non-fiction non-covid-19 reading recommendations?

[大块头]

《今日话题》on Tencent News hasn't updated for two months, Vice China appears to have ceased publishing altogether, and the New York Times Chinese edition is a feverish miasma of articles about the coronavirus...

 

I'm picking through the what are you reading thread, but I'd appreciate any non-fiction reading recommendations. I'm looking for something that:

• won't be swamped by articles about the coronavirus
• covers many different topics (science, history, humanities, etc.) so I get exposure to a variety of vocabulary
• has long-form articles
• updates daily or has a large archive of previously published articles

 

I suppose I'm looking for something like Mental Floss or 煎蛋 but with higher quality and longer articles. Any ideas?

[jannesan]

I was gonna make another post to ask the same, I have been using BBC中文 to cover some more formal language in the form of news articles but it's all the same now.

Maybe someone knows something like 故事FM, but in text format?

[Tomsima]

The 公众号 “最爱历史” might be worth a look, their posts are well written, varied and most importantly not related to current affairs. I have a read every now and again for a change

[edelweis]

On 3/27/2020 at 8:57 PM, jannesan said:

BBC中文

Although only recent articles are directly accessible from the BBC中文 portal, they do keep older articles.

I'd suggest googling BBC中文 + any topic you're interested in, in order to find the links to those older articles.

And additionally, once you've reached an interesting article, it will contain links to similar articles.

[大块头]

I polled some Chinese friends, and got the following WeChat 订阅号 suggestions:

• 《地球知识局》- writes about people, places, and things of interest around the world, such as
  • how the Panama Canal is operated
  • marijuana culture in the Netherlands
• 《张家玮写字的地方》- writes about the NBA and miscellaneous topics such as
  • the author's experience of being a journalist in China during the advent of digital media
• 《物种日历》- writes about biology and ecology, such as
  • ant/plant symbiotic relationships
  • how demand for TCM is endangering vaquita in the Gulf of California
  • how a speculation bubble in the late aughts nearly wiped out wild Chinese orchids
• 《混乱博物馆》- writes about popular science, such as
  • what centrifugal force is

[jannesan]

22 hours ago, edelweis said:

I'd suggest googling BBC中文 + any topic you're interested in, in order to find the links to those older articles.

 

good idea!:)

 

 

[roddy]

大块头, did you make any of these regular reads? Any recommendations? 

[Luxi]

May I suggest a Chinese newspaper or 2 from Shanghai? Both are free, unencumbered by adds and other pests, have very good apps in IOs and Android as well as websites.

 

My fav for some time has been  界面  , together with Caixin, the nearest thing to an independent Chinese newspaper --- with 'Chinese Characteristics' but at least not owned by the officialdom. It has a huge choice of articles on all sorts of topics, great for world news as well as finances/business, kind-of-thing but also has many articles in the culture, technology lifestyle, society and other sections. Even when I have no time to read, I enjoy checking the 'Most Read' page against the 首体 front in my iOS app, I find it rather enlightening.

 

There are also good articles in The Paper though in the last year or so its top pages are just like any other State owned newspaper. It still has good stuff in the other sections, the Culture pages always have stuff I want to read.

 

[大块头]

7 hours ago, roddy said:

大块头, did you make any of these regular reads? Any recommendations? 

 

《地球知识局》has consistently been informative and entertaining. I was thinking of posting about it in the "What are you reading?" thread.《物种日历》has also been really good.