At an "advanced" level of Chinese, reading is still a big challenge.

Chinese sentences are long, dense, and have no spaces. Punctuation isn't helpful: Sometimes a sentence is an entire paragraph. But, there is a way through. Here's a checklist I use when I'm feeling totally lost:

#1 Start at the end.

The key information usually comes at the end. So in a long sentence, the last few characters are the key point you need to grasp. This is your destination.

#2 Find the structure.

In the body of the sentence, highlight the bits you know, like nouns, verbs and conjunctions (就, 而, 才). These your sign-posts.

#3 Learn what you don't know.

Once you know your destination, and the main sign-posts, you are left with the characters you don't know, such as names, idioms, colloquialisms, poems, classical references. These are the potholes which you can avoid by looking them up.