Reading a Chinese news article is really hard, even as an advanced learner.

One of my biggest challenges is names in Chinese: people, places, companies. Unless you know them it's easy to get totally confused and lost.

Four character names (Hong Kong, Japanese) are the worst. Or company names with obscure ancient Chinese character in.

I used to get caught out all the time with confusing Chinese names, but now I use these three steps to solve the problem and increase my reading speed:

Step #1 Learn the Characters

When you find a name in an article, copy and paste it into a document. Look up the characters in Google Translate, learn the pinyin, read and repeat out-loud until you can read easily.

Step #2 Check the Frequency

Then, using "Command + F" or "Control + F", open a search bar in your browser. You can quickly search for the name across the entire article. You'll see how much that person/company/place is in the piece, and where they are in it.

Step #3 Create a List

Keep a list of names and their relationships in a separate document. This is really helpful when there are lots of people and family relationships covered in a single article. It's a quick reference to refer back to if you forget or get lost.

With this system to quickly remove the problems caused by Chinese names, any Chinese news article immediately becomes easier and quicker to read.