Few years ago I acquired a huge hunger of wanting to know everything about China and Chinese people living inside China, so I visited many Chinese sites like baidu, sohu, sogou and ifeng etc and spent hours perusing them whenever I had leisure time. I particularly love to read baidu regional 贴吧 where I can feel the moods of the people from different regions or cities. I had many urges to participate and wanted to ask thousand questions, however my being not proficient in 'pinyin input method' 拼音输入法 prohibits me to be that part of society. Lately I found 手写 method that gives a limited form of participation, however slow.
The trouble with me in reading Chinese newspaper is 1) I'm not familiar with the translated names, 2) take me a little bit of extra time to reorient myself on some idioms and 3) some insinuated names/terms to bypass the firewall simply beyond me.
I thank you and will save the 2 links. I believe I'll enjoy reading 东方时事评论 blog because it gives me Chinese perspectives on many issues around the world today. First I'll have to get to know the writers though. Right now I'm relying on
Asia Times Online :: Asian news hub providing the latest news and analysis from Asia , which has many guest writers, and a few writers from different source to read neutral opinions.