2010 saw plenty happen in Beijing and the Beijinger blog was there all through the year, charting the best and worst of what the city had to throw at us. As usual restaurants and bars came and went, Beijingers saw some great music and missed out on a whole lot more (at least of the foreign variety), continued to battle unending pollution, and were offered the world’s worst theme park. The fate of the area around Gulou hung in the balance all year and endless food safety scandals did the rounds.

2009 was certainly one of the more interesting years in recent memory – the Swine Flu hit, the world economy collapsed (and then showed signs of life), Michael Jackson died and Obama sputtered through his first year of presidency. And over on this side the PRC celebrated its 60th anniversary, the web got a whole lot less accessible and real estate prices continued to skyrocket.

Things were subsequently pretty interesting on this blog as well. With the Olympics now a memory, Beijing continued surging forward with a host of new openings, construction, regulations, restrictions and subway lines, even as things closed down, fizzled out or burst into flames.

So as we move forward into a new year and new decade, we thought we’d jump in the list making fray with our own look back at the Top Ten posts of the year on this site, according to page views:

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.”