<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>
Email me at: me@kendraschaefer.com
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>
Nothing on this site is truly beginner reading. If you just picked up Chinese yesterday, even the beginner stuff is going to be a rough ride for you. This is because for any story, article or essay to really take shape, it usually must involve some higher-level grammar or vocabulary. This is why most truly beginner textbooks stick to dialogs (Ni hao! Ni hao ma? Wo hen hao!) as opposed to actual stories.

So, I don't entirely classify on the basis of vocabulary or HSK levels. You will have to look up quite a few words in most of these texts - many beginner texts include a little advanced vocab. Instead, I classify by length, how complicated the grammar is or isn't, and the density of high-level words. 

Ultimately, my classifications are pretty arbitrary, but I try to put texts into the lowest level at which someone, with a little work, might be able to figure the text out. In other words, if a beginner could puzzle through a particular piece if they focus and look up some vocab, or the piece is short enough that a beginner can study it in a reasonable amount of time, then it goes in "beginner". But if something is so challenging that it would presumably require a beginner to look up every character, or includes regular use of more complex grammar, it will go in "intermediate". If it's long, full of difficult grammar, and includes many advanced words, it goes in "advanced".

Enjoy, and good luck with your studies.