A Chinese woman who had an affair with a married businessman who died in a car accident used frozen embryos to conceive a child she claimed was his and then sued his family for inheritance.

In a case that sparked a heated debate in China, a Guangdong woman surnamed Leng sued her deceased lover’s wife for part of his fortune as inheritance for her baby boy, who she claimed was her lover’s heir. The unusual dispute began in 2021, soon after the tragic death of the man, surnamed Wen, in a car accident. Leng claimed to have frozen some of her eggs prior to the accident which were later fertilised using Wen’s sperm at a private fertility clinic. In December of 2021, she gave birth to a healthy son she named Xiaowen, and in August of last year, she sued her former lover’s family, asking for a part of their estate as an inheritance for her son.

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Armpit onigiri is a bizarre take on the classic Japanese snack where cute girls allegedly press the rice using their armpits and infuse it with their pheromone-containing sweat.

The origins of armpit onigiri, aka underarm onigiri, are not very clear. Some sources claim it was inspired by an iconic scene in the manga Mahōjin Guru Guru (Magicle Circle Guru Guru), where an old man assists the protagonist by rolling rice balls with his armpits. This theory is supported by the plethora of armpit onigiri anime-style artworks that can be found online, but as for how the bizarre treat transitioned into real life, that still remains a mystery. And it was weird enough to know some people are actually trying armpit-rolled rice balls in their own homes, but apparently there are restaurants that proudly serve armpit onigiri to customers willing to pay 10 times their regular price.

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In many cultures, ears protruding too much from the skull are considered a physical defect, but

China’s ‘elf ears’ cosmetic craze received worldwide attention in 2021 when it was covered by some of the world’s largest news outlets after becoming a trending topic on Chinese social media. It all started with a before-and-after photo posted on Weibo, China’s version of X (Twitter), by online influencer Chen Jianan who had recently undergone a procedure to make her ears more visible from the front. Chen was of the belief that this minor change made her face look slimmer and younger, and judging by the number of Chinese cosmetic clinics offering the ‘elf ears’ procedure, she is definitely not the only one. Many people are willing to go under the knife and pay big money to get protruding ears.

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An 18-year-old Chinese girl who became so obsessed with her boyfriend that she tracked his every move and called him 100 times per day was eventually diagnosed with a condition called “love brain”.

Chinese outlet Yueniu News recently reported the case of Xiaoyu, an 18-year-old girl from Sichuan province who became so obsessed with her boyfriend that she made both their lives a living nightmare. The girl’s unsettling behavior began in her first year of university when she became romantically involved with a boy whose name has not been revealed to protect his privacy. According to Du Na, a doctor at The Fourth People’s Hospital of Chengdu, Xiaoyu quickly became unnaturally obsessed with her boyfriend, wanting to know his whereabouts at all times and freaking out when he didn’t immediately reply to her texts. Sounds like your average control freak behavior, but according to the doctor, Xiaoyu suffered from a rare mental disorder called “love brain”.

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A Chinese woman was recently sentenced to prison for kidnapping an 11-year-old girl whom she planned to raise into the perfect wife for her 27-year-old son.

The woman surnamed Yang met the underaged girl on February 13, 2023, while visiting a village in Liupanshui City in the southwestern province of Guizhou. Convinced that she would make a great bride for her much older son, she asked the girl’s parents if they would allow her to come back with her to Qujing City, Yunnan province. The girl’s father refused the proposal, but that only made the woman go ahead with her backup plan. She conspired with her 27-year-old son to kidnap the girl, and on February 14 they waited until the target was home alone and abducted her.

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A Chinese woman is being accused of trying to terminate a co-worker’s pregnancy by poisoning her water to prevent her from taking maternity leave and thus avoiding a higher workload.

In one of the most shocking cases of work-related incidents reported in China, a worker at a government-affiliated institution in Hubei Province allegedly tried to terminate a co-worker’s pregnancy by repeatedly poisoning her water in order to avoid the higher workload caused by her maternity leave. The nefarious plan reportedly came to light when the victim noticed that her water kept tasting strange, regardless of its source. At first, she was convinced that it was the office’s water supply, but the taste persisted even after she switched to bottled water. That’s when she decided to investigate further.

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Filipino online influencer Abby Domer Salle has come under fire for alleged animal cruelty after being spotted wearing a live chick in a small metal cage on her head on the streets of Manila.

Inspired by Japanese Kawaii culture, the so-called ‘duckling fashion’ has become very popular in Southeast Asia in the last few years. The exact origins of this fashion trend are unclear, but it has been linked to anime series or characters. There are multiple variations of this trend all over the world, but in its simplest form it involves wearing decorative plastic or plush ducklings on one’s head. However, one Filipino influencer recently took this already unusual fashion trend and took it to an all-new level of weirdness by caging a live chick and wearing it in public as a bizarre hat.

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Vietnamese doctors recently saved a young man’s life by removing a live 30-cm-long eel from his abdomen, where it had caused intestinal perforations.

