A 12-year-old by from Nanning, China recently won first prize at a regional science and innovation contest for creating an automatic clothes drying rack that retracts whenever it detects rain and extends again when the sky clears. The ingenious contraption impressed a lot of people, but it was the inspiration behind it that really got people talking.

Lu Jiezhen, a sixth-grade student at North-East Women’s Education Center in, Nanning, China’s Guangdong Province, came up with the idea for the automatic rain-detecting drying rack after being yelled at by his mother. One day, she had to leave the house and asked him to look after the clothes she had hung out to dry, reminding him that he was to take them inside in case it started to rain. Needless to say, the 12-year-old started playing around the house and forgot to pick up the clothes when the rain inevitably came. When his mother returned, she found the clothes soaking wet, and scolded him for disobeying her. But instead of finding excuses, Lu started thinking about a solution that would make his forgetfulness irrelevant in the future.

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A Chinese DIY enthusiast has become an overnight sensation thanks to his unusual approach to solving household problems. He uses foods like instant noodles, Oreo cookies and rice to expertly fix various pieces of furniture, leaving them as good as new.

The unconventional handyman, who goes by Xiubandrng on Chinese video upload platform Douyin, has been wowing Chinese fans with his skills for months, but the Western world was only introduced to his amazing DIY work this week, when a video of him repairing a broken sink with dry noodles and glue went viral on several social networks. He just fills the hole in the sink with noodles, pours some glue over them, smooths it out with an abrasive strip and paints the whole thing white. When he’s done, the sink looks brand new.

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A young dog breeder in eastern China was recently arrested and sentenced to ten days in a detention center after giving two of his canines controversial names that refer to Chinese government and civil service workers.

The 30-year-old man, surnamed Ban, was summoned by police on Monday, after posting on Chinese social network WeChat that he had named two of his dogs Chengguan and Xieguan. The first refers to officials tasked with tackling low-level crime, while the second is a name used to describe informal community workers, such as traffic assistants. Ban said that he didn’t know using the two words as names for his dogs was illegal, and that he had done it as a joke, but police failed to see the humor and launched an investigation after the man’s post went viral online.

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A 63-year-old man recently made news headlines in China for reportedly throwing up a tumor after a drinking session, then getting scared and swallowing it back.

The unnamed man from Hunchun County, in China’s Hubei Province, had allegedly been feeling discomfort in his throat for some time, but since it didn’t hinder his breathing or swallowing too much, he never sought medical attention. However, last week, after having one too many drinks, the man started feeling nauseous. That was hardly unusual after a long drinking session, only this time, as he was getting ready to throw up, the 63-year-old felt a sharp pain in his lower throat followed by the disturbing presence of a large piece of meat in his mouth. Strangely enough, the fleshy mass seemed to be attached to something, so the drunk man couldn’t just cough it out, so he did the next best thing –  he chugged a glass of water and swallowed it back.

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A vlogger from China who live-streamed herself trying to eat a live Pacific octopus ended up screaming in pain after the marine creature used its suckers to attach itself to her face.

The young woman, who goes by “seaside girl Little Seven” on popular Chinese video platform Kuaishou, was allegedly planning to eat the octopus on camera, although the video begins with the creature already stuck to her face. She can be heard calmly telling her fans “look how hard it’s sucking” before realizing that she can’t actually remove it without pulling on it really hard. At one point, it looks like her left cheek might come off as she struggles to detach the octopus while screaming “painful” and “I can’t remove it”.

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If you’re not a confrontational person, having to argue with someone can be a daunting task. Luckily, Chinese online marketplace Taobao now offers people the chance to hire a “professional quarreler” to argue on their behalf.

There’s a good reason why Taobao is considered the world’s largest e-commerce platform. You can find virtually anything there, from popular products like smartphones to homework-writing robots and even bizarre services like hiring people to eat your favorite treats so you don’t have to. The latest addition to Taobao’s seemingly infinite list of goods and services is ‘quarreling by proxy’, which gives people the chance to hire strangers to argue or simply harass someone on their behalf, for a small fee.

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K-pop culture has been gaining popularity across the globe, but in China it is considered a decadent trend that threatens to destroy the nation’s future. To combat this menace, a former schoolteacher has founded the Real Man Training Club, a children’s boot camp that promises to turn boys into alpha males.

The Beijing-based Real Man Training Club offers members a variety of activities meant to boost their masculinity, such as American football, wrestling and boxing, as well as character-building treks through deserts and mountains. Founder Tang Haiyan leads the boys in chest beating and slogan shouting to build up their confidence, and makes them wear headbands with the words ‘Real Man’. Even their shirts and tracksuits feature English phrases like ‘Anything is Possible’ or ‘Power Leader’. All this is meant to develop the boys’ macho character to fit Tang’s perception of manliness, and make them immune to the taint of K-pop culture.

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A Chinese man recently took a supermarket chain to court after allegedly being cheated out of 0.04 yuan ($0.008) because the checkout clerk rounded down the change he was owed.

