Blogging in English in China is not very popular for several reasons. One, many people oppose the use of English because of their nationalistic sentiments. So even if they do speak and write good English, they choose to use Chinese. Many go to the extreme of swearing at people who do blog in English. Two, people who want to blog in English worry about their language skills. What if I make too many spelling or grammatical mistakes? What if my blog is not readable? Will there be a large readership? Can I do it on a daily basis? They often stop at one or two blogs and then totally give up on it.

There are some foreign expatriates who mostly live and work in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai. www.danwei.org is a guy who translates the headlines of major local or national newspapers and give some good comments. http://www.shanghaiist.com/ is a website about Shanghai- parties and local events, sometimes commenting on newspaper reports. I read them very often and you do get another perspective if you are a careful reader. Danwei can be very sarcastic sometimes in the way he uses words.

There are some Chinese bloggers using English too. Wang Jianshuo is undoubtedly the most influential in many categories although his language skills often spark arguments. His site gets over 2 million hits every month and people leave a lot of comments there. He provides a lot of useful information about life and events here in Shanghai (mostly to help foreigners who come to Shanghai for the first time). As an IT elite, he does have many traits that others don't. He cares about public interests and you can see that from his projects (city map and all that). He does these, of course, for a commercial purpose. But what is the crime of making some money (for Wang, he must be raking in bundles)? 

Wang Jianshuo's blog is something worth looking into.  He is, in some ways, a good-will ambassador for Shanghai. People want to know more about Shanghai or come to the city to experience things. Let's not judge him by his language skills or grammar or the accuracy of the information. Don't blame him if he tends to a bit petti-bourgeois. There is something positive about his blog- the persistence, a helper....

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