Mr. R. is the mask behind China-focused news satire site China Daily Show. As the self-proclaimed "only news source visible from outer space", the China Daily Show is your one-stop bastion of fake reportage on the completely made-up news that is currently not captivating China's hearts, minds, and computer screens. From blowing the lid off of made-up stories like "‘Dark-skinned’ suspects sought in connection with Xinjiang" and "Family devastated after ‘New Year’s Gala’ DVD goes missing" to the whole-sale fabrication of non-think pieces like "Freud analyzes the Chinese Dream" and "12 signs that a Chinese guy likes you", the China Daily Show has time and time again show itself to exemplify an unparalleled eye for creating falsehood, making them one of China's most truly dispensable sources for news currently somewhat operating today. On condition that we not reveal his identity, Mr. R. agreed to sit down with SmartBeijing to discuss topics like Twitter - what the fuck is that?; the news - why are so many people doing it?; and censorship - kinda looks like no one really gives a shit anyways, right? Here's that China Daily Show link again. In the next couple weeks, the site is undergoing a redesign and they're also launching some new features and distractions. China Daily Show -- all the news that fits on the internet. At last. Bookmark it. Do people still bookmark things? *** Mr. R.: We can try to have a more interesting format for the interview. Like…

I could ask you questions as well.

Oh, I don't know. I'm sure there's a few hardcore types out there who'd be interested in what happens at SmartBeijing. [Laughs.]

You just thought it was a part of the China Daily or…

The name is actually one of the best parts of it, because if you get it, it has those two references so you'd know what you're getting into.

No, it was more of a conversation. How many conversations a night happen in this city, "Hey we should do this. Hey, we should make this movie, this website" or whatever, and most of them are kind of gone with the faeries the next morning. I was with a guy who was great at starting things and then never finishing them. So, it started like that, as like a scrappy website thing, and I took it from there to get it done.

Well, let me ask you, how many people run SmartBeijing?

Who does the tweets?

Yeah, it's very sporadic. Why do you hate it?

You'd want to be funny at it?

Well, I think it's a very useful tool, yeah. I still haven't got a personal account…

I've got a laptop. Which receives email. I was initially working with someone who wanted to push it in that direction. But, basically, you can run out of steam if you're running something that's not-for-profit. No one wants to go to a meeting twice a week for something that's, you know, not directly lucrative. It might make more sense now because we've got a reasonable amount of supporters.

Don't know. I honestly don't know. I honestly don't look at it.

We used to but I lost the password two years ago and I couldn't be fucked to get the replacement. Honestly, the traffic doesn't mean anything to me. I'm not looking for advertisers.

Well, never say never, but, for now, I'd rather create a quality product.

Well, we don't have a Facebook, so that's out. Maybe we'll set one up. How do we receive feedback? Comments on the articles, which are infrequent. I guess we have to go back to your least favorite medium, twitter, which is the only place I see people writing about stuff -- passing links forward. Generally, it's positive.

98% positive.

Occasionally, someone gets the wrong end of the stick, and that's foreign and Chinese readers. And, occasionally, I'll get some high profile writer who's writing in Chinese, they'll translate it, and send it around. Negative feedback… I don't want to go down this route too much but there's Reddit. Stick a review of yours on Reddit and then you'll just see people go, 'oh god...'

It's rare to be receiving a lot of love on Reddit. I don't want to wail on it too much though. It's fun. People on the internet. They're like raw ids floating around slinging shit at each other like monkeys.

Oh, I'm on there as well, of course. I'm out there. [Laughs.] Who really is not out there with a name like "Duckface012010"? And it's probably some friend of yours in real life. For all we know, we could be communicating with each other on there and we don't even know.

That's fair to say. They did devise a template of modern news satire, couching it in the sort of standard AP style. They're very good at that. There's equivalents to that in Britain as well -- Private Eye. Those are the one's that come to mind.

Well, it works because it's a format people already do understand. God forbid you start something completely new. You'd be fucked. But we're also trying to move away from too many news stories all the time to do new formats -- Voxbox, listicals… Listicals is the way forward now isn't it?

Yeah, you see a lot of that within the China sphere of things -- websites chasing other website's successes and trying to replicate the thing that worked for someone else. And when that happens, these website dilute their own uniqueness, their own brand by trying to become something else that appears to be successful for someone else. Like, what's happened in the last eight months or so, it's clicked in the heads of all the English-language websites is that "news" is what people are interested in. Like, "news", is what people are interested in, but what they don't seem to get is that people don't want to see the same five news stories repackaged and represented as a link to something else, they want to see new news -- something that someone has gone and uncovered. You don't get actual reportage, you get cut-and-paste jobs.

