I love the quirky, the fresh and the unexpected - things I see, don't quite understand but know have some weird significance. I love this one, it's so left-field and thoroughly modern, full of those things I don't quite understand, which is to say: the young, funky and trend setting.
A Facebook page set up three years ago by a couple of Taiwanese lasses to share their UK experiences and fascinations with friends and family has become an internet (and now publishing) phenomenon. Shang Ting Peng and Chia-Wen Liu now have over 117,000 followers on The UK Observing Diary Facebook page, over 10 million hits a month and when I checked out the page a single photo had over 19,000 likes.
Yes, I know some people tweet to millions but this isn't Justin Bieber; this hasn't got the mundane, cynical clout of the big business, manipulative, multi-media industry machine behind Lady Gaga. This is a couple of ordinary people from Taiwan.
This is cyber street, one of those organic things set up by smart individuals that hit on something and just kept growing. Hundreds of likes turned into thousands and when the page hit around 6,000 the Guardian Northerner's John Baron wrote a short article about it on Guardian Leeds This got picked up in Taiwan feeding into an internet frenzy and national TV and press coverage.
The page is based around Leeds (Shang Ting Peng) and London (Chia-Wen Liu), photo-centric with brief comments in 'traditional Chinese', Mandarin. A guide to all things lifestyle in the two cities; fashion, food, restaurants, cool people, cool brands, bands, events, tourism, interesting buildings, etc; things that are different in the UK to the Far East but also anything that catches their eye, so a brief post about Louis Le Prince making the world's first film in Leeds went down a storm.
As the story spread and the number of likes hit the tens of thousands Taiwanese publishers came calling about a book and a deal was signed for the first ever UK Observing Diary book. That's where the women are now, back in Taiwan promoting the book but before they even got there, or the book was released, it entered the Taiwan equivalent of the Amazon chart at number three, number one in the popular travel category, and a second print run was rushed through.
Their book tour included interviews with Taiwan's trendiest magazine for young women (Brand Magazine) and multiple national newspaper, radio and TV seshes. They are big news. To top it all off, from a fashion point of view, there was an interview and photo shoot with Vogue. Due to demand the book has now also been released into more of the Far East including Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong.
The book launch, a collaboration between their publisher (Suncolour), the British Council and fashion designer/retailer Cath Kidston, was Taipei's trendy Eslite Books. The store was full, with people queuing outside to filter through and gets books signed after the presentation which - wait for it - included the Victoria Quarter, Back to Basics, Roundhay Park, the Thackray Medical Museum, the Owl Trail, places to study in Leeds and the cities development and future.
The book, written in 'traditional Chinese' and so only available online in the UK, reflects the women's fashion background, picture heavy and with the layout of a cool magazine. Shang Ting studied Fashion Communication at the European Institute of Design in Barcelona. Here she had the good fortune to meet an attractive Leeds lad and now works as Hebe Media's Head of Fashion and for the last year on the print version of the UK Observing Diary. She blogs about the Observing Diary experience at Leeds Online.
The extent of my contemporary fashion knowledge ends at the inside leg measurement of my M&S jogging bottoms - ooh, that and washing kids clothes –sommat about R'n'B and almost Emo rockish music – but the large fashion element is of the streets, pictures of cool looking individuals snapped in the streets and Indi fashion designers/retailers.
The thing I like about newcomers to Leeds, be they from Runcorn or Peru, they look at our city with new eyes and perhaps the further they have travelled, culturally, the fresher the perspective. Because we walk past things every day, we miss the magic, the beauty submerges into a blur of bricks, the clutter of the familiar. To us fish'n'chips are just fish'n'chips but if you stumbled across them for the first time, at the other side of the world, they'd contain magic.
The everyday is obviously cultural, contains a story. As a result of the Catholics' tradition of eating fish rather than meat on a Friday, one in every five meals bought outside the home on a Friday is from a fish'n'chips shop. The ordinary can also tell us who we are; our traditional northern dish contains fish 'cooked the Jewish way'. Leeds is a city built and shaped by incomers and Shang Ting is having a C21st impact.
Having a mild Leeds obsession I absolutely love the idea of an adopted Leeds lass from Taiwan flogging the Leeds word all over the Far East. Although this was not her intention, she's a one woman Leeds marketing machine. It's also exciting that young people with an eye, a phone, an idea and an internet connection can make such a big splash and, it being what seems to be the only 'observing diary' in the world, create a new publishing genre and experience.
What's next for Shang Ting Peng? Well obviously, she wants to work on her Leeds accent.
Mick McCann's encyclopaedic How Leeds Changed the World leaves very little out.
