Whether it is about US arms sales to Taiwan or how the film epic "Confucius" stacks up to "Avatar", the world's first snapshot of Chinese opinion often comes from chinaSMACK.com.
The website combs China's rowdy web forums, translating popular topics into English to provide a glimpse of what is on people's minds on the other side of the "Great Firewall" of government censorship.
"Chinese people see the Internet as one of the only real tools they may have," chinaSMACK's founder, who goes by the pseudonym Fauna, said in an e-mail interview.
China is home to the world's largest web population, with 384 million people online, but experts fear censorship and language barriers mean it is growing isolated from the global Internet.
With 1.3 million page views and more than 500,000 visitors in January, according to the site's figures, chinaSMACK has become a leading "bridge blog" -- a site that translates Chinese content for an international audience.
Fauna, who keeps her identity secret to avoid the wrath of Internet users and authorities alike, said she started the site 18 months ago to improve her English.
She describes herself as a typical Shanghainese woman, "very far" from her 30s, who likes music, movies and TV -- but one with a serious Internet habit.
She spends four to six hours daily on the site, plus time reading forums throughout the day.
The items and comments she translates are often lurid, salacious and sensational, but Fauna said she and her four-person team of contributors do not intentionally seek out racy posts.