<h3>The Basics</h3>
My name is: <strong>Kendra Schaefer <a href="http://www.kendraschaefer.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">(My personal site)</a></strong>
I live in: <strong>Beijing</strong>
Age: <strong>37</strong> 
In China since: <strong>2002</strong>
My day job: <a href="http://www.triviumchina.com">Tech research</a>

<h3>The Story</h3>
Reading Chinese is one of the few things I never get bored of, probably because no matter how long I study, there's always more to learn. 

But I've always found that finding reading materials is the most difficult and frustrating part of the process. Everything I pick up tends to be too long, too short, too easy, or too hard. Particularly when I was just starting out, I ended up spending more time looking for something that was suitable than actually doing any reading. Even worse, I'd often get through a few paragraphs only to hit a phrase I couldn't decipher and, with no one to ask, would have to put the reading aside. Annoy-ing! 

As someone who starts a website every time I have a thought, it was inevitable I'd eventually start a website to solve that problem, and here you are. I post whenever I get a chance. 

<h4>About the Translations</h4>
Most (but not all) of the translations on this site are done by me, and I don't post anything unless I've checked it several times, but that doesn't mean I haven't made a mistake. Do feel free to comment if you see anything that ought to have a better translation - it won't be taken amiss. 

I am not a linguist and I don't follow academic translation guidelines. I'll often change the order of wording in a sentence so that it makes sense or reads well in English. You'll also notice that I often remove commas, split long Chinese sentences into two or more English sentences, or rearrange the order of clauses, which is necessary to accommodate Chinese grammar.  The translation is meant as a guidepost to help point you in the right direction and keep you grounded in the text when needed - it's up to you to dissect sentence structure.

<h4>How did you do those pop-up Chinese hover effects?</h4>
Thanks to Alex, the coder behind <a href="http://mandarinspot.com/">Mandarinspot.com</a>, Chinese Reading Practice now has pop-up translation on all Chinese text. If you'd like to implement something similar on your own blog, you can head over there and grab his Javascript file / annotations API. 

<h4>How I Classify Reading Levels</h4>
Ultimately, my classifications are pretty arbitrary, but I'll try to lay out some of my basic reasoning here.

<strong>Beginner</strong> - Very very few of these texts are actually beginner texts. This is because for any story, article or essay to really take shape, it usually must involve some intermediate grammar or intermediate vocabulary. This is why most truly beginner textbooks stick to dialogs (Ni hao! Ni hao ma? Wo hen hao!) as opposed to actual stories. In order to do any real reading, you've got to at least know the basics of sentence structure. I will classify something as beginner if at least a couple of the following criteria are met:
<ul>
	<li>The sentence structure is easy throughout</li>
	<li>It contains mostly simpler words that are in the dictionary</li>
	<li>There is no modern slang</li>
	<li>The subject matter is basic / or for children</li>
	<li>It's not too long</li>
	<li>It contains few or no idioms</li>
<li>It contains intermediate vocabulary but the story structure is very repetitive, so you can pick up the thread more easily as you go along.</li>
</ul>

<strong>Intermediate</strong> - I classify something as intermediate if:

<ul>
<li>It's a longer piece that you have to hold a narrative thread through.</li>
<li>The language is intermediate or upper-intermediate.</li>
<li>There are some light idioms.</li>
</ul>

<strong>Advanced</strong> - Most of what's out there online is advanced reading. That's why as of now, there are more advanced texts on here than anything else. I classify something as advanced if:

<ul>
<li>It contains many specialized or technical words (technology, health, beauty, geography, etc.)</li>
<li>It contains high-level structures, like newspaper-y or literary writing styles.</li>
<li>It contains any archaic words.</li>
<li>The sentence structure is very complicated.</li>
<li>It contains a lot of modern slang.</li>
</ul>

Enjoy, and good luck with your studies.