A Chinese man has been living in the Beijing Capital International Airport for 14 years in order to smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol without his family nagging him about it.

Remember “The Terminal“, the cult classic in which Tom Hanks plays a man stuck in an airport for years because of a political coup in his home country which renders his passport invalid? Well, his story is nothing like that of this article’s protagonist, a Chinese man who has been living inside an airport for over 14 years, of his own free will. After losing his job in his early 40s, Wei Jianguo became so depressed that he spent his days drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes. His family didn’t like that one bit and told him that he had to give up his two biggest pleasures in life if he wanted to continue living in the family home. He couldn’t do that, so he simply moved into Beijing Airport.

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An attractive woman who reportedly dated and scammed as many as six men at the same time was recently praised on social media for her time management skills.

The female scammer, a 42-year-old woman surnamed Mao, recently made news headlines in China, after being arrested by the police. Apparently, between the months of July and December of 2021, she had been dating six middle-aged men and tricking them into buying her things like smartphones, computers and clothes, as well as demanding various sums of money. Unfortunately for her, one of the victims became suspicious of her behavior, did some research and eventually discovered her scam.

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Panzhiga, a remote mountainous village in China’s Yunan Province has been dubbed “Tesla Village” for the unusually high number of Tesla electric cars owned by the locals.

The popularity of electric cars around the world is growing at an unprecedented pace, but there are still many skeptics who believe the rapid adoption of electric vehicles is hampered by infrastructure and logistic problems. For example, while rapid charging stations are being built in cities and along busy roads, using an electric car in remote areas is considered inefficient. However, that theory is being challenged by a small mountainous village in China where Tesla is by far the most popular car brand.

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Luo Yingjiu, an 81-year-old man in China’s Hubei Province, has spent the last three decades of his life taking care of sick and disabled animals at the “world’s loneliest zoo”.

It was during the 1980s that Luo Yingjiu started buying animals and taking them home with him. He wasn’t doing it as a pet collector, but as an animal lover sick of seeing all sorts of disabled and visibly sick creatures being kept in cages and sold on the streets. So he bought them and took them home with him, where he did his best to nurse them back to health. The lucky ones that made a full recovery were eventually released back into the wild, but some were in such bad shape that they required constant care and attention, which Luo was more than happy to provide…

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Strange Slope is a natural tourist attraction in China’s Liaoning Province, where a strange phenomenon causes things to roll uphill and prevents them from rolling downhill.

Located at the foot of Maoshan Mountain, near the city of Shenyang, the Strange Slope scenic area is considered one of the eight natural wonders of Liaoning Province. It was discovered in 1990, when, local stories say, a police officer stopped his car in the area and, taking his foot off the brake, noticed his vehicle slowly rolled uphill, all the way to the top. Word of the bizarre phenomenon spread like wildfire, and before long, people from all over the country, and even from abroad, were coming to see the gravity-defying slope in person. Authorities cleaned the place up, created separate lanes for bikes and cars, and Strange Slope became one of the most popular scenic areas in Liaoning.

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A Chinese man who won the praise of his employer by working 12-hour shifts basically 30 days a month recently sparked controversy in his home country.

On February 18, pictures of a framed billboard depicting the “model employee” of a company in Zhengzhou, Henan went viral on Chinese social media, sparking a heated debate. The honorary billboard praises the man, one XueLintao, for working 12-hour days, basically 30 days a month, influencing both new and old employees through his actions, improving the company’s daily production, saving his employer money in labor costs and improving equipment utilization. But most netizens didn’t see Xue as an example, but rather as a “traitor” and as an “accomplice in overtime hell”.

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A Chinese man claims he was kidnapped by a criminal gang whose members used him like a “blood slave,” routinely draining his blood and selling it on the black market.

We’ve heard of people being kidnapped and having their organs removed, but one 31-year-old man from Beijing claims his kidnappers were more interested in his blood. The man, whose identity has not been revealed, to protect his privacy, used to work as a security guard in Beijing and Shenzhen, but decided to try his luck as a nightclub bouncer after finding an online job advert. The pay was a lot better, so he decided to travel to the southwestern region of Guangxi for an interview, not knowing that the job offer was actually a trap.

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China is famous for many weird traditional foods, but the snake and whole scorpion served in Guangdong province is definitely among the most bizarre and downright scary dishes in the Asian country.

