I checked the site statistics today to see where my visitors come from. I think it’s one of the coolest features of WordPress, especially when they render that little map showing the countries, color-coded for traffic volume. One country I noticed as absent, especially when looking at the map, is China – how can 1/4 of the world’s people have NEVER looked at my blog, when I’ve gotten hits from places as diverse as Cuba, Cambodia, and the Palestinian Territories? Then I talked to a friend of mine in China, who told me that the Chinese government blocks all blogs at the Great Firewall of China. So clever Chinese users have workarounds and relays they can connect to to read blogs. He demonstrated it for me, and sure enough, my traffic went up in some other country that day (I think it was France, but hard to tell). So I do have Chinese readers, they’re just not showing up as such.

So here’s the alphabetized list of countries and hits. I am using the names of countries as provided by WordPress – if there are any objections to these names, I apologize.