Sinolicious

As I'm sure more than a scant few of you are aware, there was a blogger's site based out of Shanghai, Sinolicious.com.   It was created and ran by Keith Williams, a Canadian.

It was an open site, ie, anyone could publish.  None of this uppity "upon review will let you know" BS.   As such, it was the perfect way for me and others to "publish", ie, to test the waters of audience reaction to the topics we wanted to write about.    I liked the site, and frequently visited it. (my views were also much larger on his site than on my own)

However, I guess due to lack of expat participation, and probably the maintenance involved in managing such a site, it became fairly inactive after awhile.

Yes, I'm bemoaning the death of an expat oriented site.  But I'm wondering how such a site could have failed in the first place?   With Shanghai's large expat population, one would have thought it would've been a tad more popular.

To my knowledge, us folk down here in Shenzhen lack such an alternative.
But the main reason(those wanting to criticize me for starting a sentence with a conjunction need to hit the road) I liked the site was it's willingness to both publicize personal blogs from others, while also refusing to do what nearly every other site does, which is simply regurgitate the news.   The similarity of these sites is such that I simply need to visit just one of them, to know what the content basically is on the rest of them.  (I do like Chinasmack though, because they also have the Chinese translation, and that is important to me)

I guess what I'm saying is that to my knowledge it was one of the very few sites in existence that publish not the news, but opinions on life in China,  politically correct or not.  I found it entertaining, and now that it's gone, with the exception of Pekingduck, I just don't know where to go anymore.

We expats need more sites such as Sinolicious.   A forum where people can blow off steam, or share insights.    Were a few of the posts a bit lowbrow?  Sure....so what?   None of us are angling for the Pulitzer.   I've already more than a plethora of "news" sites.   I want insights from people that actually live here(or visit frequently).   Something personal, and original.   There are a few sites that speak of social trends, but quite frankly, they are corporate and sterile.   Money is involved.  That changes everything.  No one pays me to blog.   I don't have to write with the view of "approval" from anybody.    I'm not looking over my shoulder.    I just wish there were more of them.