Have you ever heard of Xiaxue?
Who is Xiaxue?
Xiaxue is the Chinese nickname of 1984 born Singaporean blogger Wendy Cheng. It means “snowing”.
Wendy has been a full-time blogger since 2005. Till this day her blog is still online at Xiaxue.blogspot.com. At her blog’s peak 40,000 people visited it per day. That’s 1,200,000 people per month! For comparison: The NY Times has 20 million visitors per month in 2017 and is one of the 200 most popular websites worldwide
That’s why people also call Xiaxue an influencer and it is justified.
I once read that she herself said about her blog that it’s “abandoned” by now. Her archive shows that she blogs less and less frequently every year.
Some diary-like blog posts appear on her Dayre.me but I don’t understand why she switched to an extern and amongst others more difficultly monetizable platform like Dayre, especially when she has established a blog project of twelve years. It’s even the form of blogging she started with in 2003.
On Youtube Wendy also publishes videos of her son Dash:
Even if I had the personality to create content on other platforms, e. g. videos on youtube, I’d still focus on my website of which I have absolute power of control; on platforms like youtube or twitter not the content creator has full power, but the other people and their employees; if there’s toxic group dynamics or the employee is overchallenged your content you spent so much time on is gone. I’d never abandon my own website.
A Personal Brand As An „Asset“
Personal comment in 2018: In my opinion the example of Xiaxue’s blog shows how much of a valuable „asset“ a personal brand like „Xiaxue“ can be in combination with an outgoing / extrovert personality of the creater who uses a medium focusing on written content. Imagine how many viewers her blog had by now if it wasn’t abandoned for a few years and how easy it would be to keep this source of income alive; imo content like videos are much more effort than writing a blog where you can outsource your work for a limited amount of time, can personally withdraw from everything and then go back at it when you have the muse or time again… Without anyone even noticing.
2015: Xiaxue Obtains Court Order Against Gushcloud
In 2015 Xiaxue published the Gushcloud Exposé which revealed that the influencer who belong to Gushcloud were artificially increasing their amount of fans. In the same year Xiaxue she obtained a court order against the company Facebook page SMRT Ltd which is behind it to not be allowed to write about her; previously her private address was leaked and her family members and herself were harrassed online.
Xiaxue Facts
1. Xiaxue’s Height
Xiaxue is short. She says on her blog’s FAQ, she weighs around 38 kg (that’s like my left leg) and keeps her height a secret.
2. Xiaxue’s Husband
Xiaxue is married to Mike, an American engineer, whom she met on the internet.
3. Xiaxue’s Son
They have a son, Dashiel or short “Dash”, who was born in 2013.
4. The Faces of Haters
Xiaxue gained major attention when she wrote a blogpost with the title “The Faces of Haters” in 2012, where she exposed them by republishing their public pictures and information in return of slandering her on social media.
5. The Faces of Haters part II
Yes, there’s a blogpost “The Faces of Haters part II“, lol.
6. The Goddess
In “The Faces of Haters part II” she wrote:
You attack 100 women and 99 of them might just brush it aside, but one astute one will realise she not only can fight back, she can make you sorry.
And that’s why she’s THE GODDESS OF BLOGGING.
7. Language
In her videos there’s always her thick, Chinese accent. When I went to English classes we all tried to sound as American as possible and worked hard on making our accents disappear. Not so her. She even made a video on “Singlish”, the mix of the SINGaporean and EngLISH language:
8. Xiaxue is not afraid of Haters
Xiaxue has a series called “Xiaxue’s guide to life” and in her first episode she got a tattoo of a snowflake which she took from the instructions of a deep freezer.
9. Plastic Surgery
She underwent plastic surgery to improve her looks. I personally think that she looked perfectly fine before that.
10. Xiaxue made a video on how to look like ISIS fighters
In 2017 it became public that Isis fighters dressed as women to avoid being captured. Xiaxue made a make up tutorial about one of the men:
ISIS MAKEUP TUTORIAL IS UP! 🔥Oh no I didn't! Yes I did! Get this season's hottest look! 🐐 Click: https://t.co/HmQvKAt023 pic.twitter.com/bHPVxikfGx
— 𝓧𝓲𝓪𝔁𝓾𝓮 ♥ (@Xiaxue) July 31, 2017
At the end…
… of the blogpost I realised how much I like Xiaxue as an artist. At first this post was titled “One of my favourite bloggers” but now I realised there’s no one above Xiaxue in that personal list of mine. The reason I wasn’t aware of that might be the controversy Xiaxue strikes, even in me.
Congratulations for staying authentical.
Being authentical is the most important asset in being a creative person.
What’s your favourite writer? Let me know in the comments below!