‘BLOGGING,’ A DEAD HORSE?

How Our Favourite China Bloggers Do Much More Than the Name Implies

Sam Gaskin

English-language blogging is not just a popular pastime among expats in China . Blogs here also provide, among other things: access to the Chinese-language internet, industry inside information, and an essential supplement to the mainstream news media. In fact, even the mainstream media have their own blogs, a near oxymoron that begs the question, what is a blog? Just as importantly, which ones are worth reading?

DEAR DIARY

Most personal blogs, the things we’re most comfortable calling blogs, fall into one of two categories, both of which rule them out for mass consumption. Firstly, many expats use blogs as a kind of ongoing mass-email to friends and family back home – the 15 people among whom anyone can be famous. The second function is like that of a diary: a ‘web log’ used to process your daily experience. China can be perplexing and dynamic, and blogging – like taking photos of people and skylines – is a popular way to lay out some of the weirdness in order to take a closer look. William Moss began the excellent PR and media-focused blog Imagethief (news.imagethief.com) in this way.

“My first post, almost exactly five years ago, was called, ‘Nothing here is in English’, and it was about exactly what it sounds like,” he says. “It was not my most thoughtful work, but it was a pretty good window into my general state of fresh-off-the-boat culture shock and linguistic hopelessness. It still pains me to go back and read those early posts, but they are an accurate record of my impressions upon arrival.”

The problem with diary-style blogs is that what’s strange and exciting to you may not be to others. According to Moss, “unless you lead a life of action and adventure, have the writing talent of Dave Barry or, ideally, both, it's hard to imagine too many people outside your immediate family want to hear much mundane crap about your day.”

Even if they do, they’re more likely to search for it on Twitter or Facebook.

More successful personal blogs combine a distinct voice with great enthusiasm for a particular subject. Jim Boyce’s popular nightlife blog Beijing Boyce (www.beijingboyce.com) does just that. He blogs for “the fun of passing on info about good places to grab a drink, of exchanging opinions with fellow bar-goers, and of watching the bar scene change in a city that defines that word.”

When it comes to future blogging, Boyce says, “I'm not sure what is next, but I know what I want to see: more niche blogs, such as a recent one called Gongti Legends, which focuses on the Beijing Guoan soccer team. I would like to see a good English-language blog or two on the Beijing rock scene.”

Other personal blogs we like include:

Hands free China-stress relief: My Laowai (mylaowai.com)

Diary of the weird: Quirky Beijing (quirkybeijing.com)

THE LIGER’S DOMAIN

While Time crowned ‘you’ the person of the year as recently as 2006, many of our favourite China blogs today are written by professionals, people like the journalists at Time’s ‘The China Blog’ (china.blogs.time.com). Such bloggers fulfil an essential function in China – calling out the resident English-language media on some of their more, um, patriotic claims.

Some of our favourite blogs are written and published by major international news sources. Brief posts where journalists offer their opinions as well as their reporting – what might once have been referred to simply as columns – are now blogs. In addition to Time’s blog, there’s The Wall Street Journal's ‘China Journal’ (blogs.wsj.com/chinajournal), The New Yorker's ‘Letter from China ’ (www.newyorker.com), and James Fallow’s blog for the Atlantic (jamesfallows.theatlantic.com).

Shanghaiist (www.shanghaiist.com) is another site that straddles the divide between blog and mainstream media, posting some original articles as well as prettying up other articles with a jokey tone. The city lifestyle site’s (yes, full-time) editor Elaine Chow has written for both the Gawker and Gothamist networks, moneymaking ventures that operate as a kind of meta-media, for the most part collating and commenting on other sources. Does she consider herself a Liger of the media world, part media lion, part blogger tiger? To put it another way, is she a professional blogger?

Chow thinks so: “There are professional bloggers now! Heck, I'd argue that we do a better and more professional job than many op-ed columnists – they were just bloggers in an era when you could get by writing two 750 word articles a week and people would listen to you solely based on your ‘credentials’, and the most flaming you'd get would be from some angry letter your intern would read,” she says.

“I'm churning out five to 10 posts a day and dealing with the aftermath if someone doesn't like what I say! I mean, a bunch of them are funny videos or one-off comments but it's definitely a job. I wouldn't be doing this out of just a ‘love of blogging’.”

That said, she’s not exactly in it for the money either. “I'm financed by advertising, but because we don't really have a person going out and looking for advertising – if anyone wants to apply, please email me – I don't really get financed very well.”

But are sites like Shanghaiist and mainstream media blogs better thought of as a kind of new media? Moss says: “There is a fat grey area where blogs and mainstream media overlap, both because many mainstream media organisations have included blogging into their mix of content and because there are blogs that are, for all intents and purposes, mainstream media organisations. They're edited, have advertising and full time writers.

