This is the Xiao Bawang Education Computer. The computer most often remembered for its
iconic endorsement from Jackie Chan, it stands out from the other home computers of its day
because this machine can run NES games from cartridge. Well, not NES cartridges, Famicom cartridges. But geographically, that makes more sense. The name Xiao Bawang, can translate into Little
Tyrant King, or sometimes Little Emperor. And to make it clear, if the keyboard wasn't
obvious enough, this computer is not simply an NES clone or a Famiclone, it's capable
of so much more than that. In 1987 right outside then Portuguese controlled
Macao in the city of Zhongshan sat the small struggling Rihua Electronics Factory, which
belonged to a larger conglomerate called the Yihua group. After several years of struggling to turn
a profit from making arcade machines, the factory was on the verge of bankruptcy. However, salvation came when the general manager
of the Yihua Group appointed a new young technical engineer from the north as director of the
factory. This new man, Duan Yongping saw the success
of home game consoles in other countries like the United States and Japan. However, in China an imported Famicom system
cost around 1,500 Chinese Yuan, equivalent to about 400 USD at the time. Also equivalent to about 3 months salary of
the average worker then. Needless to say that very few people could
afford such luxuries. But in 1989 Duan, together with his designers,
created the Red and White D25 Machine, a proper famiclone which cost only one quarter of what
the Famicom did, making it a much more obtainable for the average consumer. Through heavy advertising, improvements of
subsequent models, and thanks to the library of classic software already made for the machine,
its popularity spread throughout China. In fact, most people in China today refer
to the original Famicom system as the "Red and White Machine" that's how popular this
new system was. In 1991 Duan renamed the factory to the Zhongshan
Xiao Bawang Company, while to the west it was now known as Subor, and created their
new logo, the iconic two boxing gloves, one which represented the quality, keeping produced
boards down to a minimal 0.3% repair rate, and the other representing after-sales service,
instituting a policy of free repairs and replacement, no questions asked. These policies endeared this company in the
eyes of the people. In 1993 the technicians at the company developed
something that would shake up the computer market even more than the Red and White machine
had. They called it the Xiao Bawang Chinese English
Education Computer. Though not the first home computer in China
marketed as an "Education Computer" the fact that this machine was both able to play NES
games and only cost a tenth of what other computers of the day cost, it was no wonder
that by the end of that year alone, the first model, the SB-218 had an 80% share of the
computer market. Improvements were made in the model 286 and
486 which were released by 1994, just in time for a prime time ad campaign featuring the
martial arts movie star: Jackie Chan. Chan's ad campaign, in which he plays both
the father and son, is a pun on his own Chinese name, Chenglong, which means becoming the
dragon, and also uses the classic idiom, Wangzichenglong, to wish one's son to become a dragon, meaning
to wish them to become successful in the world, something that many parents in China bought
into, and you didn't hear the kids complaining about it. So let's take a look at a later model, the
926, which was released in 1995. Starting with what came in the box. In addition to the education computer there
are two 15 pin famicom compatiable controllers, an education cartidge, an RF cable, and a
power supply. Mine came broken, but a regular Famicom power
supply will also work just fine. The computer itself features a full 101 key
keyboard along with a dedicated power button and a famicom cartdige slot on top. Note the inclusion of the pause, break, and
reset buttons, along with keys labeled in different Chinese characters and radicals,
but we'll come back to that later. The top is branded in Chinese, Xiao Bawang,
the english version SUBOR, and the computer name: The Chinese and English Education Computer
SB-926. Each side features a 15 pin Famicom controller
port. While the back has a parallel port, AV composite
and RF output, and DC power input. Taking out a few screws and cracking it open
we can see the membrane keyboard and the main board of the computer. Two chips. That's it. The right board takes keyboard input and the
on the left board we have video and audio output, but the main logic happens right here. One of these should contain all the logic
of the NES. Incredibly surprising that there’s just
nothing else in this computer, it’s just these two chips here, although I don't know
what I was expecting, when it's flipped over you can clearly see, there is nothing under
the keyboard section of this computer. So let's hop into some software, each system
came with an education cartridge. Powering on we're greeted by an fun animation,
showing us this is the fourth version of the software, and then any key brings us to the
home screen where we have 8 programs to choose from. The most boring choice here is going to be
the calculator. And yeah, it works. C on the keyboard is the clear key, and escape
brings us back to the home screen, so no need to reset the computer when we want to go to
a different program. Then there is F-BASIC, which displays on a
30x25 text screen, filling the output resolution of 240x200. And one great thing is that since this was
developed in the 90's the keyboard layout is standard qwerty, and backspace actually
goes back, as opposed to the machines of the prior decade that were figuring it out. BASIC works just like it should. Some sources online mention that this is a
