Humankind’s perennial interest in end-of-year lists has bloomed tenfold this season as we set to bid farewell to the aughts. Lists, lists, lists – they’re everywhere, reflecting our collective impulse to mark the passage of time by compartmentalizing a year’s (or decade’s) happenings as a sorted inventory.

We live in a part of the world that’s predisposed to list-making – e.g., the Four Great Inventions, Four Great Beauties, Olympics dos-and-don’ts, basically every government circular – and in that spirit, China Daily has compiled not one, not two, but 21 (and counting?) top-10 lists, under the heading “The Top 10 Everything of 2009.”

Well, what’s good enough for China Daily is good enough for me, so I’ve made a top 10 of my own, The Top 10... wait, no… The 10 Superlative! Top-10 Lists in China Daily’s “The Top 10 Everything of 2009.”

The best of China Daily’s lists, ranked in some order:

10. Top 10 movies of this holiday season. No surprising indie selections here, just big-name, big-budget films like Mulan, starring Zhao Wei (who I didn’t think was all that convincing as a soldier in Red Cliff 2); A Simple Noodle Story, Zhang Yimou’s slapstick remake of the Coen brothers’ Blood Simple; Confucius, starring Chow Yun-fat; and The Treasure Hunter, which fashions Jay Chou as Taiwan’s Indiana Jones while reinventing Skeletor. And then there’s Hot Summer Days, which I absolutely refuse to watch while suffering Beijing’s cold winter nights.

Also see: Top Ten Movies of 2009, The big ten books of 2009.

9. Top 10 toppled executives 2009.

You and me!
Schadenfreude!
Making the world a better place...
Making the world a better place...
Making the world a better place...
To be!

8. Top 10 crackdowns 2009. Here’s the editor’s introduction: “Internet porn, drunk driving, human trafficking, someone wandering around the neighborhoods in pajamas…The Chinese government has good reason to keep itself busy all year long.”

Good reason indeed. PJs one day, secession the next. To say nothing of sullying Shanghai’s fair reputation for the upcoming Expo!

This list should be read in conjunction with the Top 10 frauds list.

7. Top 10 darndest things officials said in 2009. Replace “officials” with “babies” and it’s cute. But this list makes you shake your head, disapprovingly, as one might at a toddler.

On a serious note, several issues on this list are worth tracking in the year to come, including pork barreling (or an approximation of the Chinese equivalent), the property rights of homeowners, Internet vigilantism, Chinese real estate and match-fixing.

6. World’s top 10 sports news 2009. Fans who are overly defensive of their preferred sport (Americans with football, Australians with rugby, non-Americans with soccer – make that “football”) might find reason to quibble, but this is a pretty decent list considering the vastness of the sports universe.

I must deduct points for “Phelps admits using pot” in the No. 5 spot, though. The editors write, “The world’s greatest swimmer went from a hero to zero months after his eight-gold Olympics triumphs as he was found inhaling from a marijuana pipe in February,” which would make Michael Phelps the most decorated zero in the history of the world. If anything, this is an interesting glimpse into how drug use is perceived in China, where there’s little delineation between “gateway drug” and hard drug; they’re all equally deplorable. Cigarettes, on the other hand… See also: Top Ten Stories of China Sports of 2009

5. Top 10 heart-warming moments 2009. This is the list for all you non-cynics out there, and maybe even some cynics, too.

4. Top 10 no-nos for civil servants. The Internet has empowered a growing contingent of watchdogs and citizen journalists everywhere, and it’s no different in China, where Netizens have created a handbook of “10 Commandments” for public servants. For instance: “Don’t let others hold an umbrella for you”; “Don’t gawk at hot babes”; “Don’t grin amid suffering.”

Particularly striking was Commandment 7: Don’t arrest Internet whistle-blowers. China Daily recounted the example of Wang Shuai’s detention and subsequent release, then concluded, “The lesson: People have the right of free speech, and it includes cyberspace!” (Exclamation point theirs, emphasis mine.)

Read that over again and let it sink in.

Are the editors missing the irony here, or were they being slyly subversive? You decide.

Here’s a fun exercise: see how President Obama stacks up against the commandments.

3. Top 10 dramatic moments in 2009. If you’ve lived in Beijing a while, you’d understand exactly why this makes me chuckle every time:

 


A few international stories – US Airways water landing, suicide of former South Korea President Roh Moo-hyun – lend gravitas to this batch, which makes the item about Andy Lau’s revelation of his wife all that less appropriate

Also see: Top 10 stories selected by readers. 2. Top 10 web celebrities 2009. A compendium of this year’s most attractive laobaixing, from “Chinese Obama girl” to “candied hawthorn beauty” and “bus beauty” to “most handsome traffic cop in Beijing.”

But what this list lacks is not good-looking people, it is loneliness.

1. Top 10 hot topics on Internet 2009. “This place is sick. You should all be ashamed of yourselves, you heathens!” – Dave Chappelle skit

The Internet is a fascinating and bewildering place, with the ability to check power and abet it, to build and to destroy, to lift up and kick down. Online memes can become embedded in culture or forgotten in our daily shuffle, or suppressed. With all it is and all it does, it’s only fitting that the Internet finds its place on the first spot of my 10 Superlative.

Among the important questions asked in China Daily’s “Internet 2009” list: Can one say bad things about the government online? How dangerous could smoking expensive cigarettes be – to your lung and to your career? Do the rich – and their offspring – have the right to drive recklessly? Is it a sports game or a scripted play?

The online frontier is the wild, wacky agora of the 21st century and beyond, able to upset conventions and expand horizons. May you live free and forever, or at least forever.

To the 10s – and beyond!
 
The index to China Daily’s top-10 lists, again, is here.