A small village located on the banks of the Yangtze River, in Sichuan Province, has become known as one of China’s premier suppliers of ornamental stones, generating millions of dollars in revenue every year.

Positioned in an idyllic location, right next to China’s largest river and surrounded by green, forest-covered mountains, Hejiaba village gets a decent number of tourists every year, but tourism isn’t the most profitable local business. That title goes to the collection and sale of ornamental river stones; not the small ones that fit in the pocket as good luck charms, but heavy boulders that enthusiasts all over China pay good money on to add them to their collections. It’s estimated that Hejiaba village generates around 20 million yuan ($3.08 million) annually from the sale of this virtually inexhaustible resource.

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A retired elderly couple has been fighting the desertification of their home in North China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region for the last 19 years by planting hundreds of hectares of drought-resistant plants.

Seventy-year-old Tububatu and his wife Taoshengchagan live in a village on the edge of Badain Jaran, China’s third-largest desert, and they’ve been spending every day since their retirement (in 2002) fighting the advancement of the desert with the help of plant-life. Others had tried fighting the desert and failed, but Tububatu just wanted to know if he could make a difference. He started out by planting just 50 trees, but kept doubling his efforts to the point where he now plants thousands of saplings a year. His small desert oasis now spans over 266 hectares and numbers tens of thousands of drought-resistant trees.

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A Taiwanese man came up with an ingenious of getting extended paid leave from work: he got married four times and divorced three times in just 37 days.

According to Taiwanese law, a person has the right to 8 days paid work leave when they get married, which is exactly what one unnamed clerk received when he got married last year, on April 6th. Only that was only meant as the beginning of an extended paid leave, for which the hero of our story had prepared in advance. On the last day of his 8-day leave, the man divorced his wife, only to marry her again the next day and ask for another paid leave, to which he felt he was entitled to, by law. He went on to marry the same woman four times, and divorce her three times in 37 days, for a total of 32 days of paid leave.

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A Taiwanese man sparked controversy on social media after complaining about getting a pay cut for spending too much time in the bathroom during work hours.

The disgruntled employee, identified only as ‘Mr. A.’, recently took to Facebook to voice his frustration and disappointment at having part of his monthly salary withheld by the company he works at, for having spent too much time in the bathroom the previous month. The man admitted to spending a whopping 49.5 hours in the toilet, which amounts to about two hours of bathroom time per day, but said that his employer failed to inform him that his wages could be cut for taking too long toilet breaks.

The Taiwanese man posted his story on the Blame 2 Commune Facebook Group, asking the other member for advice on how to proceed. He clarified that he had worked 22 days as an intern last month, for a total of 195 hours and an hourly salary of 160 yuan. However, on pay day, he noticed than about 4,400 yuan had been deducted, so he decided to take up the matter with human resources.

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Located on top of a small mound, on a sliver of land stretching into the serene Yamdrok Lake is Rituo Temple, the home of just one solitary monk who spends his days chanting sutras and meditating.

Rituo, which means “the stone on the mountain” in Tibetan, is often referred to as Tibet’s loneliest temple. It has a history that goes back more than 700 years, but it’s considered one of the country’s hidden gems, as few tourists venture out to visit it. That’s because it’s located in the middle of nowhere, on a thin patch of land stretching into Yamdrok, one of the three holy lakes of Tibet. But the few people who did visit it, tell stories about the peace and quiet that most of us only dream of, and about the surreal experience of taking in the amazing natural scenery from atop the solitary rock mound.

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A man who accidentally lost his iPhone 11 while paddling on a lake in March of last year recently posted photos of the handheld miraculously retrieved from the bottom of the lake after more than a year. The handheld was in need of a recharge, but otherwise worked perfectly!

The owner of the iPhone, a Taiwanese man named Chen Yj, recently took to a public Facebook group to tell the amazing story of how his handheld survived a year underwater. Writing on the Bangfu1 Commune Facebook group, Chen said that he lost his iPhone 11 in March of 2020, while paddling on Sun Moon Lake, in Taiwan. Photos shared on the public group show him wearing an orange vest, with the Apple handheld around his neck. At one point, the man falls off his board, and the phone can be seen sinking to the bottom of the lake. Little did Chen know that he would not only retrieve his phone a year later, but it would be in perfect working condition.

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Xin Youzhi, aka Xinba, an online personality known as China’s king of live streaming sales, recently managed to sell more products in a single day than a Hong Kong shopping mall sells in 12 months.

Born in a small village in northeast China, Xinba managed to defy the odds, becoming one of the most popular web perdonalities in China, as well as the most successful live stream seller. Operating on Chinese streaming platform Kuaishou, the young entrepreneur specializes in promoting all sorts of products to his fans, and trying to get them to buy as many as them as possible during his online broadcast. He is really good at it too, as demonstrated by his latest achievement, selling over $300 million worth of goods during a 12-hour stream.

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Once called a madman and laughed at by members of his community, an Indonesian man is now being hailed as a hero after spending a quarter of a century covering 250 hectares of barren hillsides around his home with banyan and ficus trees.

