About a month ago, in Part I of this series, I promised we would go through our blogroll and justify and expound upon each blog, five by five. This is the second in that series. As I mentioned in that last blog post, we pick our blogs based on the following slippery, vague, and subjective criteria:

Our blogroll basically consists of those blogs we like and which we think our readers will like or should be reading. We tend to like blogs that are unique in their content, well written, or consistently helpful. If we really like a blog, it makes it on no matter what. The less we like the blog, the more we have to believe it can be helpful to our readers. If a blog has not posted for a couple of months, we start seriously consider removing it from the rolls. Three months and it is usually removed. We obviously focus on China related blogs and, within that, we generally focus on those blogs related to law or business.

Here then is our second five, listed alphabetically:

Asia Health Care Blog. Alphabetically, this blog actually belonged on our first list, but since we added it since that post, I am writing on it now. I tend not to like listing industry specific blogs because.....well, they are too industry specific. There are many excellent China tech blogs and none of those are on our blogroll. But I have added this one for two reasons. One, health care impacts us all (yes, I know technology does also, but remember the subjective part mentioned above) and this blog is written with a general audience in mind. Second, the two bloggers are so damn earnest, I wanted to give them some kudos.

bezdomny ex patria. My Latin ain't so good, but I think this blog title means homeless and outside of one's native country. And at least the second part is true of the force behind this blog. It is written by a New Zealander who lives in Beijing, hence its subtitle: "ramblings of an expat Kiwi living in one small corner of Beijing." I like that it is not yet another American blog and I especially like how the guy behind it, Chris Waugh, is very smart, very independent, and not afraid to put it all out there in his posts. This is not your standard China blog and that is why you should be reading it. Waugh describes himself as follows:

My real name is Chris Waugh.... I’m from Wellington, I live in Beijing where I teach English to earn my keep and study Chinese in my spare time because…… well, why the hell not? I mean, apart from the fact I live in China and my wife is Chinese, it’s just interesting. Well, I majored in French language and literature (Otago University, finished my BA in 1998, graduated May 1999), I also studied German language and literature, Russian language and literature, German and Russian film, Russian history….. I guess you could say I’m the kind of guy who loves studying languages, literature, cultures, that kind of thing. So in that respect, living in China is great, never a dull moment, always something to keep me interested.

I’m one of the least threatening people I know, and I don’t blog about the kind of stuff that would have people kicking my door in and dragging me off for reeducation. This blog is simply about what I observe and experience in my banal little life. If people find it interesting, cool, if not, there are plenty of other things you can kill your time with. What you can expect to read here is rambling about life in Beijing, my experiences trying to learn Chinese, perhaps some ranting about stuff in the news- but that’s not likely to be of a nature to invite unwelcome attention, I’m more likely to rant about shitty journalism, and just whatever occurs to me to write. Don’t come here looking for profound insights into Chinese language, culture, society, history or anything like that. Explore my blogroll, several of the blogs there are much better at that kind of thing. Basically, I just write about my view from this little corner of the world. That’s all.

Chris underrates himself. I have learned a lot from his blog and it makes me think.

Black and White Cat. Black and White Cat is a very intelligent, irreverent, thoughtful and independent blog. It typically takes a topical and interesting China news story and goes deeper. The writer is anonymous, but whomever he or she is, he or she knows China and does an excellent job tying previous news to current news. B&W Cat describes itself as follows:

Black and White Cat tends to be about China, since that is where I live; and I live here because I like it. But although most things I write or translate are about China, I do also launch off into other things. That is probably quite irritating to many people who would prefer not know what I think about other things.

If you came here looking for information about cats, there isn’t any. Sorry.

I'm glad about the lack of cats.

Blogging For China. The full name of this blog is Fools Mountain: Blogging for China. And its subtitle is "A wise one knows moving mountains is beyond human power, but a fool has other thoughts…." This blog too is on our blogroll for its originality and also for its courage. Courage because this blog is not afraid to take a stand and to offend. I like that. No, actually, I love that, even though I definitely do not always agree.

Blogging for China has this to say about itself:

Fool’s Mountain (愚公移山) is a collaborative effort amongst writers focused on Chinese issues. Through our blog, we publish regular English-language articles and essays for both a Western and Chinese audience. All articles represent only the opinion of the individual writer, and may not reflect the opinions and views of other contributors. All contributors write on a voluntary basis with no compensation; those who write are driven to do so by their conscience, and nothing else.

Just by way of a good example, its most recent post is a video of a bunch of American school children chillingly reciting a piece deifying Barrack Obama. The post is entitled, "Mmm, mmm, mm … Barack Hussein Obama!" and the point of it is that maybe we Americans should look at ourselves and our willingness to ignore our own propagandizing when we so condescendingly criticize China for doing the same thing. In other words, is it propagandizing that we do not like or is it the message of the propaganda that offends us. As someone who does not believing in politicizing our schools and politically brainwashing children, I like the question posed.

Last, and maybe least, is the Cal Poly MBA Blog. Least not because of content, which has always been excellent, but because of a lack of posting regularity. It has had only two posts since June 18. But I have the following reasons for keeping it on the blogroll, at least for a while longer:

1. This blog is written by a friend of mine, Chris Carr. I have known Chris for years and I greatly like and respect him.

2. This blog is really good. Chris is a professor at the highly regarded Orfalea Business School at Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo and he brings that perspective to his posts on China. By that I mean that he views a lot of what he sees in and about China from a business prospective. More importantly, his posts are great teaching devises and great for spurring thought and conversation regarding China.

What do you think?