Taiwan Panorama is a bilingual magazine that's great for learners of English and Chinese (it's actually published in Simplified, Traditional, English and Japanese). They have an excellent article on the state of the Taiwanese manhua/manga industry (summary - some great things are happening, but the market is dominated by translations from Japan). The article has some great recommendations for reading material and names to watch. It's especially fascinating for me because I'm working on getting my own comic book series started.

Comic books are a great source of intermediate level reading material. (Taiwan Panorama is as well, of course) Since reading this article, I've almost finished reading the first six issues of Chicken Cutlet Princess (鸡排公主), which was the big winner at the inaugural Golden Comic Awards. Perhaps I'll look into Hong Kong and Chinese mainland manhua as well.

http://www.taiwan-panorama.com/en/show_issue.php?id=2010129912070e.txt&table=3&year=2010&month=12

I remember a long time ago I ordered a series of Japanese manga. I had the translations and intended to just read along with the translation. Anyway, long story short the manga arrived but it was the Chinese version not the Japanese version I was expecting. The translation was still usable since the story was the same but I was still pretty surprised! Haha.

Um, I guess the point of my story is, when ordering manga just make sure you're getting the language you want before paying!

I also read as much Manhua as I can to train my reading. I suggest people to do that even at a basic level (with very famous stuff such as Dragon Ball, doesn't need a Phd to understand what's happening) it helps a lot!

As the vast majority of Manga are first translated into traditional chinese, I'm not sure you will find original stuff in HK/ML tho.

@Tortue,

Do you (or anyone else out there) have recommendations on original manhua? I'm not as interested in translations from the Japanese, and anyhow there's a lot of info out there on Japanese manga. After I finish Chicken Cutlet Princess, I plan to move on to Akru's stuff (http://akru.blog13.fc2.com/), but I'm sure I'm going to require a pretty high volume of material.

Chris

Does anyone know where could I find manhua or any sort of comics in simplified characters? Preferably relatively simple. Translations are okay but I just want them to be simplified

@cr0atian,

Where do you live right now? I know that Mainland China has a lot, and that anything published in Malaysia is simplified as well.

Chris