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Chinese fledging bloggers learn to fly in cyber sky
(EastSouthWestNorth)
Updated: 2005-11-22 09:50
Bloggers can be classified into three types: media bloggers, IT bloggers and
bloggers who record their ordinary sentiments.
When blogging first got started, the IT people had the technological
advantage and they grab the right to speak first. Some of those IT people have
recorded several millions of hits.
The most popular bloggers of 2004 were Beijing Female Patient and Meize's
Food Diary, and those blogs were just journals about standard daily life with
plenty of repetitious content. When the many media bloggers showed up, the
"sentimental journals were totally vanquished."
The media bloggers focus on the effects of
communication. They did not undergo their training for nothing, and they knew
too well how to write for their readers. They have the advantages of language
and communication.
They use the appropriate language to attract attention, and then form a
circle of colleagues to become known. The blog of Milk Pig, who is an
entertainment report at Southern Weekend, is one of those.
Her blog posts are short with only a few lines and she likes to use words
like "一砣" to mean "one of."
She is described as a "shitty blogger." But those few lines are
even better than what she wrote for her newspaper.
For example, when she
wrote about what happened to Andy Lau after he received the award, her few
sentences were better than a long report. "She has the shit on the celebrities,
and that is the advantage of the media people." They come into contact with the
celebrities, and they can show the people about what happens behind the official
articles. The best bloggers this year are like mini-media, or at least they look
like columnists.
This year, Anti served as a judge for both the World
Best of Blogs and the Sina.com blogger competitions. At the German competition,
he has a great power in that he recommends, interprets and translates the
Chinese-language bloggers.
Among the final eight bloggers which were nominated, Anti likes Wang
Xiaofeng's Massage Cream and Keso's photoblog. But he said clearly that Massage
Cream is not the subject of high recommendation because foreigners cannot
appreciate the subtleties of the Chinese language.
"The use of language that would make
Chinese people marvel at would be totally unappreciated by foreigners. Last
year, the 'Dog Daily' won a prize not because it was good, but because it was
easy to understand and accept by the world."
So what about Massage Cream? There is the translation of an accompanying
article in the same issue of Lifeweek, which is the magazine where the blogger
Wang Xiaofeng actually works. Here is how the blogger describes his blogging.
I am a very forgetful person. I can meet someone yesterday, and I won't
remember it today. A worse thing is that I earn my living as a writer.
Sometimes, I get an idea in my head but I can forget it as soon as I turn
around. I was coming home one night and an idea suddenly came to my head. I felt
that I should write it up. When I got home, I had already forgotten what it was.
I sat in front of the computer all night, and I just could not remember it. This
is probably what people often say about "inspirations arrive and then fade away
immediately."
Usually, in the car, on the street, making meals, chatting with friends ...
something strange would pop up in my head. But as soon as I formally take out a
pen and notebook, my mind has gone blank already. I feel that it would be great
fun to record these things. Many years later, when I take the notes out and look
at them again, I may think that my life had not been in vain.
For me, the blog is the tool for recording these
miscellaneous things. As I got familiar with blogging, I found out that the blog
was even more suitable for me to relax myself.
Having been a reporter at Lifeweek for several years, I have developed a
psychological problem. Whenever I begin to write, I get very nervous because our
editor-in-chief is difficult to hoodwink. I find that any article that I feel
unsatisfied with will basically never get pass the editor-in-chief.
So the more concerned I get about writing poorly, the worse I write. When I
have to do a long report, I have no idea what to do before I start. Previously,
before I started to blog, I had the habit of cleaning up my house as a way to
relieve the nervousness.
Sometimes, I sweep the whole place twice already and I
still don't know how the article should begin. After I started to blog, blogging
became my "opening battle" before I write my proper article. It can relieve my
tense nerves and it can broaden my thoughts so that I can get ready. Thus, my
house is getting more and more messy.
Up to now, I still have not done much research on the
idea of blogs. When I read the analytical reports from people in the IT
industry, I don't understand them. Someone even analyzed my own blog, but I
still did not understand it.
It
is a very simple thing, but their analyses made it much more complicated. When
this blogging thing got hot, people loved to analyze its meaning and functions,
search for the commonalities and specificities and then summarize the rules. But
if one looks at blogs from the viewpoint of traditional media, it is only gets
more confusing. The characteristic of a blog is that it is completely different
from traditional media.
At least, I have treated the blog as an extension of my
work. I blog about the things that I cannot usually publish in the printed
media. The reason that I get nervous writing for the printed media is that
another person who does not and cannot fully understand you has the right to
edit your article.
You spend
such a long time to come up with this phrase, but the editor just deleted it
when the time comes to publish, or else he amends it into another form. After a
while, this becomes of a test of wits with the editor in the psychological
sense. I found that this was hard for me to take, just as no one would feel good
about cutting off one's foot to fit the shoe.
