Happy birthday to Shanghai Scrap. One year, today.
Last May, exactly 301 blog posts ago (!), I wondered who – if anyone – would bother reading this business. That is to say, would I have a readership that extends beyond the small group of Pakistani metal traders attracted to the Shanghai Scrap domain name (for further information on that topic, please see this post)?
Yes is mostly the answer. Readership is better than I had any reason to expect, and – in a related surprise – the audience for this blog is mostly located outside of Asia.
In either case, as any blogger knows, and I’ve quickly learned, readership flows from links, and this blog’s expanding readership is largely courtesy of the blogs that have been kind enough to link to the posts, and add Shanghai Scrap to their blogrolls. Special thanks (in alphabetical order) is due to China Law Blog, Danwei, James Fallows, New Advent, and Shanghaiist – all of whom have larger audiences than Shanghai Scrap, but have linked to it, anyway, resulting in readership spikes that stick.
So. We laughed, we cried, we somehow managed to write only one post that we really regret (a free copy of Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music for the first reader to email the title of the offending post). After the jump, the top five most viewed (read?) Shanghai Scrap posts from the last year:
- The Protests, the Olympics, and Race
- The Tragedy of Yao’s Left Foot
- Northwest Airlines: Flight Risk
- Live Blogging Wipha (who can forget?)
- Art for Export: Liu Jianhua’s Scrap (this year’s dark horse in the race for the top 5!)
It’s not lost on me that only one of these posts – the last – is related to scrap. And so, in the coming year, you can expect more posts on Yao Ming’s feet, the rapacious villainy of Northwest Airlines (block the merger!), and typhoons. Oh, and I’ll finally get around to that post on why Chinese people love American soft rock from the 70s.
Finally, if I may, five posts that didn’t generate much readership, but – in my opinion – might deserve a second look:
- The Requiem Concluded with Jasmine Flowers.
- In the Vernacular
- Oriental in Minnesota
- The Shanghai Cable Guy and the Future of Chinese Manufacturing
- Cold War, Over.
Oh, and since the question has been publicly raised, again (see comments section of this post on the Minnesota Public Radio site), let me repeat: it is Shanghai Scrap, not Shanghai Is Crap. I’m just not that clever.
Scappy Anniversary!
Happy Birthday. I just realized (truly) that I had yet to add you to our blogroll so as my (deserved) present to you….
happy birthday (^-^) one of my favourite china blogs (and feel embarrassed for not having you on my blogroll, especially because you’ve been to dongguan)
By the way, I second your recommendation of “In the Vernacular” as a really important blog post, and I am disappointed that you report it as having low readership. I frequently use that post to clear up many inaccuracies in people’s understanding of the Church in China, such as the Novus Ordo Mass is not used here, or that now-Cardinal Zen escaped from China and never came back or had anything to do with the Church in China after that. Obviously, a simple trip to wikipedia.org would clear much of these misconceptions up, but that post (with pictures!) is really more significant than Yao’s left foot.
Congratulations Adam, and I’ll burn some ghost money in the stairwell for you.
I wish I could win such a great classic album, but all I can think of is “Amazing what floats on water!” I do not remember a dud so I lose! Hope the blog keeps up the high standards like Lou did with his masterwork Machine Metal Music!
Happy Birthday Shanghai Scrap! Glad to see you back in the swing of things. I already have Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music so I won’t enter the contest. Funny about the Pakistani metal traders. One of my first post was about “boiler efficiency,” and I was bombarded with comments from Indian boiler manufacturers. Remind me that I have to introduce you to my Chinese teacher who spent many an unemployed day during the Cult. Rev. (bad class background) on Sheshan.