China Blogging Tour

Riding China's expat roller coaster: two days vs. two weeks vs. two years

I've been here in China (my first visit) for exactly one week. The roller coaster phenomenon goes something like this...

1. Scarcely 48 hours after arriving in Beijing I shared what I considered to be my GREAT revelation with an audience at Amcham Beijing: with 137 million Internet users [make that 172 million] and an estimated 30 million bloggers, China's use of social media is MUCH BIGGER than in the U.S. Wow.

The corollary... this is an amazing opportunity for companies - Chinese or multinational. Tap into this online crowd with a corporate or CEO blog and your company can reap the benefits. OK, hmmm... maybe.

2. Two days later, I was back to square one; not sure I understood anything about China and China's use of the Internet as a marketing channel. Censorship is a gray area and quite nuanced. It's confusing.

Note: I had a great lunch with Jeremy Goldkorn, founder and publisher of Danwei.org, who explained some of the nuances. Did a video interview with him which I'll post to YouTube when I get back to the U.S. (YouTube continues to be blocked here in China.)

3. It's now eight days since I've arrived and I'm where I should be... I understand much more than when I left the U.S. on Oct. 13, 2007. But I realize it would take years (perhaps a lifetime) to really understand Chinese consumer and business culture.

Having said that, I'm looking forward enormously to sharing a panel tomorrow on CEO blogging (21st Century PR: Executives and Their Blogs) at Amcham Shanghai with China's word of mouth marketing expert Sam Flemming and China PR / tech guru Will Moss (aka Imagethief).

Useful Links

China's Online Internet Explosion (What It May Mean for the Internet Globally... and for U.S. Users) by Deborah Fallows, Pew Internet - July 2007 (download PDF report)

Social Media Flourishes in China (Jennifer Jones' interview with Sam Flemming on Podtech)

Chinese Bloggers: "Everybody Is Somebody" by Rebecca MacKinnon (Nov. 7, 2005)

Just call me "Jade Green Flowers"

It may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of me. But it's my name in Chinese: 黛碧薇  Those three characters mean Jade Green Flowers.

Thanks to Sabrina Dorr in Edelman's Beijing office for the amazing amount of work she's put into organizing my China book tour. We spoke by phone this morning to review some last minute details.

With her help I worked on pronouncing 黛碧薇 (Debbie Weil) as Dai Bee Way. That doesn't capture it entirely; remembering the intonation is what is so hard. But close.

Learning Chinese via Skype and podcasts

Was bemoaning my lack of progress at learning Chinese. And then was reminded of ChinesePod when I saw that it was written up in The Economist in an article titled Mandarin 2.0. I'm going to try again!

Co-founder Ken Carroll tells The Economist this is "language-learning 2.0."

“Tens of millions” of people in 110 countries now download the free ChinesePod podcasts, Praxis's flagship service, says Mr Carroll. About 250,000 listen regularly and “several thousand” pay for the premium services, which include individual Skype chats with teachers.
- from The Economist (June 7, 2007)