Right, you wouldn’t normally be reading this. It’s fine. No one’s going to tell your spouse how you’re wasting your time. But let’s just be honest with each other and talk about some of life’s indulgences: if the accountant is lively and the books well-cooked, these reports can be great with a dish of roasted peanuts and a cool drink.
As you may have heard, the Beijing Sounds studios, having completed a second year of operation as of October 19, have submitted to the accountant’s measuring devices as required by law. The term of art was, if memory serves correctly: obscenely profitable. But amid the concerns about where to store such a quantity of lucre and certain questions about eyebrow-raising expenses, the studio controller was resolute in not letting go of the statistics that really matter: how involved readers are in Beijing Sounds. So for this year, her accounting uses reader-hours — i.e. [number of readers] x [time spent per reader], since that’s how Google supplies the stats. Here are her three categories:
Top posts FY 2009:
[I dunno: the readers here are a quirky bunch...]
| Rank | Post | Comment |
| 10 | I’m not seeing you off | Nice to see that Beijinger speech acts appealed to an audience larger than one |
| 9 | Sound off: The Language | The first-ever Beijing Sounds rant, which somehow got past the anger management desk |
| 8 | Zhonglish for two-year-olds | Honest, this is NOT a post making fun of two-year-olds |
| 7 | Wu — sounds from way outside Beijing | Intro to Kellen Parker’s excellent blog on Wu |
| 6 | Silkworm husbandry | PBS and a cab driver on silkworms. Nominated for Sound of the Year 2009. |
| 5 | Schadenfreude for Zhonglish speakers | Making fun of native speakers and their use of measure words (well, not really) |
| 4 | Crisis = danger + opportunity? Beating a dead horse back to life | Yet another Top 10 guest post from Randy Alexander of Echoes of Manchu fame |
| 3 | The Onion in… Zhonglish?! | As the critic said: “geek-joy” |
| 2 | Sticky rice dumplingy | Damn cute, as long as you like érhuàyīn and six-year-olds |
| 1 | Beating a dead grass mud horse | Note to staff: start putting “fuck” in every post — nothing sells better, apparently |
Top referring sites:
As usual, big discounts on BJS advertising for these folks. Please inquire for details.
5. Language Log
4. Wikipedia
3. Pinyin.info
2. StumbleUpon [I don't do StumbleUpon so I have no idea where these links come from. If anyone knows, I'd be delighted to be unbenighted]
1. Laowai Chinese — Thanks, Albert!
Top countries
(on an average-time-per-reader basis, to be fair to non-China-sized countries — but there have to be at least 50 readers)
10. Japan
9. Germany
8. Belgium
7. China
6. Finland
5. Netherlands
4. Sweden
3. Norway
2. Australia
1. Hungary — where the grass is green and the sounds, Beijing!
So thanks to all you grass-mud-horse-reading, Laowai-Chinese link-thruing Hungarians. Hope to hear from you in the new fiscal year!
Oh, wait, and just for fun:
Favorite keywords that get you to Beijing Sounds via search engine
In other words, these are actual searches that someone really truly did to end up on Beijing Sounds. I’m not making this up, really. In no particular order…
- avril lavigne i don’t like your girlfriend chinglish
- zhonglish
- beijinghua
- american north korean beijinger beef shortage sorry
- much of my english was chinglish
- beijing dialect
- beizzhing beijing sounds french
- mother fucker in mandarin
- what does brendan o´kane do now? [yikes -- watch your back, O'Kane]
| Japan |
| Germany |
| Belgium |
| China |
| Finland |
| Netherlands |
| Sweden |
| Norway |
| Australia |
| Hungary |
Add "Learn Chinese" to iGoogle
Comments 7
I’m glad to get in the top ten of the eleven posts this year! Next year’s post is going to have a lot more profanity.
I’m surprised to see that the US is not in the top ten countries. We’ll have to shell out and get those subliminal commercials back on Fox again.
Posted 10 Oct 2009 at 5:00 pm ¶“american north korean beijinger beef shortage sorry”
At least they said sorry.
Three posts in one day? You really are making up for lost time, daily soundbite or not.
Posted 10 Oct 2009 at 10:04 pm ¶I should fess up — that last search was me .I’d been wondering.
Posted 11 Oct 2009 at 4:12 pm ¶@Randy: remember it’s minutes per reader, so I think for the US that’s just the short attention spans shining through
Posted 12 Oct 2009 at 6:01 am ¶@Kellen: I’m trying to wedge enough posts into the next week to take the rest of the year off
@Brendan: Mother Google knows all
I’ve always said I’m nǐmen de biggest fan, but somehow this makes it feel official! I’ll be inquiring about my merch discount soon.
Posted 12 Oct 2009 at 4:38 pm ¶I’m from Hungary and I was really surprised we came first. Is it minute per reader? I do spend a lot of time reading your blog actually.
Posted 14 Oct 2009 at 5:02 pm ¶And I’m actually flying to Beijing today, so I’ll be able to get some first-hand Beijinghua
Dan
Dan, you definitely get a free dinner as the only out-of-the-closet representative of Hungarian BJS readers! (Yes, it’s minutes per reader) Let me know when you’re around and we can meet up if I get back in time (I’m outta town for a few more days)
Posted 17 Oct 2009 at 1:22 am ¶