<h3>Hey. I'm Kendra.</h3>
I'm an American writer, designer and interface consultant living in Beijing. I moved to China in 2002. Somewhere in the middle there, I moved back to the U.S. for a couple of years. I searched online for Chinese reading materials, and though I found plenty of dictionaries and flash card sources, I had a very difficult time finding something that was at an appropriate reading level, was different than the typical textbook-y stuff available online, was presented in a way that was easy to read, and that I was sure I could get through. 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. It almost killed my interest in the language all-together. 

I am not a grammarian, 

<h3>This site is not</h3>
If you don't have at least a basic grounding in Chinese, this site probably isn't for you. This site doesn't exist to teach you Chinese from scratch - there are plenty of sites and programs that do that. But this collection might help you keep your skills fresh, practice recognizing sentence structure, or pick up the occasional new vocabulary word.

<h3>The Story</h3>


<h3>Reading Levels</h3>

<h4>Super Easy</h4>


<h4>Beginner</h4> 
Very very few of these texts are actually beginner tests; at least I haven't been able to find any real beginner stuff yet (I'm still looking for good sources of real beginner texts that aren't boring dialogs - if you know of any, please write!). 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 as opposed to actual articles. 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>

<h4>Intermediate</h4>
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>

<h4>Advanced</h4>
Most of what's out there online is advanced reading. 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>
