A China Blog On Suzhou Expat Life

Damn straight I voted for you! (At least I think I did…I just clicked the link and it appeared I voted.)

You’ll need to click the little green plus sign to add a vote. I believe your browser also needs to allow Javascript.

I can imagine Shopgirl now: approaching random strangers in Shanghai’s Bar Rouge and begging “Pleeeaasse vote for my blog.” In a fair world your blog would trample all over that site of shite, but you know that she is taking this seriously and getting all her socialite friends (all three of them) to log onto different computers and vote for her repeatedly.

I put my vote by your name. I only hope that it is enough.

shopgirl is a cancer of the blog world and must be quashed…

and yes. this is my whole-heartedly truthful opinion.

I also voted for you, and if I could vote negatively against shopgirl I would do so in a heartbeat. Actual sample from a recent post on her blog:

“Now you guys might understand why I love my double eyelid gel???”

Oh god, the horror…

If we all pull together we can outdo her. I’m voting for you. And myself. Heh.

I’d vote negatively if I could too. She gives female China bloggers a bad image. Or something. Or everything. Horrible.

Oh, I just love shopgirl’s advice! I always email her pictures of what I want to buy and she is like so helpful in making sure everything matches, and totally keeps my from buying anything that’s like too 2005. Suzhou is mostly just hookers anyway.

You guys rock! I didn’t realize there was such an anti-shopgirl sentiment. Hmm…

Sadly, as fiLi said in the original intro to the CBA:

This whole thing is just for fun! Like any system, I’m sure that the system can be abused, but I’m counting on the general good of the China blogosphere that this will not happen.

So, there are bound to be ways to cheat the running, and if she’s desperate enough to do that to win a good-natured award… well… her conscience, right?

To be honest though, 88s is a much better blog than this one (despite it being blocked here in the PRC), so I feel a little awkward that my push to dethrone ShopGirl is blurring the category.

@Meur: If you best Sinocidal, will they kick you out of the tribe?

@Love2…: Fuck off.

Go Ryan! The hopes of a nation are behind you in this fight!

The other Mighty Beings at Sinocidal would never dare to kick me off if I bested them. Besides, I do all the spell checking.

China is a Nation filled with problems, and no solutions in the forseeable future. If you can’t tell all that from your time here, find your receipts because your time and money was wasted.

@Meursault: The bane of a journalistic background - I know it well. I’m currently in the process of editing a novel for my Aunt

@Anon: **scratches head** Wha? I never keep my receipts.

I’m voting for you because I think of you as one of the sponsors/mentors of all kinds of blogs here, ours included.

I voted for you, Ryan. I was actually a bit surprised to see 18 votes beside my blog’s name. I didn’t know there were 18 people that knew my blog existed.

Hey Josh, thanks for the kind words. Though I’m not sure my addiction to blogging and the Net should be rewarded Peer-see got my vote, and I’m curious to see if a new baby destroys any amount of free time you guys had for blogging

Gabrielle: Your blog deserves to kick the pants off shopgirls! I feel a little bad that the race has narrowed to her and I in this category … there are so many more deserving blogs.

As an update - last check it was Shopgirl 48/Humanaught 46… closing the gap.

Ryan,

I hereby revoke my vote for your so-called “blog.” I cast my vote before I knew that our respective countries were going to war. Make no mistake; The good ole’ US of A is going to mop the floor with the lot of you beady-eyed, floppy-headed, Molson-swilling, pinko Canucks and your fart jokes.

Give us our oil if you know what’s good for you.
Check this link if you don’t know what I’m talking a boat, eh?

You are now winning 50 to 48 (I’m the 50th vote. Thank GOD for that!!!

Whats going on?
No more new posts on your fine blog so the “Alright, Time To Vote!” entry will boost your votes

Really hard to choose a blog to vote for.
Shopgirl is awful (no doubt about that)
88s, humanaught and http://china.notspecial.org/ are great.
I must say the “Uighur” blog actually pretty special (contrary to its name :P).

@ILoveChina: Cheers!

@Blammo: I swear that’s not the reason! I’ve been working on a super top-secret way to thwart the commies! But more on that, and more new posts soon. I promise. And I agree, Michael’s blog rocks the Kashgar! I don’t mind at all that one of my blogs is coming in behind him. But this Shopgirl crap… it’s sad.

Love2Shop-n-Shanghai: “Suzhou is mostly just hookers anyway.”
W00T?!?!? Not my experience. Was there last year and enjoyed it greatly. One of the nicer cities to live in china (at least compared to Shanghai).

@Ryan: I was just joking.
On a side note: After my visit to Suzhou China last year I googeled the web on additional info about Suzhou and China in general. I landed on your Suzhou blog which introduced me so to speak to the whole China-Expat blogging scene (as a reader). Enjoyed reading all those crazy chinese stories ever since! Certainly a nice way to kill some time at work (not that we have nothing to do here)

Ryan . . . I sent out emails . . . is that legal? To ask for votes?

@Blammo: Suzhou rocks It really is a comfortable city for foreigners. And I’m thinking of making that our slogan here:
‘The Humanaught: Killing productivity one mindless task at a time.’ Glad I could help

@Gabrielle: So it’s going to be like that eh? Time to dust off some e-mail addresses. Haha, sure it’s legal, though it’s doubtful I’ll bother the folks that don’t read this blog to vote for me. Like I said on your blog, I’m happy to be second to you. I just really DON’T want to lose to Shopgirl. And I hope some of the other blogs perk up to living in that shame as well and push a bit for votes.

I’m really impressed how you are asking people to vote for your blog if the want to but also encouraging them to vote for others and even helping fellow bloggers with your little “vote for me” images that they can put on their sites. Talk about being a great sport unlike SOME (ok, ONE) blogger who is shamelessly soliciting votes from people regardless of whether they feel her blog is any good, like it’s not even relevant! Hope you kick her ass!! I voted for you instead of for myself just to make sure.

Good to see that you kicked Shopgirl into the gutter - although Mysterious and Misplaced came out of nowhere and trashed you both.

And another thing Mr. Humanaught, isn’t it about time you added a link to Yellow Wings on your site? It’s a magnificent site that uses grown-up words like “fuck-up” and “arsecandle” that makes me look big, hard, and - yes - clever as well.

@Ryan - I’m glad to know that it’s legal, but Woaizhonguo’s comment is making me feel all bad about doing it. My emails were sent to people who do read my blog - I just don’t know how often. I just wanted make sure that they knew about the competition so they could vote for me if they wanted to. I made sure to encourage them to look at other blogs while they visited Chinalyst because there are a lot of other great blogs out there to read. I did a similar thing in my actual post. Hope people don’t redirect their anger from Shopgirl to me. That would make me terribly sad.

Gabrielle, take it from me, you’re not doing anything wrong. Like most other bloggers, including myself, you have merely raised awareness of the vote rather than a single minded frenzy of a campaign simply to push up your own numbers.

@Meursault: Re: Link - Do on to others? Fine, I’ll take the higher ground. Baby.

@Gabrielle: I’m with Woaizhonggui - e-mailing friends and family is completely cool. Begging for votes, or promoting the whole thing is the point in my opinion. I just don’t like Shopgirl’s blog. It should be retitled - “Shopgirl: Everything that’s wrong with ‘modern’ women”

Good man, you know it makes sense. You were always linked to on my old site (where you were graciously referred to by “He once posted a link to this site, which is a lot more than the 5,000,000,000,000 other sites out there. So, come on Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia etc, if you want to be linked here than link to me too.”) but hadn’t been updated on the new one. However, it is now done, and all is well with the world once more. Praise be.