Chinese easy-reading websites that keep you coming back for more

[daofeishi]

In English, it there is a wide number of blogs, online magazines and other websites that contain novel and interesting, non-formal, light-hearted material; amusing webpages like fmylife, PostSecret, bash.org, the oatmeal; webcomics like xkcd, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, dinosaur comics, and hundreds of very well maintained blogs written by people worth listening to. (Some relevant to me are Sinosplice, James Randi, the Science Blog complex, Terry Tao, Timothy Gowers).

What is common to the webpages above is that they are written in a light-hearted way that doesn't demand too much of the reader. They also contain good, idiomatically correct English and are written/maintained by people who quality-check the material, as opposed to what you find in online forums. In English, finding such content isn't that hard, often it is just a google-search away. However, when I am trying to look for Chinese material relevant to me that will keep me interested in the same way, I often feel like I'm banging my head against a wall. Whenever I'm googling/百度ing for Chinese sources, 95% seems to come from 百度知道/百度百科, forums and social networking-sites like 天涯, or newspapers/news conglomerates like 新浪网. Where are all the easy-reading online magazines, webcomics and high-quality blogs?

I have only found a few websites so far that fit in with the examples above. The ones I have in my favorite folder are the Chinese equivalent of FML, caoegg, 方舟子s blog/collection of essays (which has been discontinued) and ChinaSMACK (which, although written in English, is edited and links back to Chinese sources that are "hot" right now.)

It is obvious where I am going with this, and I'm going to leave it as an open-ended question; Do you know about any interesting Chinese websites in the "genre" above that are worth reading?

[bakhtinjali]

I definitely catch your meaning, but I haven't personally come across any fun websites. I'm sure they are out there. All of my roommates in China mostly just played games and so I never saw them do much with webcomics or for fun blogs. Perhaps slowchinese might qualify? It doesn't require too much brainpower and has some interesting content.

[aristotle1990]

I like the Chinese Engadget, the Chinese WSJ (lot of good stuff here -- see the life section, and unlike the English edition, it's all free), and Moko (a bit NSFW). Also check out the very cool Jiandan, Lifebang, and my favorite, the very fun 河蟹娱乐. Funny in China is good too.

There are fewer of these sites because the market for them is smaller.

[马盖云]

+1 on Chinese Engadget! Engadget has recently taken far too much of my time at work, and I just discovered the Chinese version a few days ago. I am an electrical engineer/gadget freak, so it will be a good way to pick up vocab, tech news and slang from the discussion groups after each posting! I never even noticed the pull-down menu for other language versions of the site, and I was glad to see it was not a translation, but a separate independant version. There are similar stories to the US version, so I already have some idea about each story. So, how do you say 'fanboi' in Chinese? ;)

[aristotle1990]

Wait until you see Slashdot in Japanese.

[gato]

What's easy and lighthearted is subjective, of course. I see that you've listed the blog of Terry Tao, math genius, as easy reading. Hehe.

If you are interested in Chinese politics or economics I have a few recommendations. Try

- 贺卫方

- 谢国忠

- 周天勇

- 冉云飞

[creamyhorror]

Politics and economics don't sound so "novel and interesting, non-formal, light-hearted material; amusing webpages" to me

I think one problem is that a lot of Chinese sites are very busy, filled with a lot of textual and graphical elements (ads, ugh), making them harder to browse than many of the cleaner, Web 2.0-ish English sites.

[jbradfor]

graphical elements (ads, ugh)

If you use firefox, try installing the adblock plus plugin. After a bit of work, you get ad-free web browsing.

[creamyhorror]

Yeah, I've been using Adblock for years, but the coverage wasn't too great for Chinese sites till I realized I had to add the China filter list as well.

[daofeishi]

Aristotle1990, those are some great websites. 煎蛋 and 河蟹娱乐 are now favorited.

A Chinese friend of mine also tipped me about 秘密, a website for anonymously sharing your secrets with the world. Sort of like postsecret, except you don't have to go through the trouble of sending a post card.

[aristotle1990]

To revive this thread -- daofeishi, your tip led me to 有秘密, which is quite interesting. Plus, the posts are short, so perfect for whipping out your phone and reading on the subway. Any other tips, preferably for sites with working RSS feeds?