There’s a hilarious trend sweeping Chinese social media these days and people can’t get enough of it. Videos of people sneaking in their own raw ingredients into hotpot restaurant and dropping them into bowls of simmering broth have been going viral since December.

If you’re ever been to a Chinese restaurant, you probably know all about the hotpot. A staple of Chinese cuisine, it basically consists of a simmering pot of soup stock and a selection of raw ingredients that patrons drop into the stock to be cooked right at their table. Hotpot restaurants are all the rage in China, and they usually offer all the raw ingredients you need for a delicious meal, but a new trend has people sneaking in their own ingredients, which range from mushrooms and herbs to whole chickens and fish.

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When two farmers in China’s Hubei province decided to let their neighbors take a bag or two of their newly-grown white radishes, they had no idea it would cost them their entire 500 tonne harvest, or about $42,000 in cash.

Xu Jiuge, one of the farmers who suffered the shocking loss last month, told the Chutian Metropolis Daily newspaper that he and his partners decided to let their neighbors take a few radishes for home consumption after some of them praised their produce, saying that it tasted great in their winter soups. After all, they only had a few neighbors, and if each took a bag or two of radishes, it didn’t really affect their hundreds of tonnes harvest. But what the farmers didn’t expect was for their neighborly courtesy to turn into a free-for-all that not even the police could stop.

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The first time people see Xiong Qingzhen’s toothpaste paintings, they’re not very impressed. Frankly, they look sloppy,, but then he flips the light switch in his bathroom and everyone’s jaws hit the floor…

Based in central China’s Hubei province, Xiong Qingzhen got the inspiration for his now famous toothpaste painting technique from his days taking photos with an old film camera. He found the way images on negatives were inverted in a dark room interesting, so one day he decided to apply a similar technique in the comfort of his own bathroom. Using the mirror as a canvas and plain toothpaste as paint, Xiong started painting “negative” portraits of popular celebrities. They didn’t look too impressive to the naked eye at first, but a simple flip of the switch revealed the true artwork.

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While still technically in its infancy, the vlogging (video content) industry is incredibly competitive, but while some creators rely on tech or entertainment skills to capture viewers’ attention, one young girl from rural China has become an international star by filming herself perform daily chores.

Li Ziqi is often referred to as an internet phenomenon in China. The 29-year-old not only has millions of dedicated fans in her home country, as well as the approval of the Chinese government for promoting Chinese traditional values, but she has also amassed a following of millions outside her country’s borders. And she’s done it all by gracefully leveraging an impressive array of skills that range from cooking to furniture making, while painting a perfect fairy tale image for her audience. And in a time when Chinese viewers are getting more fed up with work stress and pollution every day, Li Ziqi provides the perfect escape.

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Videos of a Chinese groom humiliating his bride by playing an X-rated video of her cheating with another man to their wedding guests have been circulating on Chinese social media, sparking a heated debate.

The unverified footage, believed to have been recorded by guests at a wedding in Fujian province, comprises three videos – one of the two newlyweds walking down the aisle, and two explicit clips showing the bride and her brother-in-law. In the first video, as the newlyweds walk down the aisle, an MC can be heard saying “now we are going to show you the videos of how the newlyweds grew up”, but instead a sex video featuring his bride and another man is projected onto the screen behind them… “You thought I didn’t know?” the man asks his bride, who throws her bouquet at her, as both their families try to separate them. The other two clips show the young woman sleeping with her sister’s husband.

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Rather than improve his noodle recipe, a restaurant owner in China’s Guangxi Province would lace his noodles with opium to get patrons addicted and increase the chances of them coming back for more.

The restaurateur’s dirty trick was uncovered by mistake, after someone who ate at his local in Sanjiang Dong Automonous County tested positive for morphine, the active component in opium, during a police inspection. The shocked man insisted that he had not willingly taken drugs, and told investigators that the only thing he had ingested that he couldn’t vouch for was a bowl of noodles at a local restaurant. That’s how police ended up making a surprise visit to the noodle shop in question, where they took a packet of snail powder which tested positive for morphine.

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A 46-year-old man who reportedly spent the last three decades of his life with his face pressed against his thighs, after being diagnosed with a rare condition called ankylosing spondylitis (AS). Luckily he is now able to stand straight again after undergoing  life-changing surgery to fix his hunched back.

Li Hua was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis when he was only 18-years-old, and over the years his condition worsened to the point where he literally became a “folding man” with his face pressing against his thighs. Mr Hua’s family, who hails from the city of Yongzhou in Central China’s Hunan Province, did not have the money required for treatment, but his case became so severe that it attracted the attention of Professor Tao Huiren, head of spinal surgery and orthopaedics at Shenzhen University General Hospital. He had treated people of ankylosing spondylitis before, but had never seen such a severe case. Still, he took it upon himself to help Li stand up straight again.

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A Chinese father sparked outrage on social media after it was reported that he made his son beg at a Shanghai train station as punishment for not doing his homework.

