Confessions of a gossip monger

Thanks to the weeklong Spring Festival vacation, when even the most dedicated workaholics stayed at home with their families, I came to realize one thing I can't live without - juicy, but stupid celebrity gossip magazines.

For almost four days that week, newspaper kiosks in Beijing were closed, and perhaps because most of the hardworking paparazzi took their only vacation in a year, updates on celebrity news on Chinese Web portals came to a standstill.

I felt terribly empty and missed the daily fix so badly that I lost interest in the real news altogether. As a news professional, I always start the day reading headline stories on everything and from everywhere.