What's in a name? Apparently everything in the blogoshpere. That and more is what it takes to get on China Blog List's Top 10.
It's about time we took a look at Chinabloglist.com. Kudos to those that set it up. It's a helpful and fun catalogue of over 500 English language blogs regarding China. And where better to start than the CBL Top 10. We wanted to see who is at the top, learn what keeps them there and discover what they have in common with each other. It turns out that sex, software and China bashing still tantalize RSS readers.
What makes a good or popular blog isn't a mystery in publishing circles. The three most fundamental ingredients—frequency, entertaining writing and a clear "angle"—highlight the best of the blog circuit worldwide. All blogs on the CBL's Top 10 match either one or all of these qualities, all except one: "Another Laowai in China." This Suzhou-based blogger has not updated his site since he apparently went on holiday last Chinese New Year. Worse, his writing isn't exactly riveting or succinct:
... with my re-negotiated contract i get an extra 700 a month for putting up with all the bullshit that they had put me through the last 5 months—sammi [his dog or close partner] where happy last night so i gotta celebrate with an indulgence trip to the import food shops and bought some real food
Filling none of the three basic rules of what makes a decent blog makes one wonder why "Another Laowai in China" is still at the top (ranked eighth to be exact).
"We've always gotten the feeling that the title of the blog was the biggest factor in it rising through the ranks ('Sex and Shanghai' shot to the top way before the Chinabounder controversy broke, for instance)," says John Biesnecker, co-creator of CBL and former Blogger columnist. So once you have the right name, CBL's Top 10 is put together by the number of "click throughs" each blog has: The more clicks your blog has, the higher the ranking. And once on CBL's Top 10, you're likely to stay: "Generally the number one spot has twice as many clicks as any other blog, simply because it's on top." The number one blog at CBL, "American Foreign Devil in China," is replete with inane banter from the frontiers of Changchun.
Darryl and I get more excited to be the first people EVER to introduce American football to China. They already love the NBA (the NBA has been rebroadcast on Chinese Television for 20 years now), so it's about time they start loving football too. I heard they already play baseball in Taiwan (and I know they do in Japan), so that will help in deciding where I go next year. www.ineedsomecheese.livejournal.com
Do all the blogs on CBL's Top 10 have good names? No, but they do have familiar words and topics that resonate in expat circles: China, ABC, foreign devil, laowai and so on. CBL's Top 10 blogs also all deal with issues that affect Westerners on cultural levels and reinforce stereotypes of life in China. Consider "An ABC Chick in Shanghai" or "ChinaDirt," blogs that feature tales from Western women lamenting over the difficulty of maintaining a healthy relationship with a Western male in China. Sadly, but humorously, this last observation draws out what the majority of most blogs on CBL's Top 10 share: complaints.
In the name of science, we've submitted this blog to CBL: "Laowai Ladies in Beijing & Shanghai who Wish they Could have Sex with Cute Dumb Chinese Girls." Click on us, or better yet, click on a blog that doesn't include any of those words and is actually worth its weight in cyberspace, to make CBL's Top 10 one to envy.
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**Good point** It's frustrating that the language barrier often prevents Westerners from interacting easily with most Chinese. Your wish is City Weekend's command. We'll speak with CW's new Blogger columnist, Tim Beckenham from Shanghaiist about putting together a column that looks into this issue. Curious, what is it that you think that Chinese people would say about foreigners living in China?
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Ha, my coworkers told me that Violet Eclipse would have done better on the CBL if I didn't have such a cool-when-I-was-16 name. But the creative name thing did turn me on to Whyguoren and Pastey White Guy, not just Sex In Shanghai.
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"Laowai Ladies in Beijing & Shanghai who Wish they Could have Sex with Cute Dumb Chinese Girls" Now what I would like is for someone to actually WRITE the above blog...pretty please... I can supply you with laowai ladies after just such sexual liasons....there are more of us than you could ever imagine ;)
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There are even more of us who wish we could have sex with cute smart chinese girls...but at this point...we laowai ladies of the lesbian fold would be happy with those of the female variety....cute, smart, dumb and all those inbetween...
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**Flipside of the coin** With only something like 200,000 expats to the 20 million Chinese in Shanghai (depends by whose count, but let’s keep this one for argument’s sake), I see the need for a few outlets to vent; and, we’d all definitely knock a blog that only sung Shanghai’s praises. At some point though, the über-negative venting or “cultural observations” just feed on themselves. What I’d really love to see are more blogs written by Chinese people about interacting with foreigners. For all the mud we sling, and the number of times we feel like banging our heads against a wall, some of the things we do are and say are probably as ridiculous to local Chinese as vice versa. It’d be interesting to see the more Chinese written blogs in the top 10 – I’m guessing Chinese people have as much to say about us as we do about them. I think we’ll be able to stand the heat, maybe get a little perspective, and if nothing else, it’d be entertaining to see what the “other side” has to say.