A Chinese manufacturing company has come under fire for allegedly firing employees who can’t finish a 5 km (3 miles) race in 30 minutes, because ‘they lack hard-working spirit’.

Mr. Liu, a man living in Suzhou City, China’s Jiangsu Province, filed a lawsuit against his former employer for wrongful termination after allegedly being fired for not being able to run 3 miles in 30 minutes at 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit). Liu apparently applied for a job at a mechanical parts factory and, after passing a series of practical tests that involved electric welding and gas cutting, he was announced that he had gotten the job. After paying for a medical examination out of his own pocket, Mr. Liu started working at the company in a maintenance position. Little did he know that he still had one more big test to pass…

Read More »

Suodiu is a bizarre type of Chinese street food that consists of small river rocks stir-fried with a mixture of spices and herbs. You are supposed to suck on the stones and then spit them out.

Roughly translated as ‘suck and throw away’, suodiu is believed to have been invented hundreds of years ago by boatmen who would prepare the dish when they became stranded in the middle of the river with no real food while delivering goods. To trick their stomachs, they would stir-fry some river pebbles with various condiments and then suck the stones dry. The traditional dish was passed down through several generations, and today roadside vendors in China can sometimes be seen stir-frying bunches of river rocks with cilli oil, garlic sauce, garlic cloves and a mixture of spices.

Read More »

The Regent International apartment building in Hangzhou, China, is famous for having a number of inhabitants comparable to a small town, around 20,000 people.

Located in Qianjiang Century City, Hangzhou’s central business district, the S-shaped Regent International was originally designed as a luxury hotel, but was subsequently converted into a colossal apartment building, with the rooms turned into thousands of high-end residential apartments. The impressive building is 206 m tall and has 36 to 39 floors, depending on what you’re side of it you’re on, and as any self-contained community, features a variety of amenities and businesses, like a giant food court for its tens of thousands of inhabitants, as well as swimming pools, barber shops, nail salons, medium-sized supermarkets, and internet cafes. You can find anything you need in the building, so technically you don’t even need to go outside.

Read More »

A Chinese mountain climber recently sparked controversy after reportedly refusing to pay the $10,000 resue fee of the sherpa who found her unconscious on Mount Everest.

On May 18, while making the climb up Mount Everest, Chinese mountain climber Fan Jiangtao stumbled upon an unconscious woman in her 50s. An experienced mountain climber herself, the woman had reportedly reached the summit and was on her way back to base camp when she started experiencing health problems. Fan and the sherpa decided to abandon their goal of conquering Everest in order to take Luo back to the base camp safely. During their descent, they met Xie Ruxiang, a Hunan Provincial Mountain Climbing Association member, who also abandoned his climb in order to help. His sherpa, however, was reluctant to join them, but they needed the extra hands so Xie promised him a fee of $10,000, to which the man agreed. No one asked the person being rescued, though…

Read More »

A scandal known as ‘Rat Head Gate’ has been getting a lot of attention on Chinese social media after a student found what looks like a rat head in their cafeteria meal. The school claims it’s actually a duck head.

The incident reportedly occurred last week at the cafeteria of the Jiangxi Vocational Technical College of Industry Trade in Nanchang, China. While eating their lunch, a student found what looked like a rat’s head in their bowl of rice and pulled out their phone to record the discovery. They then confronted the cafeteria staff about it but were told that it wasn’t a rat’s head, but a duck’s head. The latter, along with duck necks are an important part of Chinese cuisine, but it wasn’t what the student had ordered, and it certainly didn’t look like a duck…

Read More »

A Chinese man was fired by his employer for spending too much time in the toilet during work hours. The man reportedly took bathroom breaks of between 47 minutes and 6 hours.

Chinese news media recently reported the bizarre case of an employee surnamed Wang who sued his employer for wrongful termination after being fired for spending too much time in the toilet during work hours. After undergoing surgery for an anorectal issue, the man continued experiencing pain and discomfort, so he started spending three to six hours in the toilet every day. Wang’s former employer claims that during a period of 10 days, he took a total of 22 bathroom breaks, which lasted between 47 minutes and 6 hours. Citing provisions in the staff handbook relating to tardiness, leaving work early, and authorized absences, the unnamed company from Tianjin terminated Wang’s employment.

Read More »

The parents of a 13-year-old gaming-addicted girl in China’s Henan province got the shock of their lives when they learned that she had spent 449,500 yuan ($63,000) on mobile games.

Imagine checking the savings account you’ve been putting money into for years and seeing it depleted overnight. That’s exactly how one mother in China felt when she discovered that someone had left only 0.5 yuan of the 449,500 yuan ($63,000) she and her husband had been saving for years. More shocking still was the discovery that the culprit had been her teen daughter, who had been using the woman’s debit card to fuel her video game addiction. The girl had managed to deplete the savings account in about four months but managed to keep her spending habit a secret from her mother by deleting all banking history from her phone.

Read More »

‘Number 28 on Yongxing Jie’ is an unusual attraction in Guangzhou, China which consists of an eight-storey apartment building surrounded by a busy overpass.

The story of ‘Number 28 on Yongxing Jie’ can be traced back to the year 2008, when a number of buildings in the Haizhu District of Guangzhou were scheduled for demolition in order to make room for a new road. While most of the residents reached an agreement with developers and decided to sell their homes and relocate, three residents of a now-famous yellow apartment building drove a harder bargain, refusing to abandon their homes unless their demands were met. In the end, developers decided to abandon negotiations and instead build an overpass around the building. Today, the story of the ‘encircled’ building is known as Guangzhou’s most tenacious holdout against infrastructure developers.