The plaintiff, named only as Xiao, claimed that after shopping at a branch of Yonghui Superstores and offering 55 yuan ($8.16) for groceries worth 54.76 yuan ($8.12), he was given only 0.20 yuan as change instead of the 0.24 yuan he was owed. He didn’t really need the 0.04 yuan, but he considered the supermarket’s rounding off system to be cheating, so he decided to sue them and draw attention to the practice, hoping it would get fixed.

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A Chinese man was recently ordered to pay tens of thousands of dollars in compensation after his firecracker celebration killed over 10,000 of his neighbors’ rabbits to death.

This unusual tragedy occurred at the beginning of 2018, when a man named Cai Nan decided to celebrate the renovation of his home in Xuzhou, China’s Jiangsu Province, with a bang. He and the workers set up dozens of firecrackers on the roof of the house and reportedly fired them off for a period of 3 to 4 minutes. Cai never imagined that the loud bangs they made would affect the rabbits on his neighbors’ farm, let alone scare thousands of them to death.

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A team of Chinese cardboard modelling experts stole the show at this year’s Hobby Expo China (HEC) International Model Expo, in  Beijing, with a 1:1 cardboard replica of the Merkava MK4 Israeli battle tank.

Photos of this awe-inspiring masterpiece of cardboard modelling have been doing the rounds on Chinese social media for the last five days, drawing the admiration of millions in the Asian country. Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be much information available online, except for the fact that it is a 1:1 model of the Merkava MK4 made out of over 5,000 cardboard parts and weighing around a ton.

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For the seventh time in the last couple of years, a Chinese person has been arrested for trying to drop a handful of metal coins into an airplane engine, for good luck.

On Monday morning a 66-year-old woman surnamed Wang was detained for attempting to throw six metal coins into the engine of a Tianjin Airlines plane just before take-off, in an effort to guarantee a safe trip. Fortunately, the coins ended up on the ground instead of into the multi-million dollar engine, and were noticed by an airport worker before the plane’s departure. When an announcement was made, asking whoever threw the coins to come forward, Wang refused to take responsibility, but she soon identified using surveillance footage.

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Doctors in Shenzen, China recently performed an emergency endoscopy to remove a 13-centimeter metal spoon from a woman’s duodenum, after she accidentally swallowed it while trying to dislodge a fish bone from her throat.

The reckless patient, known only as Lily, reportedly swallowed the stainless steel spoon before the Qingming Festival on April 5, but didn’t bother going to the hospital until four days later, because she didn’t feel any pain in her stomach. She had apparently tried to use the metal spoon to remove a fish bone that had become lodged in her throat, but it accidentally slipped from her fingers and she ended up swallowing it. Talk about things going from bad to worse, right?

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A 42-year-old man in Shenzen, China, was recently hospitalized with a stroke after the staff at a local internet cafe noticed that he hadn’t got up from his seat in 50 hours.

According to CCTV footage, the unnamed man arrived at the internet cafe on the morning of March 31st and never once got up from his chair for the next 50 hours. It was only on the evening of April 2nd that the staff checked CCTV cameras and noticed that he had been there for over two days. When they checked on him, they found that he was paralyzed, unable to speak and suffering from incontinence. When he arrived at the Longhua District People’s Hospital, he was barely conscious and couldn’t move the limbs on the right side of his body. Doctors diagnosed him with massive cerebral infarction on the left basal ganglia and frontotemporal lobe, otherwise known as a stroke.

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A 58-year-old street cleaner in China has been hailed as a hero after it was reported that he has donated over 180,000 yuan ($27,000) to dozens of poor children in the last 30 years, despite earning a monthly salary of just 2,000 yuan ($300).

Mr. Zhao, a street cleaner from Shenyang, in China’s northeast Liaoning Province, leads a very frugal lifestyle. Most of his meals consist of simple boiled noodles, he hasn’t bought new clothes in about 30 years, and he and his family live in a very modest house. Even though he earns just 2,000 yuan per month, he could probably have  much more comfortable life if he didn’t give most of his income away. Coming from humble beginnings himself, Zhao known all about poverty, so he has dedicated the last three decades of his life to helping impoverished children, while also taking care of his own family.

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If you love eating and drinking for free and are looking to make some pocket change, there’s a job in China with your name on it. A new type of online service allows people to hire others to eat or drink their favorite treats, either to cure their boredom or satisfy their craving without the calories that usually come with it.

Chinese media recently reported on an increasingly popular service on online commercial platform Taobao that’s as mind-boggling as it is intriguing. People can now go online and hire others to consume certain foods and drinks, and ask them to provide video evidence of them eating or drinking the said treats. Fees usually range between 2 yuan ($0.30) and 9 yuan ($1.35) plus the cost of the food that the client wants consumed. It’s not exactly a get-rich quick kind of job, but there are quite a lot of people willing to do it for the free treats alone.

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