It’s been a busy year for The Nanfang. Our traffic increased by 250% in 2013 from 2012, we’ve welcomed a number of new writers to the fold, and we’ve undertaken some big updates to the site.

If you haven’t logged into the site in a while, I encourage you to do so. We have a dramatically redesigned “My Profile” page that makes it incredibly simple to upload and edit content across the site. In the next few weeks, you’ll also see substantial redesigns to the Classifieds and Jobs sections, two of our fastest growing areas.

As we’ve said before, The Nanfang makes no money. It is a labour of love, and actually requires rather substantial investment to ensure the site is designed well and updated daily. Therefore, we’re always happy to have advertisers help to lessen the financial blow on the founders, and are pleased that Doctors Beck & Stone International Pet Hospital has been so supportive. Absolutely visit them if you have pets in need.

Posting will be light during the holiday, but will resume in full force following the break. That said, we have a couple of features almost ready that will appear over the holiday, and we’ll always be on top of any breaking news in the PRD.

Finally, we want to thank everyone who visits us for their support. We aim to be a community site, and it’s always great to meet people in the PRD and hear their feedback and suggestions. If you want to get involved with us, please email admin-at-thenanfang-dot-com.

May all of you have a healthy, happy, and prosperous Year of the Horse!

Cam and Ewan

But that misses one of the fastest-growing social networks in China at the moment: Weixin/WeChat. Today we’re happy to announce we’re finally live on WeChat.  You can follow us using the QR code below, or by searching for the account named The Nanfang.

We’ll be sharing a selection of stories and must-see events on our WeChat account, so follow us!

We’re also getting our mobile site in order just in time. The mobile version of The Nanfang works decently well on iOS devices, but there are still some bugs on Android. Hang in there, as our development team is working on it and you’ll notice changes in the coming weeks.

To those of you who’ve followed our development, you’ll know that the co-founders of the site and our numerous contributors have done an amazing job bringing daily news to our readers.  Our traffic has grown exponentially since we launched two years ago, and particularly within the last six months.  But the site we were working on was based on a fragile foundation that wasn’t helping us do all of the things we want to do.

With today’s launch, we hope to rectify that.  The Nanfang is known for its Insider Blog, but we’re a lot more than just that.  We want to do a better job of showcasing our listing and event information, make it easier for people to upload information, and make the site more interesting to browse.  Our aims were ambitious, and I think we’ve pulled it off… sort of.

No doubt you’ll find a few empty spaces, mis-sized photos, error messages, and more in the coming days.  We have a team of staff working frantically to get things in order. Launching a revamp of this magnitude is not easy, and we really appreciate you bearing with us.  Over the coming weeks, we’ll bring a few stragglers, namely our Classifieds and Jobs sections, into the new fold.  We also have more plans that will be unveiled this year, and we hope you’ll like them.

The Nanfang is a group effort involving staff, journalism students, developers, designers and interns contributing from around the Pearl River Delta, across China, and in multiple time zones.  We have no profit and no revenue.  Sure, we’d like to earn some eventually, but that’s not why we do what we do.  We love the Pearl River Delta, and this is a labour of love.

We hope you enjoy the new site, and we’re always open to feedback at [email protected].

Cheers,

The Nanfang Team

Photo courtesy Top China Travel

It’s party time in the PRD and across China as the Chinese Lunar New Year is rung in.  Unfortunately, as we already noted, there won’t be nearly as many large-scale fireworks shows in the PRD this year.  But that doesn’t mean you can’t have fun; there is no doubt plenty going on over the next 7 days.

Many of you have time off work for the Chunjie holiday, and we will too. Posting will be sporadic at best until we all return to work following the break.

So here’s to you and yours for a fantastic Year of the Snake.

Another year is winding down here at The Nanfang’s PRD headquarters, and it’s been a busy one.  We re-launched the site this year, which included a re-design of our home page and blog.  In 2013, we have a lot more in store, and want to thank each and every one of you for stopping by and spending a few minutes of your day with us.

There are plenty of Christmas parties happening across the PRD over the holidays, so check The Nanfang’s Events section for Shenzhen, Dongguan, and Guangzhou for details. We’ll be off tomorrow for Christmas Day, but will return to regular posts on the 26th.

From all of us at The Nanfang, we want to wish you and yours a very Merry Christmas.

While we’ve been to many of the bars and restaurants in Dongguan already, we’re looking forward to hitting up the ones that have escaped us. One of the ones on our agenda is Woodstock, as well as Beijing Bar and Hollywood Baby Too. Of the three main cities in the PRD, expats calling Dongguan home have the fewest online resources — all the more reason for us to make our listings even more comprehensive.

For those Shenzhen and Guangzhou residents who fancy a night’s stay in Dongguan, you could do worse than giving this a read for a primer on Dongguan’s nightlife. We may also use this as a general guide.

Hope to see you around this weekend.