“To me, the thing that separates the best true blogs from mainstream media is that they are personal, and defined largely around the voice and view point of a single person or a small group of people. … So many of the blogs I enjoy the most are written by single, talented authors and have something of the atmosphere of a lively dinner conversation. (Although the dinner conversation does occasionally degenerate into a bar fight, as any blogger will tell you.)”

Some of the best China blogs that fulfil these criteria are written by media professionals – such as those working in journalism, PR and advertising – in their own time. Personal blogs allow them to add some sass to the mix of quality research, analysis and writing skills that pay the bills.

Media types’ personal blogs that we enjoy:

The web-obsessed ‘Rconversation’ (rconversation.blogs.com) by academic/journalist Rebecca McKinnon (may need a proxy)

‘Shanghai Scrap’ (shanghaiscrap.com) by journalist (and tireless US Expo pavilion bid detective) Adam Minter

‘56minus1’ (56minus1.com) by digital media guru Adam Schokora

‘Imagethief’ by William Moss (news.Imagethief.com)

Other blogs with industry niches worth a read:

Fashion: Nels’ Frye’s ‘Stylites in Beijing ’ (www.stylites.net)

Auto: ‘China Car Times’ (www.chinacartimes.com)

Art: ‘Shanghai Eye (www.shanghaieye.net)

Sport: ‘China Sports Review’ (www.chinasportsreview.com)

Tech: ‘China Tech News’ (www.chinatechnews.com)

BLOGGING THE SINONET

Our third category of China blogs aren’t conventional web logs at all. Instead of chronicling events in their authors’ lives, or following personal or professional interests, blogs like Danwei (www.danwei.org), East South West North (www.zonaeuropa.com) and ChinaSMACK (www.chinasmack.com) are major arteries into the heart of the Chinese-language internet for those who don’t read Chinese.

Roland Soong, who is based in Hong Kong , writes East South West North. He says “if you are serious about understanding China , whose opinion would you prefer? The Chinese people? Or expats? The answer is obvious. ESWN is one of the first bridge blogs that bring Chinese opinions expressed originally in Chinese into English.”

Translation sites are excellent resources, but differ from the traditional conception of blogs by lacking a personal tone. Soong sees this as an advantage. “The main content is uneditorialised translations. The point is to show how the Chinese people are reacting to certain issues or events. As such you don’t need to know my personal opinion because that will just confuse things.” Of course, there is some subjectivity inherent in the choice of articles. Soong says “The materials translated [on ESWN] are usually chosen because 1) they are ‘hot’, or 2) they are interesting (in my opinion).”

Inevitably, there is some overlap between articles published by these sites. Fauna of ChinaSMACK tells us that her first post was about happily kept mistress Fragrant Chrysanthemum 1986. “I had spent a lot of time translating it but then saw that EastSouthWestNorth did a better translation,” she says.

Despite that coincidence, the vastness of the Chinese web leaves room for many more translation sites with different specializations. While Danwei (which also features original reporting) and ESWN have a fairly broad mandate, ChinaSMACK focuses almost exclusively on controversial, often raunchy content, much of which comes from hugely popular BBS forums.

BBS forums are so well populated in China , Fauna says, “because they allow people to talk with each other and express their opinion. This is different than television or other websites that only allow you to receive or listen. You can also discover and read about many more different things and also you can be anonymous.”

ChinaSMACK extends this very free discourse to the English-language internet. “On ChinaSMACK, there are often a lot of stupid comments and people who argue with each other. Many people have complained about this and ask that these stupid or racist comments be deleted. However, I usually don’t delete them because I think it is normal that there are stupid people and stupid comments. I translate a lot of stupid comments from stupid Chinese netizens also. If I show foreign people that there are stupid Chinese, then I should allow foreign people to show Chinese people they are stupid too.”

THE NEW MAINSTREAM?

Where does this combination of personal, professional and translation blogging leave us? Moss says “A blogging engine is just a simple publishing tool for chronologically arranged content. After that, a blog itself is whatever you make it into, whether that is essentially mainstream media in blog format, like the Huffington Post, a site where you share baby photos with grandparents (which I do for my son), or anything in between.”

“As blogs have matured, the thing that they have proved useful for is enabling people with interesting ideas to reach a global audience without depending on mainstream media. That has expanded the range of the voices and ideas available to the public in unfiltered form. Much of the result is garbage, and any given topic tends to wind up with a few dominant voices, but thanks to blogs there is plenty of useful analysis, humour and even reporting available that would otherwise never see the light of day.”

If diversity of opinion is one of the great benefits of having blogs, then having blogs that take a variety of different forms is likely to enhance that diversity. Blogs may increasingly reflect and repurpose mainstream media, but this is a starting point for free, public discourse online, not an obstacle to it.

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