Read More »

A 40-year-old woman’s decision to quit her job and become a ‘full-time daughter’ in the employment of her own parents has sparked controversy in China.

Last year, after 15 years of working for a news agency, 40-year-old Nianan quit her job. She had to be on-call virtually 24 hours a day and was constantly under tremendous stress. Luckily, her parents came up with a better employment offer if she just quit the job that made her so miserable. “Why don’t you just quit your job? We’ll take care of you financially,” the woman’s parents said, promising to pay her 4,000 yuan ($570) per month if she just came and lived with them. That obviously meant no more housing costs, and saving massively on food and various household items, as the parents would take care of such expenses. So Nianan quit her job and became a ‘full-time daughter’.

After a year in her parents’ employment, Nianan describes her profession as one “filled with love”. She spends her days accompanying her mother and father when they go grocery shopping, she cooks dinner with them every evening, drives them around when they need to, and even has an hour to dance with them every day.

Read More »

A 29-year-old man who has been living in a tent in an abandoned parking lot for 200 days has become the newest symbol of China’s increasingly popular ‘lying down’ culture.

At the end of 2018, Li Shu quit his job in Sichuan Province and began spending most of his time chilling in his rented apartment. The 29-year-old quickly realized that, with no income whatsoever, he would quickly go through all his savings, so he cut his daily expenses to just 10 yuan ($1.5) per day. Even so, after years of having to pay rent, it became painfully obvious that he would either have to find a way to make money or move out. Since the first option wasn’t even considered, he sold most of his belongings, bought a 400 yuan ($57), and decided to continue his relaxed lifestyle in the great outdoors, among the debris of an abandoned parking lot. He has been living there for 200 days, and has no plans of joining the rat race of life anytime soon.

Read More »

A 72-year-old man in China melted the hearts of millions after it was reported that he spends most of his time promoting makeup and other beauty products online in order to treat his sick grandson.

People will do all sorts of crazy things for their loved ones, and 72-year-old Zhu Yunchang is a perfect example. The Chinese pensioner has been dedicating a lot of his time to his unusual job, that of makeup-wearing beauty blogger, for which he applies all sorts of beauty products, from creams to lipstick and mascara for fans all over the country. It’s not exactly typical behavior for a man Zhu’s age, but then again, his is not a typical story.

Read More »

A young security guard who suffered multiple injuries while trying to catch a girl who had jumped from a building ended up losing his job and getting criticized by the woman’s family.

28-year-old Qu Yan was working as a security guard at a hospital in China’s Jilin Province in 2022 when his life took a tragic turn. He was on duty when he received reports that a young girl had climbed onto a fourth-floor balcony and was threatening to jump to her death. He quickly ran outside and saw the young woman preparing to take her own life. Firefighters had not yet arrived, and a number of hospital employees were scrambling to improvise a net to catch the woman when she jumped. They never got the chance to do so, as the woman leaped from the balcony before they were ready, so Qu Yan reacted instinctively, rushing forward and trying to catch the woman in his arms.

Read More »

A 65-year-old Chinese pensioner shocked his entire nation after it was reported that he kidnapped his own granddaughter and demanded over $70,000 as ransom.

Chinese news media recently reported the bizarre case of a gambling-addicted grandfather who kidnapped his 4-year-old granddaughter and held her for ransom, asking his own daughter to pay him 500,000 yuan ($72,500) if she ever wanted to see her child again. The bizarre story, which shocked and outraged millions of Chinese, began when the man, surnamed Yuan, went to pick up his young granddaughter from school. Only instead of taking her home to her parents, the called the 65-year-old man phoned the little girl’s daughter, his own daughter, to tell her that she needed to pay him half a million yuan if she wanted to see her little girl again.

  Read More »

Chinese news media recently reported the story of an 11-year-old boy who rode his bicycle 130 kilometers (81 miles) in under 24 hours trying to reach his grandmother’s house after an argument with his mother.

After getting into an argument with his mother, an 11-year-old boy from Hangzhou, China’s Zhejiang Province, got on his bike determined to reach his grandmother’s house. He actually told his mother so during their fight, but she never actually believed him, because her mother lived about 140 kilometers (87 miles) away in Mejiang. She underestimated the boy’s determination, because he spent about 22 hours cycling day and night on busy roads and motorways trying to achieve his goal. He only stopped when his legs couldn’t carry him any longer, but by that point he had already covered an impressive distance of about 130 km.

Read More »

A young man from China’s Sichuan province spent over 20 hours kneeling in front of his ex-girlfriend’s workplace hoping to convince her to take him back.

A lovesick man became the talk of Chinese social media this month after spending almost 21 hours kneeling outside his ex-girlfriend’s workplace in Dazhou City. The man reportedly started the extreme attempt to get back into his ex’s good graces at 1 pm on March 28 and remained on his knees until 10 am the next day, braving the rain, the cold, and the curious stares of passers-by. At first, no one really paid attention to the lone man kneeling on the street with a bouquet of red roses next to him, but as the hours passed, people started noticing him and asking what he was doing. Before long, a crowd had formed around him.

Read More »