A recomendation for anyone in the quest to improve chinese literacy; a kindle connected to the amazon.cn store.
This store(unlike amazon.com) contains a great amount of books and magazines(chinese), and the kindle comes equipped with 现代汉语词典 and a chinese-english dictionary, which makes it really easy to read without the need to have an additional dictionary.
Additionaly, the books are really cheap, most of them under 5RMB.


Interesting series of book directed to 中小学生 which shouldn't be too complicated for itermediate-lower advanced levels.
http://www.amazon.cn/%E4%B8%AD%E5%B0%8F%E5%AD%A6%E7%94%9F%E5%BF%85%E8%AF%BB%E4%B8%9B%E4%B9%A6-%E5%BA%B7%E6%A1%A5%E4%B9%8B%E6%81%8B-%E5%BE%90%E5%BF%97%E6%91%A9/dp/B008HKAA4Q/ref=sr_1_8?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1384194478&sr=1-8


And 读者, a magazine I just downloaded to check out.
http://www.amazon.cn/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?__mk_zh_CN=%E4%BA%9A%E9%A9%AC%E9%80%8A%E7%BD%91%E7%AB%99&url=node%3D116169071&field-keywords=%E8%AF%BB%E8%80%85&rh=n%3A116087071%2Cn%3A!116088071%2Cn%3A116169071%2Ck%3A%E8%AF%BB%E8%80%85

Too bad there's no newspaper yet.

Can people who live in the USA shop there? I tried to get some books on amazon.de recently and was not allowed because I live in the USA.

A related question: do I need a kindle, or could I just use a kindle app on an iPad? Would it work in China if the iTunes store account was from the US?

Is there any way to easily sign up outside the country? I have read that if Amazon catches you using accounts from multiple countries, they may close both and prevent you from opening accounts in the future.

I've never had a problem buying from amazon.cn . With the exception of buying Kindle books however, as it wouldn't let me do that with a foreign credit card.

An alternative is also Newstand on the iPad - they have a fair few Chinese magazines on there.

This post sums it all,
http://eastasiastudent.net/china/amazon-chinese-ebooks

I have 2 kindles, one connected to the amazon.com store and the one I mention connected to amazon.cn, as I'm living in china at the moment I used the same credit card for both accounts but my chinese adress for the second.
I think there shouldn't be any problem having 2 accounts from the 2 different stores, where did you read that lechuan?

Article here:

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2012/oct/22/amazon-wipes-customers-kindle-deletes-account

Crime was using a friend's address to buy kindle books in a different country's store.

From their site:

"Residents of the following countries or regions are eligible to shop for Kindle eBooks on Amazon.cn: China, Macau, Hong Kong, USA, Canada, Thailand, and Taiwan. If you have moved to a country or region not listed above, you will not be able to shop for Kindle eBooks with your Amazon.cn account. You will need to set up a different account to shop on Amazon marketplaces outside of China."

It is not any problem of having multiple accounts.

I have also downloaded many free or almost free books. With the build in dictionary it is easy to get on with the reading and with the note system you can save the words and later add them to skritter. This is the best reading solution!

Thanks 湖安马林 and 俞翰森! I live in one of the eligible countries, and was able to purchase after setting up an amazon.cn account with a *different* email (than my amazon.com account), and after setting up my country/address.

PS. Note that it seems that you have to register with a different email address than an amazon.com account. amazon.cn wasn't letting me buy Kindle books (says there were no registered devices) when I had used my amazon.com email to log onto amazon.cn. After playing around with settings on amazon.com, it seems you have to associate an email with only one store.

Does anyone know if there is a web-based cloud reader that works with amazon.cn? I cannot log into my amazon.cn account from the Kindle Cloud Reader (I can login fine from Kindle for PC).

Too bad Mexico is not within the eligible countries :/, I'll be back there on december... I'll have to download a great ammount that can last me for at least a year.

They have 4 of the Chinese Breeze books on amazon.cn

Give duokan.com a try - you can install its OS alongside the Kindle one, good selection of books and magazines which continues to grow, good prices, and you can purchase via their website or using a iTunes account to pay - no region restrictions so far for me.