copy of Family BASIC, but it isn’t. It’s its own thing. And again from here, escape takes us back
to the main menu. If we take a look at this first option, it’s
called keyboard exercise, which has you type a random key on the keyboard within 2.5 seconds. And you win the game by typing 99 keys in
a row. The game below that is called "typing game"
in Chinese, and when we open it up we have the English title "Letters Invade". This is a fun take on space invaders. Here the falling letters damage the floor
when they reach it, but very satisfyingly blow up if you can type them before they hit
the ground. This game can be cranked up to 180 characters
per minute, which is a lot for me to handle, but really fun to try out. The next program is a favorite of mine, it's
called the music window, with three features, Note names and solmization, which lets you
hear a musical scale with different length, speed, and pitch. Then there’s Virtual Electric Piano, which
uses the number keys as the white keys, and the function keys as the black keys. The range is enough for basic songs, but it
can only play one note at a time. The last section is Music Appreciation, it’s
a collection of classic western and eastern songs. Two of the remaining options here are for
studying different Chinese input methods. The first is Renzhi Code, or Cognitive code,
although this method has no proper English name, since it never really caught on. The second is Wubi or 5 stroke input method. This is where the blue text on the keys are
useful, it shows which keys represent which part of the Chinese character. Each program itself is a simple typing game,
that I'm sure would be a lot more fun if I actually knew how to type Chinese with these
certain input methods. And the last program on this cartridge is
the Chinese and English Text Editor. Starting it up we have four options, enter,
help, print, or return. We'll type H for help first, which lays out
the many input methods we can choose from, and we can switch using the Function keys
here. If we go back we can select Enter instead
we can write the name of the document we’re going to be editing here, and this does automatically
save as we type, so we could close out of this and we could come back and as long as
we type in the same document name we’ll be editing the same document, although power
cycling will lose all this data. The editor itself has our document name at
the top left here, and then we have the caps lock state, and the insert key state. On the bottom is our input method. We can type in either English, or choose a
Chinese input method like Pinyin, 5 stroke, or directly inputting GB 2312 codes. And the color of the page can be changed through
Ctrl+H. And from the menu of this program we could connect a printer over the parallel
port and then print our document. But that's just the default cartridge that
came in the box. Let’s not forget that this machine runs
Famicom carts as well. We can plug in the provided controllers, which
do include built in turbo buttons, and play any famicom game that we want, Mario, Kid
Icarus, Kirby, or other games that were popular in China like Romance of the Three Kingdoms,
GO, or (三目童子) The three eyed kid. In August 1995, Duan Yongping resigned somewhat
unexpectedly from the Xiao Bawang company, taking with him many of the top leadership. Although Duan had already achieved great financial
success and had built the brand that had quickly become the most widely recognized computer
company in the world’s most populated country, the empire that he created was not his own,
the Xiao Bawang company was still merely a subsidiary of the Yihua group, and the leadership
of the Yihua group weren't willing to let Duan take any ownership of the company. After resigning he founded the company BBK
across in the pond in Dongguan, which eventually became one of the largest tech companies in
China and some people speculate that Duan may now be the richest man in all of China. Though the popularity of the Xiao Bawang was
not effected by the departure of Duan at the time, he left a hole in the company that struggled
to be filled. By 2000 China had already become much more
prosperous than it was a decade earlier. It was the beginning of the internet era and
32 bit home computers were becoming more affordable everyday, the Xiao Bawang may have been the
best financial option in the 90s but it hadn't kept up with the times, and in terms of technology,
it was decades behind the competition. On top of that video games came under increased
scrutiny in China, being blamed for a myriad of social problems. The backlash went so far as to lead to a 15
year ban on game consoles. And although the Xiao Bawang was marketed
as an education computer, its association with games also caused the company to want
to pivot towards developing rice cookers, home appliances, and other electronics. Although the company would have minor success
here or there throughout the years, even brokering a deal with AMD in 2016 to provide new VR
chips, nothing ever came of it in the end. In 2020 it was announced on Weibo that the
company was filling for bankruptcy. But in the end, the Xiao Bawang company did
manage to change the country. It brought games, word processors, and programming
at a fraction of what other computers cost to people that otherwise couldn't access these
things. Even today people fondly remember the Xiao
Bawang as part of their childhood, just as we all remember the computers we played with
as kids. It was perhaps Jackie Chan who put it best:
望子成龙 小霸王
In the next installment of the computer history of China, we’ll be going over the CEC education
computer, so click subscribe and stay tuned. And until next time, thanks for watching.
