Your Heart of Beijing China blogs, 2012

Beijing/China blogs: ROLL CALL TIME.

I recently did some much-needed housecleaning of this site's blogroll, which appears on the sidebar to your right. As I've stated before, these sites are roughly ordered by my preference, though the order breaks down a little in the categories following "Blogroll - News and Issues."

New to the blogroll is an "in memoriam" section: blogs that have been dead for a while (as I just noticed), like an unfed goldfish. These are all News and Issues sites that were notable for one reason or another, and that could not be sustained -- for one reason or another. They can be found after the "News and Resources" section.

It's unfortunate that china/divide, undoubtedly one of the Top 10 China blogs in existence for about 12 months from 2010-11, heads that "in memoriam" section. So it goes.

But china/divide wasn't the only site that dropped out of this blogroll's Elite Eight category. Danwei, which apparently is now a "web magazine" that has a new domain (.com, no longer .org), has been relegated to the second tier due to lack of posts. Sorry, Jeremy. I know it sucks being blocked by the Great Firewall, but you do know you're transitioning to the dark side with this whole "custom research" thing that you're selling, right? To each his own, I suppose. (Check out Danwei's blogroll while it's still free to access.)

Taking those sites' places: please welcome China Geeks and Dan Harris's consistently excellent China Law Blog.

A few words about some News and Issues blogs:

Some sites would be much higher if the owners would post more. Brendan O'Kane, looking at you.

China Government Watch is now a private blog for "invited" readers only. If anyone from that site is reading this: PLEASE INVITE ME. Seriously. I want in the club. How do I get in?

Completely new to the blogroll is Sinocism, which is good, but sometimes it's too much, you know what I mean? Just pure unfiltered info dump.

I don't know how often I will update the blogroll rankings. Maybe quarterly? Monthly? Whenever I have time.

The rankings under the Life category are a bit less thought-out. Let's just say that after Jenny Zhu's site, I'm not sure if anything listed is actually extant. Assume no. I really should just delete all of them, but I kind of like to keep 'em for posterity.

New under this category: Laowiseass, a guy in Taipei. How's this for a throwback: he uses Livejournal. Everything's different in Taiwan.

Some sites have moved. Don't try to access the old Beijing Sounds (北京的声儿) site. Here's the new URL.

The "art, literature, music" section has been renamed "Culture." The blogs that belong to magazines and newspapers -- i.e. traditional media -- is now simply "Media."

Here are four new tech blogs that really aren't my thing, but have at it if you like: Silicon Hutong, Tech Rice, DigiCha, TechNode.

I'm going to try to get into the habit of reading less Deadspin and more of my RSS feeds, which include all the sites on my blogroll and then some. I'll link to stories that don't suck. Let's say we'll do this every... Friday. Happy reading.