I have been using MSN Messenger with Video cam almost every night with my wife, and also using Google translator, that works well most of the time. In many places in China they only have 56k band speed. (perhaps in the more larger common cities like Beijing and Shanghai they probably offer high speed capability, and even then many will still use the less expensive 56k speed) Well as most of you know, you cannot jam to much info through the 56k band phone line, sometimes we will get some lagging when using the video cam, but all in all it works pretty good and serves us well.(I am using High speed broadband cable and it is fine for everything I do., no sense of getting anything faster because my wife is using 56k! it would be useless for me to get even faster Extreme high speed internet and pay more.)
Yoshii,
About your idea of using PS3, well many of the 40+ year old ladies in China do not have that much computer skills, they know the very basic stuff, and many do not even have a computer in there homes,(never mind a PS3). Having a detailed custom Avatar does not mean anything to them, they simply want to communicated with there male boyfriend or husbands from abroad, they are not concerned with some cartoon style image (Please do not take this personally, I am simply saying how most of them will probably think about that). Maybe the younger girls 18 to 25 would appreciate such a thing and would find it cool, but not the older women. But hay, you are free to try it. I understand you were thinking the more younger women and men would go for this.