Paparazzi and Celebrity Blogs Most Popular

One of Wei Jiaqing's blog articles has been viewed for nearly 1 million times

The most popular blog entries--the ones that have the most visits--so far this year on Sina blog (http://blog.sina.com.cn/) are about celebrities.

The champion, with over 980,000 hits, is a short entry written by 25-year-old model and singer, Ms. Wei Jiaqing, who gained her national recognition after participating in the 2006 Super Girl singing competition. In the entry, she told her fans that she already ended a contract with the company that managed the Super Girl.

Among the eight blog articles that have been viewed for more than 500,000 times, six fall into the paparazzi and celebrity journal categories, written by celebrities themselves or by bloggers specializing in star tales. Sina hosts perhaps the largest number of celebrity blogs in China.

In one of the popular articles, which is from a paparazzi site, the blogger recounted the love story between famous Taiwanese actress Lin Qingxia (Brigitte Lin) and her three lovers. The entry is full of detailed anecdotes and old pictures, demonstrating the blogger’s rich knowledge about the super star.

The two non-paparazzi entries that reached the 500,000-hit mark concern nothing serious, either. One of them is about China National Geography magazine’s project of searching for people with peculiar family names in China.

In comparison, the most popular entries on http://www.bullog.cn/, a blog site carrying more serious discussions about politics, culture and economy, only generated five-digit hit.

As much as the Internet has become an important political forum for Chinese public, it is an even more powerful entertainment medium. This is partly due to Chinese authority’s control over political discourse on the Internet, which results into abundant revealing beauty pictures but much less out-spoken expressions on Chinese websites.

A large number of Internet users in their teens and twenties, who are ardent followers of the celebrity culture, also helped to drive the popularity of celebrity blogs. Meanwhile, celebrity blogs have become an important part of pop culture in today’s China.

Some popular Sina blog entries in 2007:
http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4a6a57e901000c98.html (Wei Jiaqing)
http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_48caa4d901000bt4.html (Rivalry between two female stars)
http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_48bb0d010100076i.html (Peculiar Chinese family names)
http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4894b6f901000c3a.html (Old picture of stars)
http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_53a020d501000c9u.html (Brigitte Lin)

List of most popular articles in 2007 on Sina blog

http://blog.sina.com.cn/lm/wenku2007.html