Rallying cry

Chinese devour APEC leader bios

Seeking the light

Zhou says that he was greatly influenced by the West when he was young and wrote a lot of "silly" articles that sharply criticized China and highly praised Western countries.

"I was once affected by the negative opinions against our country on the Internet and accepted some biased values," says Zhou.

"But as I read more books and learned to think independently, I started to realize that no other country is more unjustly accused than today's China."

Zhou shares the story of the transformation of his views in one of his most-read posts, Please Don't Fail the Era, the subtitle of which writes: "If you also have once cursed the country, dare to come in and read this."

In the article, Zhou counters many misrepresentations about China and asks his fellow Chinese not to overgeneralize that the whole country is corrupted just because of some of the shortcomings exaggerated by the media and the Internet.

In another popular post, Broken Dreams in the USA, Zhou breaks the illusion of the perfect life of US that many Chinese hold in their minds, and lists many misconceptions about the US, including the cheap consumer goods and real estate which are widely circulated in Chinese cyberspace.