For example, I wrote an article about cats and I
described the deceptiveness, selfishness and ruthlessness of cats in lively
fashion. Unfortunately, this article fell into the hands of an editor known as
"Old Cat" and an article that praised the virtues of cats was printed instead.
When I think that the words that I write have to be trampled by several
people before being published, my heart aches. Actually, when I was an editor, I
also trampled upon others in the same way.
I remember clearly how I felt. Therefore, there is a principle in my
blog in that my posts must be different from that which is published in the
printed media. I wanted to write those words that the editors were not used to,
or else I would lose interest in writing altogether.
But I discovered that this space is very huge. I am not
limited by the printed media and I can let myself go. When I think about
something, I write about it. When I want to write about something, I write it.
I don't have to have
a topic in order to write. I don't have to conduct any news gathering. There is
no style or format ... it seems to let people go back to the original state of
creating popular literature. Therefore, when we look at the language on blogs
from the viewpoint of traditional media, we find that blogs lack a refined
system. Even if a bunch of celebrities were invited to start blogs at a certain
website which wants to set a Guinness world record, this does not alter the
grassroots nature of blogs. Blogs offer people the space of a different means of
expression. When people use a laissez-faire approach to use language afresh, the
magic of blogging shines through. You do not know what kind of new language will
be created in the future.
Therefore, when I write for the printed media, I seem more to be writing for
the editor. When I write for the blog, I seem more to be writing for myself. It
is very hard to write for the former. For example, when I write the music column
at Lifeweek, it takes two to three hours to write a 1,700 word article. Before
that, I have to spend several days to think about the train of thought in the
article and to gather relevant information. When I write, I have to weigh the
choice of words because I don't want to write poorly. But when I write a 1,700
word item on the blog, it is basically only 20% longer than the time it takes to
type in the words. I don't have to mind the language or logic. I will write
whatever my thoughts lead me. Whether you like to read it does not matter. The
magazine represents a brand, but the blog represents only me. When I think about
how I choose the words, one is very tiring whereas the other is very easy.
I do not think about whether a blog post will be used by the media. In fact,
my blog posts are being used by more and more media. If I think about the
possibility that the media may use it, I could not have maintain the same
blogging style, or at least it won't be written under the same state of
relaxation. I hope that I can record my ideas when I am in a state of
relaxation, because I have written too many words while not being relaxed.
Previously, my signature on the blog was this: "Some people stare into starry
space and contemplate the deepest problems; some people stare up at the ceiling
and they can even become thinkers; I can only look at the display monitor and
ponder purposelessly ..." An era without computers produces thinkers easily,
because people need to go through deep and complicated thinking in order to
understand something. With the computer and the Internet, everything becomes
easier. The Internet is actually the external hard-drive for the human brain and
we can obtain information from it at any time. Therefore, computer networks are
the biggest reason why people don't have to think. If we look at how the
Internet went from its initial appearance to its popularity today, we will
easily find that the Internet provides people with entertainment content most of
the time. The entertainment includes words, photographs, sounds, videos.
Everything from text to multi-media revolves around entertainment. Each time
that Bill Gates introduces a new version of the operating system, he emphasizes
that his system is even more suited for entertainment. The Internet lets writing
become lighter, and the Internet also liberates the traditional media from its
stodgy, serious and formal language by offering another means of expression.
I like to record the funny things in my life and tell others about them.
Someone asked me, "Why did you originally think about recording the sayings of
teacher Han Qiaosheng?" My reply was very simple -- because I lacked a sense of
humor, whereas his sayings were just right for me to learn what is humor. When I
tell people about those sayings, they will be quite delighted. If I don't know
something, I can learn it. This thing known as humor sometimes cannot be
learned, for it is another kind of sense of awareness about life. But at the
least, you should become someone who can understand humor. Therefore, it is a
delightful thing to record the funny things in life and tell others if you have
the chance. Besides, it trains you to understand humor. In any era, it is more
popular to communicate happiness than to communicate sadness and bitterness.
The pressures of life force people to adapt themselves. I do not want to get
even more burdened than I already am. When I have nothing to do, I find
something to relax myself. First of all, when I blog, I don't think of it as a
burden because this is something that I want to do. Secondly, I hope to write
some funny stuff, because the process of writing is when I relax myself.
Actually, people are always thinking about entertaining themselves, most of the
time based upon outside entertainment -- music, movies, television, games ...
but very seldom do people entertain themselves inside their hearts and minds.
Writing a blog is such a method for me. If I can entertain other people as well,
then I am even performing a public service.
From what I can see, a blog is just a tool for recording in the digital era
for those who wish to express themselves. In ancient times, literary folks would
write words like "Number One Mountain Under the Means" on the face of stone
cliffs; other people may write "I was here" on a brick wall. No matter what,
this is just about how people are changing their ways of making historical
records, no matter if it is on blogs or on bamboo slips.
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