Xiaxue
Wendy Cheng, better known by her pseudonym Xiaxue, is a Singaporean celebrity blogger who posts about her life, fashion and local issues. Her blog, which attracts about 20,000 readers per day, has won prestigious blog awards and earned her sponsorship deals, as well as stints as a columnist and TV show host. However, she is a contentious figure in the Singaporean blogosphere, with some of her offensive posts sparking national controversies.
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Blog
When Xiaxue was younger, she maintained a paper diary for a year, however her ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend threw the diary away during a Chinese New Year "spring clean".[1][2][3] Wanting to air her thoughts in a space that nobody can throw away,[1][2][3] she started blogging in April 2003.[4] She selected her pseudonym, "Xiaxue", which means "snowing" in Mandarin Chinese, because it "had that tinge of mysterious, beautiful girl thing about it".[1]
Xiaxue has ten blogs, including her main blog, a geeky blog, her media centre and several private blogs.[1] On her main blog she provides updates about her personal life, posts photographs, writes about topics such as fashion, rants about issues such as "nasty taxi drivers", and posts paid advertorials about various products.[1][2][3] She often swears in her posts and her success has been attributed to her bitchy, provocative writing style.[3][4] According to a survey she conducted, which attracted 6000 responses, her readers are mainly Singaporean, female, young adults, into fashion and looking for alternative voices.[1]
Achievements
Xiaxue makes a living through her main blog, which attracts about 20,000 readers per day.[5] Besides Nuffnang ads, and deals to write advertorials,[5][4] she has a sponsorship deal with LocalBrand and was also previously sponsored by Kimage and Voxy.[6] She has won several blog awards, including the 2005 Bloggies Best Asian Weblog,[7] as well as the 2004 and 2005 Wizbang Weblog Awards Best Asian Blog.[8][9] In 2008 her blog was selected for the National Library Board archive.[10]
Beyond blogging, Xiaxue has worked as a columnist for The New Paper, Maxim and the "STOMP" Star Blog.[4][11] She co-hosted a reality TV series, Girls Out Loud,[12] on MediaCorp Channel 5 and has her own show on clicknetwork.tv, called Xiaxue's Guide to Life.[13] In addition, she was an ambassador for the Fresh Air for Women Campaign, an anti-smoking campaign organised by the Health Promotion Board.[14]
Controversy
Xiaxue is a contentious figure in the Singaporean blogosphere. On 20 July 2005 a hacker broke into her Blogger and Gmail accounts, defaced her blog and deleted all of her e-mails, but she quickly regained access to her accounts.[15] In January 2006 she was accused of impersonating another blogger and abusing her position as a Tomorrow.sg editor to remove comments critical of her.[16] On 30 June 2008 she allegedly made defamatory remarks about rival blogger Dawn Yang, who responded by threatening to sue her.[17]
Several of her offensive posts sparked national controversies. In an entry dated 16 October 2005, she condemned a disabled man, who scolded another man for using the toilet for the disabled, leading to an online backlash which prompted two of her then-sponsors to cancel their deals.[6] On 28 December 2005 she wrote that foreign workers should be banned from Orchard Road, as they were repeatedly molesting Singaporean girls; many netizens condemned her posts as "racist rants" and signed an online petition to ban her from Orchard Road.[16]
Personal life
Xiaxue graduated from Singapore Polytechnic with a diploma in mass media.[6] Her father is an antique dealer and her mother is a property agent; she also has a younger brother.[3] She is married to American engineer Mike Sayre.[18]
References
- ^ a b c d e f "The life of Wendy", Go Digital, August–September 2005
- ^ a b c "Interview with a blogger", Hardware Zone, September 2005.
- ^ a b c d e "Who says I have a foul mouth?", The Sunday Times, 15 August 2004.
- ^ a b c d "Blogger Xiaxue brings Girl Power to strait-laced Singapore", Guardian Unlimited, 21 July 2008.
- ^ a b "Ratings, reviews, revenue", Digital Life, 20 May 2008.
- ^ a b c "Hard-hitting blogger flushed with success", The Straits Times, 31 December 2005.
- ^ "The 2005 Bloggies", Nikolai Nolan.
- ^ "2004 Weblog Awards", Wizbang.
- ^ "The Weblog Awards", Wizbang.
- ^ "Does blogger deserve a place in S'pore's history?", my paper, 10 January 2008.
- ^ "Straits Times launches web platform", The Business Times, 15 June 2006.
- ^ Grace Yap, "Smells like team spirit", TODAY, 23 December 2006.
- ^ "Xiaxue's Guide to Life", clicknetwork.tv
- ^ Lim Wei Chean, "Campaign to get women to stub it out", The Straits Times, 1 August 2005.
- ^ "Don't let attacks bog down your blog", Digital Life, 27 March 2007.
- ^ a b "157 seek Orchard Road ban for Xiaxue", TODAY, 18 January 2006.
- ^ "Xiaxue won't say sorry to Dawn", The Straits Times, 23 July 2008.
- ^ "Blogger Xiaxue's web proposal", The Straits Times, 15 December 2009.