The story of Sadiman, the Indonesian man who singlehandedly brought a forest back to life, began in the early 1990s, but the problem he helped fix can be traced back to the 1960s. It was then that great forest fires ravaged the forests on the southern slope of Lawu Mountain, in Central Java, turning hundreds of hectares state-owned pine forest to ash and leaving barren hills in their place. For decades dozens of villages in the Regency of Wonogiri battled draughts and famine, until an unlikely hero took it upon himself to bring back the forest and create a better life for him and his community.

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Xiao Zhu, a young “online supervisor” from Xinyang, China, specializes in helping people combat procrastination by texting and calling them to make sure they fulfill their daily tasks.

With so many distractions literally just a click or finger swipe away, it’s no wonder that procrastination is considered a modern-day “plague” that keeps many of us from reaching our full potential. Whether it be fulfilling work-related tasks, sticking to a weight-loss routine, or studying for a fast-approaching exam, we always find excuses to put them off and do something more fun instead. That’s where online supervisors like Xiao Zhu come in. They spend most of their day keeping track of their customers’ schedule, constantly reminding them that they have things to do.

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A Filipino man who had been experiencing sharp chest pains in cold weather, learned that he had a four-inch-long knife blade lodged in his chest after doing a routine X-ray.

25-year-old Kent Ryan Tomao was more than a bit confused when doctors told him that he had an an “object resembling a knife” stuck in his chest, very close to one of his lungs. He had undergone an X-ray exam required to apply for a mining job in Agusan del Sur, and never imagined there was anything wrong with him. He told doctors in Kidapawan City that he had sometimes experienced stabbing pains in his chest on unusually cold days, but didn’t think too much of them. He certainly didn’t think there was a knife blade in his chest.

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An attractive female Twitter user in Japan recently shocked her tens of thousands of fans after going on a national television show to unmask herself as a 50-year-old man using a popular smartphone app to alter her appearance. I think it’s safe to say that after reading this story, you’ll never trust another internet photo again. Nor should you!

Azusa Gakuyuki, a young, attractive girl who had been entertaining her Twitter followers with photos of herself indulging in her biggest passions (motorcycle riding, mountain hiking, skiing and other outdoorsy activities) went on popular television program Monday Late Show (から夜ふかし) to reveal something that left everyone flabbergasted. The beautiful girl, who appeared to be in her early 20s, was actually a 50-year-old man using the popular app FaceApp to alter his appearance and pass himself off as a woman.

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The Polar Bear Hotel, part of the Harbin Polarland theme park in Heilongjiang, China, opened its gates this week to full bookings and criticism from animal lovers, after it was reported that all the rooms offer guests round the clock viewing of a polar bear enclosure.

Marketed as the world’s first “polar bear hotel”, the newest attraction at Harbin Polarland was jointly designed by famous Russian designer Kozylenko Natalia Yefremovna and Japanese theme park designer Shuji Miyajima. It’s built around a small polar bear enclosure, allowing guests to look at two captive polar bears both from the ground floor and from any of the 21 rooms available. The concept has attracted a lot of attention, both from people willing to pay a premium to book a room, and from animal activists who accused the establishment of profiting from the animal’s misery.

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Minato-san, a 30-year-old male office worker and cosplay enthusiast, recently shocked Japanese social media with his transformation into an anime-inspired heroine.

It’s no secret that great cosplayers can alter their physical appearance to the extreme, but in some cases the change is downright scary. Take the case of Minato, a 30-year-old Japanese man who likes to cosplay as an anime girl, and is so good at it that it’s impossible to guess his gender by looking at him. With a clever use of makeup, modern accessories like prosthetic breasts, and a bit of digital manipulation, Minato-san can transform into a whole new person that often leaves the viewer confused.

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A Chinese man who spent a small fortune as well as a lot of time and effort turning a small wasteland into a pink paradise in order to impress his ex-girlfriend, has received a clot of compassion online, after failing to win back his old fling.

It’s fair to say that Xiao Xu, a young man from Hetou Village, in China’s Guangdong province, went above an beyond to win back the heart of his ex-girlfriend. Over the course of a month, he spent around 100,000 yuan ($15,500) turning a small patch of wasteland rising up from a lake near his village into a fairytale Love Island complete with fake cherry blossom trees, swings, river rock arrangements, and more. He even convinced some locals to give him a hand and turn this place into the ultimate love letter to his former partner. Unfortunately, things didn’t turn out the way he had hoped…

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In a landmark divorce ruling, a Chinese court ordered a man to pay thousands of dollars to his ex-wife, as compensation for housework performed during their five-year marriage.

According to court papers, the man, identified only as Chen, filed from divorce from his wife, Wang, last year, after a five-year marriage. Although reluctant to grant him the divorce at first, the woman later requested that he compensate her for all the work she did as a full-time housewife during their marriage, adding that he had not participated in raising their child and “barely cared about or participated in any kind of domestic chores”. Recently, a Beijing family court ruled in the woman’s favor, sparking a heated debate in China.

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