Xiaxue

Wendy Cheng Yan Yan (born Cheng Yan Yan; 28 April 1984), better known by her pseudonym Xiaxue, is a Singaporean blogger and online television personality who writes about her life, fashion and local issues in a provocative style. Her main blog, which attracts about 50,000 readers daily, has won prestigious blog awards and earned her sponsorship deals, as well as stints as a columnist and TV show host, but some of her posts have sparked national controversies.

Personal life Born in Singapore on 28 April 1984, Wendy Cheng studied at River Valley High School and graduated from Singapore Polytechnic with a diploma in mass media, then briefly worked as a project coordinator. Her father, an antique dealer, she started blogging in April 2003. She underwent plastic surgery, sponsored by MediaCorp TV, to "correct her bulbous nose" in 2006.

In 2010, she married American engineer Mike Sayre, whom she met online and had dated for three years, and in March 2013, she gave birth to a boy named Dashiel.

In 2023, she announced that she and Mike Sayre had split up.

Blogging Wendy Cheng has several blogs, including her untitled main blog (usually known as xiaxue.blogspot.com), and several private blogs. Although she writes in the English language, she selected her pseudonym Xiaxue (下雪, pronounced something like ), which means "snowing" in Mandarin Chinese, because it "had that tinge of mysterious, beautiful girl thing about it". she provides updates about her personal life, posts photographs, writes about topics such as fashion, discusses local issues such as "nasty taxi drivers", and posts paid advertorials. In July 2005, a hacker defaced the blog, but she managed to restore its contents. Her main blog, the first from Singapore to enter the Technorati Global Top 100 Blogs List, The Health Promotion Board selected her as an ambassador for their Get Fresh campaign to discourage women from smoking and help female smokers quit.

Controversy In October 2005, Xiaxue wrote an entry condemning a disabled man, who scolded a non-disabled man for using the toilet for the disabled, leading to an online backlash that prompted two sponsors to cancel their deals. In April 2008, she made a video about the iPhone, which she insists "was meant to be funny", but was dubbed "the worst iPhone review" by American technology writer Daniel Lyons and ridiculed on other technology websites, including Gizmodo. Xiaxue also has a heated rivalry with blogger Dawn Yang, who threatened to sue her for an allegedly defamatory post in June 2008.

In July 2020, Xiaxue lost brand sponsorships following police reports over racist tweets, including tweets that were targeted at foreign workers, alleging “they molest people and fuck our maids and leer at girls and flood Little India” and the attempt to use the N-word in certain context. Beauty brand Fresh and Swedish timepiece company Daniel Wellington have publicly confirmed that they have ended their partnerships with Xiaxue following this incident. Reality and lifestyle channel Clicknetwork, with whom Xiaxue has worked with since 2011, dropped Xiaxue as a host.