Arachnids and insects have been a part of Chinese cuisine long before the West even considered their nutritious value, but even here scorpion soup is not really considered mainstream. In northern China, deep-fried scorpions skewered like grilled meat are very popular as street stall food, but in the south, the arachnids are preferred as the main ingredient of a soup that also contains chunks of snake and pork meats, as well as a mix of spices. Despite the toxic poison of the scorpion, the dish is actually considered a detox dish.

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For over half a year now, border control points in Longzhou County, along China’s border with Vietnam have been using geese as part of their arsenal of detecting and apprehending illegal immigrants.

As part of China’s strategy to prevent the spread of Covid-19, the country has taken a very hard stance on illegal immigration, with border patrols and control points playing a big part role. However, China’s a big place with a long border, so keeping people out isn’t the easiest thing to do. In Longzhou, a county in Guanxi Province, the border with Vietnam stretches for 184 kilometers on land and 22 kilometers on waters, with many trails and paths for patrols to keep an eye on. Luckily, since last summer, they have had a new secret weapon in their arsenal – geese.

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Chinese real-estate giant Vanke Group recently sparked controversy after naming its advanced AI-powered debt collector its employee of the year for 2021.

Looking at a picture of Cui Xiaopan, Vanke Group’s employee of 2021, you’d think she was a woman in her 20s with a very determined look on her face, but in reality, she isn’t even human. The AI-generated photo that the Chinese company uses to depict its star debt collector is just an attempt of attaching an eye-pleasing face to what is otherwise a cold-and calculated artificial intelligence. However, when it comes to performance, the AI debt-collector managed to surpass her human colleagues by quite a large margin, registering a 91.44% success rate in collecting overdue payments.

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A young Chinese man who had been experiencing severe headaches lately was shocked to learn that he had been living with a bullet in the left side of his skull for about two decades.

Xiao Chen (pseudonym), a 28-year-old man from Shenzen, had been suffering from random headaches for as long as he could remember, only lately they had been getting more frequent and more severe. At first, Chen thought that the pain was caused by his lack of sufficient sleep on weekdays, but sleeping wasn’t the answer, especially since the headaches kept him up at night. Finally, things got so bad that he decided to go to the hospital, where doctors discovered a rather bizarre cause of the pain.

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Liang Xiaoqing is China’s most popular “auntie” fashion model, a niche segment aimed at marketing fashion products to middle-aged and elderly women.

Although Liang Xiaoning is only 29-years-old, you’d probably think she was well in her 40s, maybe even her 50s, if you looked at any of her professional modeling photos. She has been working as an “auntie” model since she was 18, trying her best to look distinguished and elegant, but also a lot older than her real age. Her tall figure and round, pleasant face apparently make her the perfect auntie model, and over the years she has perfected the art of posing and displaying the emotions that appeal most to her target audience.

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Known as ‘the poor man’s fireworks’, Dashuhua is a 500-year-old pyrotechnic ritual used in Nuanquan, China, to celebrate the Lunar New Year.

The small town of Nuanquan, in northwestern China’s Hebei province, is home to one of the world’s most dangerous yet mesmerizing fireworks displays. Although fireworks have been a part of Chinese celebrations since around the year 800 A.D., they haven’t always been as widely available and affordable as they are today. So about half of a millennia ago, local blacksmiths came up with a viable alternative that was cheaper, but just as impressive as conventional pyrotechnics – throwing molten iron at cold walls to produce a waterfall of bright sparks that are at the same time beautiful and dangerous.

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Researchers in China claim to have developed an advanced AI that is reportedly capable of identifying crimes and filing charges against those suspected of committing them.

There is no denying that advancements in artificial intelligence are being made at breakneck speeds and that many of us will one day lose our jobs to a tireless machine, but I doubt anyone imagined prosecutors would find their jobs threatened by machines anytime soon. And yet, if Chinese researchers are to be believed, there is already an AI system that can replace human prosecutors “to a certain extent” and file a charge with over 97 percent accuracy, based on a description of a suspected criminal case.

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A 37-year-old man from Henan Province, in Eastern China, recently found his biological mother 33-years after being abducted, thanks to a map of his home village that he drew from memory.

Li Jingwei was only four years old when he was abducted outside his family home in Yunan and sold to another family thousands of kilometers away. It was a neighbor who lured him with a toy and then drove him 2,000 kilometers to Henan Province, where he sold him to a family that raised him as his own. It’s unclear if he ever tried to run away, but what is known is that he spent many nights remembering what his parents and his home looked like, which ended up helping him reunite with his mother 33 years after his abduction. Li used his childhood memories to draw a crude yet detailed map of his home village and then turned to social media for help, asking people where they thought it could be.

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