How to start living on the Chinese side of the Great Firewall

[lukejmo]

I'm in China. I can meet Chinese people and talk in Chinese all day. But when I'm back at my place, on the internet, I'm back to browsing American/English sites. So my question is, which Chinese websites should I use as replacements? Easy example would be, "Oh, you like Twitter? Check out Sina Weibo." I'm not asking about VPNs or the Chinese firewall. I want to stay on this side of the wall, because I spend at least a quarter of my free time every day on the internet. If I'm gonna be in China, I want to be in China.

Obviously for some things there's no substitute and there's no perfect match or replacement. I don't think even the best "dumb" query (through Google or Baidu or whatever) can replace the opinions and knowledge of real people on this subject. And most Chinese people are as useful as the average American, they know and understand their internet "world" and can barely conceive any other. So please, people who know both sides, help me transition to the Chinese internet. Maybe there are also some Chinese websites that aren't similar to an English language one, but that I should still know about. Any and all info is useful, but I was thinking of things like or somehow filling the role of:

google.com = baidu.com?

facebook.com = renren.com? qq.com?

reddit.com = douban.com?

youtube.com = youku.com?

Google Maps = Google Maps? Baidu Ditu?

yelp.com= no clue

Nanfang Zhoumo has been mentioned as a decent Chinese newspaper before, but is that still the case? What is the difference between Taobao and amazon.co.cn, etc? I understand China has a bunch of different social networks, none of which are dominant the way FB is in the US. What are they, and why is this the case? What are some other useful sites to know about?

I'm asking a bunch of different questions, I know. Feel free to help me with any of them or anything I might find useful.

[Lu]

Nanfang zhoumo is still considered a good newspaper. QQ is for chatting, not sure what the English-language equivalent would be, but it's very popular. Douban is good for cultural stuff (and perhaps more, but that's what I use it for).

I sympathise, I have the same problem. I intuitively know my way around the English and Dutch parts of the net, but am still fumbling in the dark when it comes to Chinese stuff. A good way in may be to find stuff you're interested in anyway (or would like to get interested in) and search for stuff related to these things on the Chinese net. Many celebrities have blogs on Sina, I think, you could check that out to see if there is anything you like to read. And get on weibo, of course.

[Brian US]

The guys in my class admit to spending too much time on certain Japanese sites.

[icebear]

For news I mostly read the Economist and similar in English; I find Caixin to be a nice Chinese counterpart (not equivalent!). Most of my Chinese friends use Kaixin Wang, although I think that is specific to their group as Renren seems to have a larger grip. And I've found Baidu's Ditu service generally better than Google Ditu...

For me the majority of my time online is either reading the news or reading forums of interest. I'm trying to slowly integrate more Chinese news sites into those I check daily, but haven't delved into Chinese forums yet - I expect this would work a long way towards drawing me in further.

[Flying Pigeon]

If you have an iOS or Android device you might want to check out some of the Chinese news apps. I recommend the 新浪新闻 app.

[gato]

yelp.com= dianping.com

[wedge]

Speaking of opinions of real people being valuable, zhihu.com is the quora of the Chinese Internet.

On the question on Taobao, yes it's the Amazon of China, but with the 3rd-party C2C seller component currently being much bigger than the direct B2C selling component.  As for actual online bookselling, I think Dangdang is still the leader but is fading.

I have the same problem with trying to avoid English websites so I'd like to add a few requests:

Espn.com = ?  (especially espn.com/nba)

Realgm.com = ?  (especially for NBA discussion)

Seekingalpha.com = ? (website with credible articles and discussion about stocks and investing)

[roddy]

When anyone's looking for Chinese-language forums I point them to the Groups section of Douban - plenty of topics covered, but a much nicer interface than your average Chinese forum.

南方周末 is great, but it tends towards long pieces. You might want to throw in a local paper - the 新京报 in Beijing, for example. This gives you something shorter and more concrete to dip in and out of - it's Car Crash on Second Ring Road rather than Climate Change Policy Worries Stall Talks. Taxi drivers love it if you can ask them about yesterday's traffic chaos.

Taobao roughly is eBay, while Amazon.cn is Amazon.com.

Anyone want to propose Chinese equivalents to Wired, Slate, Boingboing, Longform.org, The AV Club? LIfehacker?

[gato]

Seekingalpha.com = http://www.imeigu.com (not exactly like SA, but it is about US-listed Chinese stocks); http://xueqiu.com is its Weibo-like counsin.

[icebear]

I enjoy reading reports from think tanks like Brookings, CFR, etc, and find the content from http://think.sifl.org/ to at least be along the same topics (policy oriented); I haven't looked deeply into the publishers so I don't know if they have some ideological bias which I've missed in the handful of articles I've read. Any other suggestions on Chinese language think-tanks would be appreciated.