this was so interesting to read - thank you for sharing your thoughts! somewhat unrelated, but this post made me think about a site called wenxuecity, frequented often by my mom, who immigrated to the US from china in the 90s in her early twenties. from my perspective, she seemed to use it all the time, often to communicate with other chinese moms. it had the vibes of an early 2000s Internet forum - definitely not as slick as xiaohongshu - but i suspect that the site was vital to her and other immigrants of her generation! I’ve only read one piece about it - linked below.
This is fascinating! I did some digging into the site mentioned in the piece (echoshadow); I think the Chinese name of it is "妈妈宝宝" which is just moms & babies - probably why it didn't ring a bell in the first place. is sensuality the same as wenxue city or do you know if there's another chinese name to it? I do remember the time when BBS was very popular in china...quite interesting too that they were all online forums for moms. Taylor Lorenz wrote in Extremely Online that the internet started with mom bloggers. I guess there are some similarities across the world!
i meant wenxuecity 文學城 - damn you autocorrect! i think the website is still around, but these days i think my mom is mostly watching videos on wechat (maybe less need for parenting advice, as her kids are all grown up now).
a history of global internet(s) from the perspective of moms/women would be so interesting to read!
Great article!! Thank you!
this was so interesting to read - thank you for sharing your thoughts! somewhat unrelated, but this post made me think about a site called wenxuecity, frequented often by my mom, who immigrated to the US from china in the 90s in her early twenties. from my perspective, she seemed to use it all the time, often to communicate with other chinese moms. it had the vibes of an early 2000s Internet forum - definitely not as slick as xiaohongshu - but i suspect that the site was vital to her and other immigrants of her generation! I’ve only read one piece about it - linked below.
https://eliqian.substack.com/p/echoshadow
This is fascinating! I did some digging into the site mentioned in the piece (echoshadow); I think the Chinese name of it is "妈妈宝宝" which is just moms & babies - probably why it didn't ring a bell in the first place. is sensuality the same as wenxue city or do you know if there's another chinese name to it? I do remember the time when BBS was very popular in china...quite interesting too that they were all online forums for moms. Taylor Lorenz wrote in Extremely Online that the internet started with mom bloggers. I guess there are some similarities across the world!
i meant wenxuecity 文學城 - damn you autocorrect! i think the website is still around, but these days i think my mom is mostly watching videos on wechat (maybe less need for parenting advice, as her kids are all grown up now).
a history of global internet(s) from the perspective of moms/women would be so interesting to read!
Great read! Thanks for sharing, Yiwen