The Decade in Viral Blogs on theBeijinger.com
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Maybe you can help us decipher meaning in the madness...
2010 - Beijing's Top Tailors
Readers were determined to start the decade in style with this 2010 blog which listed 11 different tailors and made-to-measure shops around the city, mostly in Chaoyang. While most of these are long-gone, the practice of going to a tailor of a custom-made suit or formal wear is still a pretty hot topic among expats and visitors alike. Time for an update on this blog, we think.2011 - The Wonderbro? Male Size-Enhancing Speedo Bulge on Taobao
From haute couture to... padded junk. The hottest blog in all of 2011 was about a Taobao product that gave insecure bathers a little boost of confidence by the swimming pool. While the blog charmingly included notes on how to navigate the then-relatively-new Taobao.com, most incredible of all, this product is still for sale, at the exact same store, and for the exact same price, eight years later. What a world.
2012's biggest hit asked all the hard questions: what's the point of going back to the US after living in China if you're not going to receive special treatment? Why is written Chinese just a bunch of squiggly lines? How do people even live without an ayi? Will the Beijinger commenters ever learn to identify satire? It seems that they certainly hadn't in 2012.
2013 - Hardcore Porn Meets Jane Austen in Translated Ming Classic
Part book review, part history lesson, part thinly veiled excuse to reprint erotic excerpts that we wouldn't have allowed in our Classifieds or Forum section, this blog lit up our site in 2013. It coincided with the release of the latest translation of The Plum in the Golden Vase (金瓶梅 jīn píng méi) which, smut and all, is considered by some to be the fifth great Chinese novel. This year was also significant as it was in April that we published the first articles on the newly created Beijinger WeChat account. Good times.
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2014 - I Was Scratched By My Dog and Had to Get Rabies Shots
The hottest blog from 2014 was actually a cross-post from our sister site beijingkids, and dropped some serious knowledge about the realities of rabies virus and how to protect yourself. Given that 3,300 cases of human rabies were reported as recently as 2007 it's still just as important to read up on the potentially fatal disease.
2015 - Peter Le: Asian-American Gay Adult Content Producer Discusses His Heritage, Career, and Club Appearances in Beijing
Peter Le was already a fixture on the Beijing circuit by 2015, which is when we finally sat down with the Asian-American star to talk about his life as a gay model and stripper. This blog has consistently stayed near the top of our most-read blogs since 2015, solid proof that his audience cannot get enough of Mr. Le (and who can blame them).
2016 - Facebook's Zuckerberg Accepts Chinese Green Card Offer, Plans Home in Beijing
The news that Facebook CEO would be permanently relocating to Beijing was big news back in 2016. Those that were Zuckered into reading, and weren't tipped off by the date of publication or author's name 'Yu Renjie,' generally figured that the jig was up at mention of Zuckerberg's promised official police detail to create roadblocks during rush hour, personal helicopter with landing rights atop the CCTV tower, and statue of his famous jog on Tiananmen Square.
2017 - Mandarin Monday: The First 100 Characters Every Beginner Needs to Memorize
Did everybody suddenly up the ante on their Mandarin study in 2017? We may never know, but the hottest blog of that year was all about good old hanzi, and it not only did well in our market, but also in Chinese, with multiple language sites translating it under the title "The Top 100 Characters a Laowai Must Learn When First Learning Chinese." Fair enough.
2018 - Inside Xiaomi’s Everything Store at Beijing's The Place
From smartphones to... basically everything, China's technology giant Xiaomi has consistently sought to expand its market both at home and in the rest of the world. The opening of Xiaomi's so-called 'everything store' in The Place caused big waves as this article, itself a cross-post from our former partner site Technode, proves.
2019 - Prepare for (Even) More Road Closures This Weekend, Sep 21-22
As we're sure you well remember, Golden Week this year coincided with the 70th anniversary of the founding of the PRC, and boy did we pay for it. For months leading up to the big event, streets were closed, traffic diverted, subway stations were locked, and police out in force. We tried to keep you as up to date as possible on all the disruptions, but our advice essentially boiled down to this: avoid the city center and forget that Tiananmen ever existed.***
So, what will the next decade bring? Judging by this collection of articles... the top performing blog for the next ten years will be something like this: "Sexy, Well-Dressed Beijing Traffic Cop Moves Back to the US, Misses His Robot Vacuum Cleaner." Let the good times roll and happy reading, Beijing!READ: 2019 Year in Review: Plague, Fires, an Airport, and Other News That Kept Beijing Rapt
Images: refer to individual blogs
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