Yes, exactly, and it's mostly a day old or so. Like thanks very much for this link, but I did already get this from a much more reputable source about a day ago already. And even now you've managed to fuck up your cut-and-paste job. Like, who is going to these sites for their news anyways? But mostly that's because the people doing it are perhaps not journalists or the industry is not very developed.

Right, and then after ChinaSmack, you've got Smack, Bop, Twat, Rush, or whatever, and they're all over the place now -- Korea or wherever. ChinaSmack was very unique in 2008 or so, tracking netizens' comments and then foisting all of it on to expats, but now that's basically everywhere. It's gone mainstream. With the exception of some very niche curated websites, there hasn't been a single bold new website in like two or three years. SmartBeijing being the exception of course.

That can be your headline.

Yeah, but let's not talk about that. We all know the players involved…

Yeah. Some people found that insensitive and inappropriate.

Well, yeah, because if you misplace a joke, you turn from being a defender of values into a bully. With that one, it was more about all the conspiracy theories -- the joke was at the expense of the speculators and the media frenzy to create content around this incident. Amateur detective work and amateur aviation experts coming out of the woodwork. But that goes back to what I was saying before, and this problem with our traffic-based web. People just re-purpose items, give a little link to say thank you, and then claim it as their own. I just find that particularly boring. Is SmartBeijing going to start covering the news?

You should make that your catch-quote. "SmartBeijing: We Haven't Read a Newspaper Since Deng Xiaoping Came to Power". I personally stopped reading anything after Mao died. What's the point?

About as much as you are.

You know, the government hasn't really cared about English-language blogs for about… well, the last one that got blocked was Danwei in 2009, but from what I heard of that, it was a commercial business thing. Maybe some sort of miscommunication. How you probably get blocked these days is to somehow directly or indirectly target a person -- a certain person -- who sees it themselves and intervenes personally. I don't think the government even cares as long as you don't bring it directly to their doorstep. Don't mess with anyone's bottom line. Don't mess with people's bank accounts.

I've had this guy in a beard following me around and I'll tell you what: he looks fucking dodgy. [Laughs.] But, no, I'm not worried. The reason for anonymity has to do with the nature of the website itself. If it had a real name behind it, it would get associated with that person's personality -- "hey have you read so-and-so's piece on this" -- but with this it's more, "did you see that thing on China Daily Show" -- it's its own entity.

I think it's gotten a little more mature. More mature, in that in the beginning there was a tendency to do localized jokes. And there's still a place for that, but we're moving away from it. Like, I've still got all the jokes about English teachers and all that but when I go to post it, I'm thinking "hmmm". It's a bit like low hanging fruit. English teachers, they're the lighting rod for criticizing expat population in China. And I've actually met a lot who are actually sincere teachers. Some people have excellent qualifications and come here with a genuine motivation to pedagoguery, and when it becomes their turn to say what they do, people always roll their eyes at least inwardly… And I'm sure a lot of intelligent and worthwhile people have started off down the coal mine of English teaching or whatever. Wasn't [Peter] Hessler an English teacher to start off with?

He's certainly perceived to be so. I think he's just received a large endowment hasn't he?

Yeah, I went to a few of those. The thing about the expat writing festivals is that I don't think anyone's ever said anything that ever needed to be said. Like anything that you couldn't already find in a book somewhere or on a website. I don't know. It feels like they're there for a type of person who is very incurious and accepting of things, like 'isn't this amazing, isn't this incredible' without questioning things. It comes across like, 'isn't China cute', you know what I mean. It's like a tunnel vision. No self-awareness. Like middle-aged women talking about squat toilets. There is a vast reservoir of talentless schmucks writing about their "China experiences". Is this the sort of thing you're referring to?

What's lacking is good writing out in the sticks. You have a few. There's a few in Xinjiang. There's a bunch of guys in Yunnan, Szechuan -- they're delivering some good writing about China. But what you don't have a guy in the provinces digesting what's happening out there and processing it for people in the major cities. Most of the talent gets sucked towards towards Beijing and Shanghai. It takes a specific kind of person willing to live out in the middle of nowhere, someone who posses spanking good Chinese, and willing to create thoughts and observations for probably no money -- those people are like gold dust. But, you know, most of the people are drawn to Beijing and Shanghai. What about you, what do you read?

[Laughs.]

Sure. And it's hard to talk about that stuff without sounding like a huge knob.

Oh yeah, I remember that one. What does he mean?

But Global Times is fake news.

I think they had an article on there recently, "Is Your Pet Gay?"

Yeah, they'll always be one better. *** China Daily Show -- here's the link. They also have a twitter.