Lat Thursday morning, Shanghai police responded to an emergency call about a young boy with a schoolbag on his knees begging for food in a local train station. When officers found the 10-year-old, he was holding a small bowl and asking people for food. Asked how he had gotten there, the child told them that his father had left him at the station about 45 minutes earlier, put the bowl in his hands and told him to beg from strangers as punishment for not doing his homework.

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Inserting long, plastic tubes through their oesophagus to induce vomiting has been an unhealthy trend among Chinese girls for a while now, but a 22-year-old woman recently became the first to accidentally swallow her vomiting tube.

Xiao Lu, a 22-year-old girl from Guangzhou, reportedly went to a local hospital on December 3 and told doctors there that she had accidentally swallowed a drinking straw. The object was too deep to reach, so doctors ordered an upper gastrointestinal tract radiography, which revealed a long thick tube in the the woman’s oesophagus. The foreign object measured about 1.9cm-wide and 30cm-long, which made it too thick and too long for a drinking straw, so the doctor pressed the woman for answers.

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A Chinese man was recently sued by an Audi dealership in Guilin,in China’s southern Guangxi region, and had to pay a settlement of more than $10,000 after his young daughter casually scratched 10 luxury cars.

The young girl’s father, identified only as Mr. Zhao, reportedly accompanied a friend  to the dealership, bringing his wife and daughter along. They were looking around at the nice cars and listening to interacting with the staff, leaving the 3-year-old girl to her own devices. After understandably becoming bored, the little girl allegedly grabbed a stone and proceeded to scratch doodles onto the paint of no less than 10 Audi vehicles, including  an Audi Q8 valued at nearly 1 million RMB ($142,000).

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A 22-year-old man was recently accused of scratching a BMW sedan at a dealership in Jiangxi City for a very bizarre reason – so his father would be forced to buy it for him according to the “you break it you buy it” principle.

The suspect, identified as 22-year-old Ji Moubing, reportedly visited the BMW dealership on November 25th and expressed interest in buying a dark blue sedan. Staff later told police that Ji acted normally and actually seemed really excited, telling one salesman that his father had promised to buy him a nice car as reward for getting his driver’s license. Unfortunately, things took a turn for the worse after Ji called his father to tell him what car he wanted.

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Doctors at a hospital in south-eastern China’s Fujian Province recently reported the unusual case of a man whose non-stop coughing had apparently been caused by a leech attached to his throat.

Last Friday, the unnamed man arrived at the Wuping County Hospital in the city of Longyan complaining of almost non-stop coughing over the past two months. He had become increasingly worried about his condition after coughing up phlegm and blood, so he finally decided to seek medical attention. Doctors at the hospital’s respiratory department initially recommended a CT scan, but when that didn’t reveal anything, they decided to try a more invasive procedure called “bronchoscopy”, which allowed them to inspect the patient’s air passages with a small camera. That’s how they found a leech living in his throat.

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He may not have Ace Ventura’s charm or his iconic hairdo, but Sun Jinren is a real-life pet detective in all the ways that matter. When he takes on a lost pet case, he pours all his effort as well as thousands of dollars in expensive equipment in order to find them.

Dubbed China’s first pet detective by the country’s media, Sun Jinren launched his business seven years ago and has since reunited about 1,000 lost pets with their owners. He has a success rate of around 70%, and despite charging a whopping 8,000 yuan ($1,130) per case, clients know his services are worth it. He now has an entire team working for his company and uses all sorts of high-tech gadgets to increase his chances of finding lost pets, including heat detectors, thermal imaging cameras and even an endoscope.

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A property developer in the Chinese city of Changsha has been slammed by homebuyers for deceiving them by promising “high vegetation cover” and “park views”, and delivering a public area covered in a blue plastic material to look like a lake.

To say that homeowners in a new residential complex in central China were less than impressed when they picked up their keys earlier this week would be an understatement. Having been drawn in by developer Changsha Shiji Yujing Real Estate with promises of natural vegetation and a “park lifestyle”, they were expecting the public area to look like an idylic paradise. However, all they got was a fake lake made out of a blue, plastic material, complete with a small timber bridge. The pavement decoration does in fact create the illusion of a lake when seen from above, but it’s not exactly what residents were hoping for.

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A Chinese woman whose violent coughs reportedly resulted in 10 fractured ribs was shocked to hear that her bones had become fragile due to her excessive sunblock use, which caused a severe vitamin D deficiency.

The 20-year-old woman from Zhejiang province, in eastern China, first started experiencing coughing episodes after pulling out a straw mat to sleep on to combat heat during the night. She started coughing that very night, and although her doctor first diagnosed her with a case of allergic asthma, the violent coughs soon revealed an even bigger health concern. After a few days, after particularly violent coughing fits, Xiao Miao (a pseudonym used by Chinese media) experienced severe pain in the left side of her chest, which investigations revealed was caused by several broken ribs.

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