No-nonsense China Expat Blog

I ran across a blog post over at Dalian blogger Kim’s great new spot, East-West Station, and it got me thinking.

In the post, entitled “The Years BC“, Kim recounts the (often entertainment-industry induced) rather skewed knowledge he had of China before moving here last year. He shares tales of stereotypes, evil villains, kung-fu legends and the fact that in his younger years, like most of us, had no idea China was different from Japan (and Korea was just unknown).

For a while now I’ve wanted to find a topic to launch group writing projects here on Lost Laowai in an effort to bring together fellow Sinosphere bloggers in a creative and constructive manner. Well, in true Chinese form, why come up with something new when you can just copy the brilliance of others?

So, welcome to Lost Laowai’s 1st Group Writing Project.

A group writing project is a good way for bloggers in the ’sphere to come together and get to know other semi-related blogs and possibly make some new friends while doing so.

It’s also a chance for lesser-known blogs to get some extra traffic from people who might not normally run across their site.

To participate, here is the process to follow:

1. Write a post relating to your pre-China knowledge of the Middle Kingdom

• Check Kim’s or other submissions for concepts or ideas.
• Feel free to add, subtract or modify this idea - be as creative as you can. As long as it sticks to the theme, it’s fine.
• You can write it in any form you like (songs, poems, rants, humorous posts, as told by fecal art, anything you want).
• Come up with a snazy title for the post that might attract some interest from other readers.

2. Let us know when it’s done.

• Once you’ve posted your story, simply fire us off an e-mail (Contact in left sidebar) with the following information:
  Title of Post, Post’s Link, Your name (or online alias)
• The deadline for this group writing project is Monday, June 18th.
• You don’t have to link back to this post - but it might be a good way to get others involved and help this project grow.
• Additionally, you are more than welcome to use the graphic above in your post. Simply download it, or just link to it from here.

3. What happens next?

• I’ll be doing a “daily” post of submissions on here. Additionally, I will also be adding your post to a central “If I Knew Then What I Know Now” submission list to make it easy for everyone to view all the posts related to this group writing project.
• The final list will be posted next Tuesday, June 19th.

4. Don’t be shy - get around.

• This is where you take over. Get out there and see what other people thought about China before winding up here. See if they compare to your own pre-China notions. Leave comments and make connections with other Sinosphere bloggers.
• There is no formal ‘judging’ as this is not a competition. Instead, I suggest perhaps you can surf through the submissions at the end of the week and list the one(s) on your blog you feel were the best and share the linky linky love.