One thing I have found useful when studying Chinese is to read as much Chinese as possible. Since it is very time consuming to look up all the characters I like to use annotation tools. Here I will publish several texts from the net that come both with and without annotation. Everyone is more than welcome to share their own texts. The audience for those texts is primarily newbie to elementary. For more advanced learners there is a very nice group with Chinese news that might suit them better. There will be short texts mixed with children’s stories and songs lyrics.
The friend who are interested in Chinese culture, especially Confucian culture and the calligraphy and painting, welcome you to visit my ideas space(http://www.etsy.com/shop/wowchina). Also very willing to be friends with you .Let's learn about Chinese culture...