About China blogosphere, travel, and entrepreneurship

Wang Jianshuo, Veteran Blogger of Wangjianshuo’s Blog from Shanghai, China.

Part I: Wang Jianshuo discusses the origins of his blog and the pains of finding an audience, and how he kept blogging through the tough times to make it a blogging icon. Jianshuo is now the head of Baixing.com (formerly kijiji.cn).

Interview Transcript

Let’s start with our first question, why do you blog?

When I first started in 2000, I didn’t think about starting a blog and just simply registered a domain and wrote some English articles. If I remember, among them I wrote an article about the Pudong airport, and to my surprise a few months later as I googled Pudong airport, my page came up as the first result. I was very surprised and realized there were no previous information about Pudong airport in English on the internet. So I decided to keep writing about the city of Shanghai one article every week.

Two years later in 2002, a blogger interviewed me through MSN and asked a lot of questions. I thought he was a journalist but at the end of the interview he told me he was a blogger and sent me his site. It was then I learned about blogging and how great it was since you can write articles and help people by sharing your knowledge. I then decided to change my website from html format into a blog. The reason I blog is because I consider myself a volunteer for the city of Shanghai by blogging and helping the people and the city.

When you are blogging, what’s the inspiration behind each post? Do you have a certain person/audience in mind when you blog?

Most of my blogs are regarding the events in Shanghai that affect my life and others. I have certain guidelines: first it must be something in Shanghai, second it has to affect people’s lives. The “persona” you are referring to my target audience when I blog is a new visitor to Shanghai, I want to share these small details of Shanghai life with them to help them. You can see in my blogs that I like to focus on the small things. For example: “I take the bus, pay two Yuan, and most of the bus here cost two Yuan if it’s air-conditioned, and one Yuan if it’s not” would be an excerpt from one of my blogs. I believe it’s very important information that you can’t learn from books or newspapers. This information is very important stuff for visitors, so I write all kinds of these small things for these people. I don’t really know what they need, so I just share my life and tell them the details of how to live a life in the city as I see it. For example, one day I had nothing to write about, but I saw an image of 119(emergency number in China), and I posted a blog to about dialing 119 for emergency calls. To my great surprise, there were so many comments on that short post alone; people commented “I’ve been in Shanghai for many years, and I had no idea, we salute you and thank you so much Mr. Wang!” I thought it was shocking and couldn’t believe that people didn’t know.

Do you feel pressured to blog? Does it come naturally to you? If you go a day without blogging, do you feel pressure or is it something you enjoy and look forward to?

It changes over time; the first six months were very painful since you never had the habit to write a blog. Another most important thing is that no one read blogs back then; it’s better and easier now since I know there are thousands of people who are waiting to read my blog. Back in the days, you knew you only had one or two readers, and you write for three months and get nothing back, so you start questioning yourself why you are still doing this. That was a tough period for most bloggers is that first month or two.

What advice do you have for bloggers who are all in that same boat within first few months of blogging hardship?

I think the most important question to ask is “why do you blog?”, if you blog for readership, chances are you will give up. It’s very hard for to get readership, some people after one year still have no readers except their parents and friends. My advice is “never write if you just want people to read it”. At the very beginning, when I was working for Microsoft, I would give people my business card and feel the pride of belonging to such a prestigious company as people were impressed by Microsoft the company. One day in 2002, all of a sudden I had an epiphany and realized the honor I was proud of belonged only to the company and not me. As a person, you have to accumulate something of yourself, not for fame, not for the readership, but accumulate the knowledge in life and share it even if no one read it. That’s why I wrote everyday and didn’t care I had no readership because doing a blog made me think and observe everyday and this is very helpful.