Fili’s world

I haven’t been around for too long, but I do have the feeling that things are different now than they were when I started paying attention to the English language Asian & Taiwanese blogospheres around 3 years ago, and I have to say - I think there’s something great going on in our tiny Taiwan blogosphere right now. The amount of fascinating articles beautifully decorated with the most amazing photography that I read in our blogosphere daily is almost inconceivable when you consider the number of expats we actually have here in Taiwan. Few are blogging for any expectations of gain or rewards, most are doing an amazing job out of their own passion for what they experience here in Taiwan and knowing something about other blogospheres around the world I find that to be very special and unique.

As the wonderful David on Formosa’s Shared Google Reader items, I use the NewsGator service that links up with my offline FeedDemon to highlight Taiwan clippings I recommend. I used a bit of Yahoo Pipes magic to combine our two lists and remove duplicates, and posted our combined recommendations on Taiwanderful’s “Interesting articles section“. If you also share such a Taiwan recommended list and you want to add it to ours, we’d love to - let me know. Just take a look of articles flagged today, I think you’ll see what I’m talking about.

There’s the great “The Daily Links” project that Michael Turton started, David Reid joined and others like The Bushman followed up on. Bloggers in Taiwan has been keeping track of Taiwan blogs for Buddha knows how long now. Lots of really great Taiwan stuff that you can’t find anywhere else.

-

Why’d I think about that? Through the ever interesting Scott Sommers I found the non-RSSable AmCham Taiwan Topics magazine with the new article about our little blogosphere titled “Travel and Leisure: They Come, They See, They Blog“. The article includes an interview with some interesting figures from the Taiwan English blogosphere giving me an interesting outsider summary of how we look :

It goes without saying that the vast majority of bloggers in Taiwan write in Chinese. Nonetheless, the country has an active English-language blogging scene. Michael Turton, an American who works as an instructor in Chaoyang University’s Department of Applied Foreign Languages, estimates that at least 700 blogs in English emanate from or focus on Taiwan.

Of these, Turton’s own “The View from Taiwan” (accessible at michaelturton.blogspot.com) is perhaps the most popular. At the end of 2007, three rankings of local English-language blogs were compiled by the Tainan-based author of “Fili’s World” (filination.com), who used various methodologies to arrive at the rankings. “The View from Taiwan” topped two of the three lists. According to Turton himself, his site gets between 800 and 900 visitors on most days. [...]

Taiwan may not have its own “China Bounder,” but ideas expressed by foreign bloggers do sometimes reach a mainstream audience. Last year, Greg Talovich, a teacher who posts in both English and Chinese, made use of his blog “Wandering in Wulai” (talovich.blogspot.com) to criticize the government’s “UN for Taiwan” slogan, calling it “wrong English and incomprehensible.” He called the government’s decision to stamp the slogan on pieces of mail an infringement of his freedom of speech.[...]

“The View from Taiwan,” on the other hand, is written entirely in English. Turton launched the blog in February 2005 to supplement a website (michaelturton.com) he has maintained for several years. That site is focused on providing information for foreigners who come to Taiwan to teach English; the blog, on the other hand, has become best known for political commentary. [...]

Another of the better-known (and one of the longer-running) English-language blogs in Taiwan is “Poagao’s Journal” (www.poagao.org). This blog, by T.C. Lin, is similar to a personal diary, emphasizing his hobbies, moods, and feelings more than political or social commentary, and also providing a showcase for his photography. [...]

Jason Cox – better known in the blogosphere as “A-Gu” (a-gu.blogspot.com) [...] Cox’s blog is called “That’s Impossible: Politics From Taiwan.” “Originally, I wanted to post on U.S. politics, Taiwanese politics, and other topics that interest me, including Buddhist texts and linguistics issues,” says Cox, who started the blog in November 2006. “I also wanted the blog to be more or less bilingual when possible. I soon realized this was overly ambitious.” [...]

But if some bloggers use tools like Google Analytics to find out where their readers come from, others – like Scott Sommers (scottsommers.blogs.com), an instructor at Ming Chuan University – admit to having only “a hazy idea” about who looks at their blogs. Sommers, who often writes about Taiwan’s English-teaching industry, believes he has thousands of readers and gets 200 to 300 visitors on a typical day. But, he says, “I don’t pay a lot of attention to these numbers.” [...]

Joanna Rees, a professional photographer who maintains a blog alongside her website “Joanna Rees Photography” (jorees.wordpress.com), says she gets 200 to 500 hits a day; the number goes higher when she posts more often. The three main themes of her blog are: her photography (the most popular topic, she says); working in academia (Rees teaches a course on Pronunciation and another on Media and Communications at Huafan University); and education (she is completing a doctorate in Fine Arts and Art Education at National Taiwan Normal University). [...]

 

I especially like the summary, because it’s so true :

“Blogging is the future,” Rees says of efforts like this. “It does fill gaps. Blogs say things the mainstream media doesn’t say.”
“Blogging has been really important for long-term expatriates like me,” Turton says. “It’s all about building community. Even a blog that’s all about yourself can do that, as it’s putting part of yourself out there in public.”

It does form a community and it makes living in Taiwan a whole lot more interesting.