Xiaxue

Adrianna Tan and Xiaxue (right)

Wendy Cheng, better known by her pseudonym Xiaxue, is a Singaporean celebrity blogger who posts about her life, fashion and local issues. Her main blog, which attracts over 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.

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 uses profanity 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 over 20,000 readers per day and was the first Singapore blog to enter the Technorati Global Top 100 Blogs list.^[5][6] Besides Nuffnang ads, and deals to write advertorials,^[5][4] she has a sponsorship deal with T-shirt maker LocalBrand and was also previously sponsored by hair salon Kimage and nail studio Voxy.^[7] Her main blog has won several blog awards, including the 2005 Bloggies Best Asian Weblog,^[8] as well as the 2004 and 2005 Wizbang Weblog Awards Best Asian Blog.^[9][10] In 2008, her main blog was also selected for the National Library Board archive.^[11]

Beyond blogging, Xiaxue has worked as a columnist for national newspapers TODAY and The New Paper, Maxim magazine, Snag magazine and the "STOMP" Star Blog.^[4][12] In 2006, she and DJ Rosalyn Lee co-hosted Girls Out Loud, a reality TV series where they engage in "outrageous antics", on MediaCorp Channel 5.^[13] She also has her own fortnightly series, called Xiaxue's Guide to Life, on the web-based TV channel clicknetwork.tv,^[4][6] and was an ambassador for the Fresh Air for Women and Get Fresh campaigns, organised by the Health Promotion Board to discourage women from smoking.^[14]

Controversy

Several of Xiaxue's posts have sparked national controversies. An entry condemning a disabled man, who scolded a non-disabled man for using the toilet for the disabled, led to an online backlash which prompted two of her then-sponsors to cancel their deals.^[7] In December 2005, she wrote that foreign workers should be banned from Orchard Road, as they were molesting Singaporean girls; many netizens condemned her posts as "racist rants" and signed an online petition to ban her from Orchard Road.^[15]

Like most celebrities, she has many haters, whom she dismisses as "teenage boys who have no life" and "love to hate things that they feel are unworthy of attention".^[1][2] In July 2005, a hacker defaced her blog and deleted all her e-mails, but she quickly regained access to her Blogger and Gmail accounts.^[16] The following year, she was accused of impersonating another blogger and abusing her position as a Tomorrow.sg editor to remove comments critical of her.^[15] She also has a heated rivalry with blogger Dawn Yang, who threatened to sue her for an allegedly defamatory post in June 2008.^[17]

Personal life

Xiaxue studied at River Valley High School and graduated from Singapore Polytechnic with a diploma in mass media.^[7] Her father is an antique dealer and her mother is a property agent; she also has a younger brother.^[3] In 2009, she married American engineer Mike Sayre, whom she met online and had dated for three years.^[18]

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d e f g} "The life of Wendy", Go Digital, August-September 2005
2. ^ ^{a b c d} "Interview with a blogger", Hardware Zone, September 2005.
3. ^ ^{a b c d e} "Who says I have a foul mouth?", The Sunday Times, 15 August 2004.
4. ^ ^{a b c d e} "Blogger Xiaxue brings Girl Power to strait-laced Singapore", Guardian Unlimited, 21 July 2008.
5. ^ ^{a b} "Ratings, reviews, revenue", Digital Life, 20 May 2008.
6. ^ ^{a b} "Wendy Cheng", Munky Superstar Pictures.
7. ^ ^{a b c} "Hard-hitting blogger flushed with success", The Straits Times, 31 December 2005.
8. ^ "The 2005 Bloggies", Nikolai Nolan.
9. ^ "2004 Weblog Awards", Wizbang.
10. ^ "The Weblog Awards", Wizbang.
11. ^ "Does blogger deserve a place in S'pore's history?", my paper, 10 January 2008.
12. ^ "Straits Times launches web platform", The Business Times, 15 June 2006.
13. ^ Grace Yap, "Smells like team spirit", TODAY, 23 December 2006.
14. ^ Lim Wei Chean, "Campaign to get women to stub it out", The Straits Times, 1 August 2005.
15. ^ ^{a b} "157 seek Orchard Road ban for Xiaxue", TODAY, 18 January 2006.
16. ^ "Don't let attacks bog down your blog", Digital Life, 27 March 2007.
17. ^ "Xiaxue won't say sorry to Dawn", The Straits Times, 23 July 2008.
18. ^ "Blogger Xiaxue's web proposal", The Straits Times, 15 December 2009.

External links

• Xiaxue's blog
• Xiaxue's Twitter