housekeeping

It's been an interesting year for China, with signs in how Xi Jinping has used his power (from fresh meddling in the arts and opinion, to diplomatic posturing and stonewalling of protests and dissent) that I think are pretty unequivocal predictors for what to expect in the next several years. Meanwhile, life goes on with all the humanity and energy which is why I still love this place. The Anthill has always been about finding and telling some of those stories, which we think speak more to what a country is than the news ticker can.

It's been a good year for us (some popular post and stats here). Now we're going into hibernation over Christmas, and up until the Chinese new year. We'll be back with a vengeance in the year of the pleasant sheep, with an exciting announcement. In the meantime, I'm putting out a call for submissions for stories from new and old contributors, including fiction, poetry and translation – see our guidelines for more.

Until then, the colony wishes you a very merry Christmas and happy new years!

A round up of this year's antics, and two new editors join

It's been two years since the Anthill crashed the China blog party like a colony of narrative story-telling fire ants at a picnic. Last year we threw a party. This year we're going to get together a group dinner for ants and friends of the hill in a couple of weeks (email me if you want in).

It's been a great year. We've now run 236 posts, and are up to over 11,000 monthly unique readers – which is small but respectable for a blog. We've also had over sixty writers join the colony, and been linked to in Sinica, Sinocism, The Browser, and my mum's emails to her friends.

The top five most popular narrative posts this year have been:

We've hit one year and 100 posts at the Anthill. If you're in Beijing, come celebrate at our drinks night at Cuju bar next Monday. In the last year we've had over 40,000 visits and are up to 4,000 monthly unique visitors. Over 20 writers have joined the colony – why not submit a story to join the colony too? Special thanks to Beijing Cream, HAL publishing, Sam Duncan and Tom Pellman.

We're taking this opportunity to dig up some gems from the archive that new readers might have missed. Happy reading, and don't forget to follow our Facebook and Twitter.