In a wave, celebrities are shutting down blogs, to shy away from foul language. Will this “embolden” the government in cleaning up the Internet? From Josie Liu’s blog (photo: Beijing real estate tycoon Pan Shiyi, via Josie Liu’s blog):
In a recent blog entry, famous real estate entrepreneur Pan Shiyi (ÊΩòÁü≥±π) called on blog readers “not to curse mom” in their comments, because it is a “very bad habit” and has forced several celebrity bloggers to shut down their sites. …
As many celebrities in China, including movie stars, popular writers and TV hosts, Mr. Pan keeps a blog on sina.com.cn. While having received over 31 million hits, his blog also has seen flood of hostile comments.
To keep his site clean, Mr. Pan said he assigned a secretary to delete promptly such invectives every day, “not only those personal attacks, but also any comment cursing any party, any god, and mother.” [Full Text]
– Pan Shiyi’s blog post Don’t Curse Mom (Chinese)
– Singer Gao Xiaosong (È´òÊôìÊùæ)’s discontinued blog post (Chinese), where he was likened to a “pig.”