The Story Behind One of China’s Largest Blogging Communities

February 28, 2007 | By Wang Xiao | Filed Under Bloggers, Blogging, China, Features

Not everyone in China knows Bullog, but anyone who knows Bullog clicks it everyday. When I first time clicked the site half a year ago, I said: “Wow! I can get access to almost every China’s famous blogger’s posts. With only one website!” Since the first time I opened it, I fell in love with this site.

And this is its story.

Bullog is a web2.0 site based on RSS that collect a great deal of China’s elite bloggers’ posts (authorized). In a short 5 months, its traffic rank of Alexa rises to 11964 and is continuously growing.

On Bullog, readers are able to read articles of most Chinese famous bloggers. For example, Ark the blogger who combats TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine), Han-Han the well-known young author who is an idol of many high-school students, and Fatty Luo who rails against nonsensical ways of writing or teaching, who happens to be its founder.

Fatty Luo? Yes, that’s his nickname because of his fleshy shape. The Bullog founder initially named his blog “Stupid Crazy Fatty Luo’s Dairy”, but his articles were not actually stupid, nor crazy.

Who is Fatty Luo, exactly?

Fatty Luo, whose full name was Luo Yonghao, was born in Jilin Province, China. He quit school before college because that he hated the stupid and senseless way of teaching in high school. After that, he found work as a construction worker, small tradesman, a salesperson, and even some shadier activies.

To earn a living, Fatty Luo committed studying English. In the year of 1999, Luo joined the New Oriental Group, which is now China’s biggest education group; he became a teacher of GRE courses. Listening to Luo’s lectures started to be a trend on internet; wth a relaxed style of teaching, the large-belly teacher became an idol of many college students.

Furthermore, many people liked his penetrating insight into social affairs and the relaxed atmosphere of Luo’s class. Some fans even made online-book named “Luo says”.

In the year of 2004, Fatty Luo found a new way to communicate with people: Blogging. Fans were able to get to know a real Fatty Luo beyond voice. In Luo’s blog, he kept an eye on vices and antediluvian ideas of Chinese culture and wrote posts on what he saw, what he knew and what he thought.

He was also concerned with social problems and challenged many questions with rational beliefs. In his fans’ eyes, Mr. Luo was an outspoken fighter, a model for youngsters and a cool teacher; in opponent’s eyes, he talked nonsense and lacked the basic elegance of an intellectual person.

Luo quitted his job of New Oriental on June 2006 for personal reasons and set up his own website: Bullog.cn, a professional service provider for bloggers. Initially, Bullog only allowed VIPs (Famous bloggers and literary lions) to post, but that has since changed, so that anyone can set up an account for posting. And that’s the story behind one of China’s biggest blogging communities.

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Comments

6 Responses to “The Story Behind One of China’s Largest Blogging Communities”

Maki on February 28th, 2007 7:48 pm

Ok .. I seriously think Blog Herald should do more articles on the non-english speaking blogosphere.

Really enjoyed the insights into China and Russia recently and I look forward to more news from these and other regions.
Tony Hung on February 28th, 2007 9:15 pm

Thanks Maki … we think its an important part of what we need to do in the future.

Does anyone else echo this opinion?

Cheers
tony
Yue Xu on March 1st, 2007 4:51 am

Yes I echo it.
China Law Blog on March 1st, 2007 5:54 am

Great post! Thoroughly enjoyed it.
Bob on March 3rd, 2007 6:08 am

I found http://www.outpost-earth.com doing this same thing but on a more global level. Very cool.
Global Voices Online » China: Blogs deleted, barred and officially backed on August 18th, 2007 10:38 am

[…] blog “The Beijing Olympics, I don’t support them” had been deleted. In his post Luo Yonghao writes: “don’t always go asking openly what the reasons are, what act the Chinese […]

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