff actually my proposal song to my wife was ellen john your song there's a link between disney elton right and where was this uh san francisco at a ktv was that a ktv good for you man as a fan of ktv i am very happy that you managed to merge this into such an important part of your life and the last question which comes from justpod which is the studio we're in right now what or who is your biggest source of inspiration in china so um this is a what so it's actually how fast things move here it's really inspiring it's actually a lot more challenging as well because we have more competitors but at the same time competition is important for innovation it's actually making us more aware and we want to just be better thank you so much eric thank you so much oscar i'm so happy to be here absolutely and before you leave tell me who out of everyone you know in china would you recommend that i interview in the next season of mosaic of china i would recommend uh interviewing another eric so he's actually in charge of this amazing place called planet one it's vr esports location-based entertainment um they have like you know vr headsets that you can experience many different types of games it's like a restaurant plus esports and vr combined i would say well thank you for that i look forward to meeting eric you know what i don't think i knew many eric's before but there was an eric in season one of this podcast you and eric in season three uh-huh now there'll be one in season four you gotta have eric's right all right well i can't wait to meet him tell me if there was one question you would ask eric what would you ask him i would ask him is there going to be a planet 2 [Laughter] with the twin aspects yeah is that what you're going for yes all right thanks so much eric great thank you so much [Music] so there we have a classic example of what an episode of mosaic of china is all about we talked about big concepts and we talked about everyday experiences we were intellectual and lofty in places and yet we still managed to drop in the words we and poo into our conversation we talked about china but we also very much discussed the outside world and all of this was done through the stories and experiences of the guest so i want to say another big thanks to eric for kicking off the season and letting us view the world through his 3d lens one important update i've been in touch with eric and he can confirm that the scar on his leg from the cheap tv stand is still there you can see a photo of that on social media along with all the other visuals accompanying the conversation including his object the glasses his favorite wechat stickers visual representations of his digital twin technology and lots more besides and while you're online click the link at the top of the mosaic of china website to subscribe to the extended version of the show here are a few clips from today's premium episode it could be an enterprise it could be a business it could be a government it could be yeps people who actually wore it they were called glass holes [Laughter] this is how society works we always power through right and until the day we don't oh my god how am i gonna communicate literally i went how do you know that the information isn't being shared to the police department unfortunately we don't helicopter simulators with real cockpits so that you can fly and learn oh yeah haven't they got enough cities why do they need to make new ones too many people rice cookers because i actually haven't searched for rice cookers apart from sharing a first name with eric olander the american journalist from season 1 episode 3 the biggest overlap with a previous episode was with the fintech philosopher himself srinivas yanamandra from season 1 episode 15. if you're interested in the intersection between technology and ethics then you've got to go back and listen to that one and another more unexpected connection is with the fire engineer michael kinsey from season 2 episode 25. listening to that episode along with today's really tells a story about how building design computer modeling and now smart cities will combine to transform the world of fire safety in the future mosaic of china is me oscar fuchs with artwork by danny newell speaking of connections there follows a catch-up conversation with eric's connective tile in the mosaic casey hall from season two so stick around for that and we'll be back with another episode next week [Music] hello casey it's great to see you in person again yeah it's been a while it has been a while you and i did our recording originally about 18 months ago believe it or not i actually don't believe that that time it just has no meaning anymore you know well let's talk about what has happened to you since our original recording and i should tell people who didn't listen to that that you were the asia correspondent for business of fashion right so your key journalistic focus was in things like fashion and consumerism so what has changed since then well i'm still in the same area but i have changed jobs during lockdown i started a new job which was quite surreal but i started a new job as china consumer correspondent at reuters news agency oh still fashion luxury beauty that part of china consumer life it's been really interesting and a really interesting time obviously because so much has changed very quickly in the terms of people's consumption and attitudes and economic confidence all those things but you know i don't think a lot of the fundamentals of the china market long term have gone away right and i think that once we are through this pandemic period things will change again and people will regain confidence but the fact that we don't have a kind of end point at this stage just plays into it even more well i remember in our original chat we talked about your object which you brought which was the original lonely planet book for china and you had a few things that you wanted to still tick off you have ticked off a few more places right yeah i have so i finally went to tibet ah i'm so jealous it's not easy it's not a straightforward process like you can't just hop on a plane and fly to lassa there's a lot of permits and things that are involved because of covert there's a lot of added complications in getting permits a lot of the paperwork changes so i had booked this trip in may 2021 and i didn't end up going until the end of september and my permits came through two days before the trip started and so i had to make this decision very quickly like my first instinct was no it's too hard i have to book flights i have to take time off work i have to organize stuff for the rest of the family and i can't possibly get it done and then about one minute after that i thought but i really have to yes [Applause] i don't really have a choice i have to i've been waiting to do this for 14 years so i mean i i hope also that you get to make it thank you well if anyone who's listening did not hear your original episode i do want them to go back and listen i've stolen a lot of the words that you said and i use them now in general conversation foreign press focus on the big the bad and the weird exactly so now i always in my mind have a mantra oscar don't do the big bad way of china to try and do the other side of china that people don't know about and i think about you all the time because of that oh that if if that is what you remember from me i that makes me very happy i feel like in so much of my career over the last 15 years that has been my personal mantra oh right um like when i'm writing or when i'm pitching stories or when i'm thinking about what i want an audience to know about um that is also often at front of mind for me so i'm really really glad that that's something that you've taken away from it too good please continue what you're doing it's awesome that you are part of this project i'm very grateful casey and please stay in touch i will oscar thank you so much
2022-09-01