for the China`s own political reasons.
so who can tell me a good email instead??

That is troublesome. I haven't been using anything else over the years, but it seems to me hotmail updated their system. It's a good option.

You could also go with a free e-mail host that supports pop3 (or whatever it's called) to allow you to retrieve your emails with programs like Outlook Express.

You can check gmail with sockets, so theres probably a script or you could make one, that reads your inbox.

Noooo, definitely avoid Hotmail! It's spam filter is awful, every page takes ages to load (even if you have a faster connection), little AJAX implementation (or none, I can't seem to recall seeing it being used anywhere) - the service isn't professional enough when compared to its owner. It might have a lot of storage space, but currently (in my opinion) there is no mail service that can be as good as GMail.

I'm not sure, I think it's because Gmail is capable of POP3 that made China ban it.