On March 20, a 34-year-old man was admitted to the Hai Ha District Medical Center in Quang Ninh Province, Vietnam, with severe abdominal cramps. Since the patient was in too much pain to be questioned about his symptoms, the hospital staff conducted an X-ray and an ultrasound which revealed a foreign body in his abdomen, as well as intestinal perforation and peritonitis. Doctors decided that the best course of action was to conduct surgery, remove the suspicious object, and try to mitigate the damage to the man’s intestines. Upon opening up the patient’s abdomen, doctors were surprised to find that the foreign object was a 30 cm live eel.

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Virtual news anchors and presenters have been around for quite a while now, but they’ve gotten so good that Government organizations are using them to replace actual humans and save money.

The provincial government of Jeju Island, in South Korea, recently hired a news anchor to conduct its weekly YouTube program, Weekly Jeju, for a fraction of the cost of its former employees. J-na seems very experienced at her job despite her young age, but that’s only because she isn’t a real human, but a computer-generated virtual avatar managed by a private contractor. The news she appears to read on-screen is also a script generated by AI language models like ChatGPT. According to the island province, switching to a virtual news anchor was a much cheaper option, as J-na and the news generation script reportedly cost only 600,000 won ($450) per month.

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A couple of Taiwanese university students are being accused of faking frostbite injuries that eventually warranted a double amputation to defraud insurance companies.

Taiwan’s Criminal Investigation Bureau has accused a university student surnamed Chang of conspiring with a former high-school colleague named Liao to orchestrate a bizarre insurance fraud in January of last year. Evidence presented to prosecutors shows that in early January of last year, Chang took out policies covering disabilities, injuries, health, and travel safety from at least five insurers. On the night of January 26, both Chang and Liao rode their motorcycles through Taipei, to make it seem like one of them suffered frostbite because of the cold weather. In reality, the frostbite was self-inflicted and caused by a bucket of dry ice.

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In a high-profile divorce case that sparked heated debates in China, a man divorced his wife of 16 years after learning that none of the three children she birthed during their marriage were his.

In December 2007, Chen Zhixian married Yu Hua, a woman eight years his junior, soon after meeting her for the first time. She seemed like a simple, down-to-earth woman, and his parents had long been pressuring him to settle down, so he never really took the time to know her. Soon after tying the knot, Yu Hua informed Chen that she was pregnant, and he was so overwhelmed by the news that he was going to be a father, that he never realized his wife had to have already been pregnant when they met to have a child when she did. Yu gave birth to the couple’s first daughter, and her husband became a long-distance freight driver who was away for most of the year, only coming home, in Dexing, Jianxi Province, for short periods of time.

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Over the last couple of years, more than 40 T-Rex costume races have been hosted around Japan, making it one of the fastest-growing racing events in the Asian country.

T-rex costume racing is believed to have originated in 2019, when dozens of people donning inflatable Tyrannosaurus Rex costumes gathered on the Emerald Downs racetrack in Auburn, Washington for a hilarious race that has been doing the rounds on social media ever since. However, T-Rex costume racing never really took off in the West, not like it did in Japan, anyway. The inaugural Tyrannosaurus Race Daisen was held in the city of Daisen, Tottori Prefecture, in April 2022 and proved so successful that it inspired a national trend, with over 40 similar events taking place all over the country ever since.

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Stressed Chinese parents are reportedly suffering heart attacks and strokes while helping their children with homework, especially math.

One evening in January, Ms. Dong, a 40-year-old mother-of-two from Hangzhou, was helping one of her sons with his math homework when she lost her cool because the child didn’t understand a problem. Soon after this outburst, the woman felt a splitting headache, followed by vomiting. She tried laying down for a few hours, but her condition didn’t improve at all, so she went to the hospital. After a thorough examination and a CT scan, Ms. Dong was diagnosed with spontaneous subarachnoid hemorrhage, a minor stroke most likely caused by constant long-term stress. The sudden outburst while tutoring her son was just the final nail in the coffin, but this is a scenario that is becoming worryingly frequent in Chinese society.

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For the last 12 years, Chinese professional actor Lu Jingang has been making a living by playing a poor beggar in a popular scenic spot and collecting money and food from kindhearted citizens.

Seeing Lu Jingang on the job, you’d think he was nothing but a poor beggar looking to make ends meet, but that’s only because he is really good at his job. Lu is a professional actor who has been playing the role of a beggar at the Qinming Shanghe Garden scenic area in China’s Henan Province for the past 12 years. With his dirt-covered face, sad puppy eyes, and modest clothing, he has perfected the art of getting tourists to dig deep in their pockets and help a poor guy out. Only he is very good at pretending to be poor because, in reality, he is anything but that. The talented actor reportedly earns up to 70,000 yuan ($9,730) per month, plus more food than he could ever hope to eat.

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A Chinese makeup artist known as Tuzi (Rabbit) has been getting a lot of attention on social media for her ability to completely transform her clients to the point where they are impossible to recognize.

Tuzi runs the Starlight Rabbit Portrait Studio in Yunan Province, but she gets most of her clientele from social media, particularly Douyin (China’s version of TikTok) where she regularly posts clips of impressive makeup transformations, where she either makes her subjects look decades younger than they actually are, turns them into heroes of Wuxia tales, or simply makes them unrecognizable. Over the years, she has had collaborations with fellow influencers and celebrities, including celebrities, actors, and singers.

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