An elementary school in Tiantai, in China’s Zhejiang Province, has a 200-meter running track built on its roof. It’s a strange place to have children running, but the school’s authorities didn’t have much of a choice. There wasn’t any construction land available on the campus grounds, so they figured a track on the roof is better than no track at all.

“Under the circumstances that limited land cannot provide enough space for students to exercise in, we chose to challenge the concept that playgrounds and tracks have to be on the ground,” said chief architect Ruan Hao. The unique design has received worldwide recognition – it represented China at the 14th Venice Architecture Exhibition this year.

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Hu Juan, a 28-year-old mother of two from Hunan, China, suffers from a rare condition known as Cutis laxa which has caused the skin on her face and neck to age at an accelerated rate, leaving her looking like a woman in her 60s or 70s.

The young woman’s nightmare began 11 years ago, right after she gave birth to her eldest son. She started noticing that her appearance was changing fast and just six months after giving birth, her youthful looks had deteriorated drastically to the point where she could hardly recognize herself in the mirror. Hu Juan was diagnosed with Cutis laxa, an extremely rare connective tissue disorder that causes the skin to become loose, saggy and wrinkled at a very rapid speed due to loss of elasticity. It has only affected her face and neck, and several medical checkups over the years revealed that she is otherwise  in good health. Hu Juan is the only known Cutis laxa sufferer in China and one of ten worldwide. Read More »

In order to raise money for the treatment of his leukemia-stricken son, a man in China turned himself into a human punching bag, offering passers-by in Beijing the chance to hit him in exchange for 10 yuan ($1.6).

The young father was first spotted on the streets of Beijing on November 27, wearing a t-shirt that read ” human punching bag, 10 yuan per punch”. In front of him there was a donation box covered with hospital diagnosis certificates that proved his son was suffering from leukemia, so that people could that this crazy way of raising money was for a good cause, and not just a stupid prank.

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Chinese student Zu Bingqun is living the dream of almost every comic book lover in the world. No, he hasn’t become a superhero himself, but he does have an amazing collection of Avengers suits that he built himself, from scratch. Zu said that by building the suits, he is trying to fulfill his own childhood dream of becoming a superhero.

A senior student at the Changchun University of Technology, Zu has been working on the outfits since 2012. He starts by downloading a blueprint of each superhero’s suits and buying the necessary materials for the build online. He then begins the painstaking process of molding each part of the suit and putting it all together.

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Chinese martial arts expert Li Liangbin probably has the strongest neck muscles in the world. They are so strong that he can actually support himself and even breathe while hanging from a noose!

The 49-year-old from Lizhuang village, China’s Shandong province, said that he’s been practicing kung fu since he was a young boy. “Although I am now a kung fu master, I’m always looking for new challenges and new ways to discipline my body,” he revealed.

“Kung fu is my life and it’s important to have a challenge. Everyone knows about kung fu masters that can chop up concrete blocks or leap off tall buildings, but surviving a hanging is something new.” So he decided to toughen his neck muscles to such an extent that he would be able to survive even after being hung from a tree.

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Chinese businessman He Liesheng is putting Tiger Moms to shame by taking ‘pushy parenting’ to whole new levels. ‘Eagle Dad’, as he calls himself, has only one philosophy when it comes to raising his son: “We think that not having adventures in life is the most dangerous thing.”

Well, adventures don’t sound all that bad, but wait till you hear what he’s put his son through so far. At age four, He Yide was made to jog in the snow, while wearing only underpants. It was supposed to be a character building exercise, and the video clip that Liesheng shared online showed the boy crying while running in New York’s subzero temperatures. It earned him the name ‘Running Naked Boy’ on Chinese social media.

A year later, Yide was taught to fly a plane and he made a 35-minute flight above Beijing Wildlife Park in an ultralight aircraft, breaking the Guinness Record for the world’s youngest pilot.

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While most women turn to ice cream and tissues for the much needed post-breakup comforting, this Chinese woman chose a different way to deal with heartbreak – she went and got herself a fake wedding with the man who dumped her!

The woman, who calls herself ‘Doudou’, is a student in Wenzhou city in eastern China’s Zhejiang Province. She told reporters that she’d been swept off her feet by a businessman, 11 years her senior, whom she’d met at a restaurant. “I found him charming and romantic and thought I had met my dream man, and that we would spend the rest of our lives together,” she said.

Unfortunately, Doudou’s dreams were shattered when she discovered that her knight-in-shining-armor was already married. This resulted in a furious row, but she had already fallen for him hard. “I was already in too deep, and didn’t know what to do,” she said.

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In a geeky display of love, a game designer from Guangzhou city, China, confessed his feelings to a co-worker, surrounded by 99 brand new iPhones. The extravagant gesture cost the man a whopping 500,000 yuan (over $80,000) – two years’ worth of his savings.

The man stacked up the 99 boxes of phones in the shape of a heart in the middle of the office parking lot during break. He then stood in the center with a bouquet of roses, ready to profess his undying love. The woman arrived at the scene after some cajoling and pressure from the rest of the co-workers. She apparently heard him out, but hasn’t given him a reply yet.

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Residents of Jinshicun village in China’s Hunan Province have discovered a rather crappy way to keep healthy. They’re actually drinking a revolting concoction of mashed cow dung and goat poop that they think is a miracle cure for cancer and other illnesses.

The villagers say they stumbled upon the medicine when an elderly local woman suffering from cancer woke up one day with a bizarre request – she asked her son to collect as much animal feces as possible. Her son complied, without the faintest idea of what was she was up to.

“I was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer last January and despite going in and out of the hospital nothing was helping,” explained 66-year-old Ma Shuang. “And then I had a dream where a voice was telling me to mix the dung of a cow with the droppings of goats. When I woke, I instructed my son on what he had to do and although clearly thinking I had lost my mind, he went and did it anyway.”

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A pretty young woman from Shanghai is on a mission to get a new boyfriend in every city she visits in China. The 19-year-old created a stir online after she posted recruitment notices on social media, asking for temporary boyfriends. She said that she’s looking for male friends to be her travel partners, and to fund her travel expenses.

“Travel with me: Post-’95, adorable girl recruiting temporary boyfriends from all parts of China to be my travel partners,” her post read. She explained that she wanted to “recruit one temporary boyfriend from the local area when/before visiting the city” so that she could “travel all over China on ZERO yuan.”

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Comfort eating is said to help in coping with emotional distress, but this Chinese woman might have taken it a bit too far. Recently dumped by her boyfriend, 26-year-old Tan Shen actually stayed inside a KFC for an entire week, gorging on chicken wings the whole time. When she finally came out, she said she did it because she just ‘needed time to think’.

Clearly hit hard by the breakup, Shen stepped into a KFC last week, near a train station in the area where she lives. “I was walking around feeling miserable and decided to stop off at the KFC at the train station,” she said. “I hadn’t planned on staying there long, I just wanted some chicken wings. But once I got in there and started eating I decided I needed time to think. I didn’t want to go back to my apartment because it was full of memories of him. So I stayed.”

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Beggars in China are stooping to new lows in order to gain sympathy (and money) from impressionable passers-by. Horrific pictures show deliberately mutilated camels that are being used to beg for donations. Apparently, the trick has worked wonders so far – the beggars’ collections have increased because people are quite sympathetic and end up donating generously to help the poor animals.

The latest case was discovered in Fuzhou city, China’s Fujian Province, where two men in ragged clothes were spotted kneeling down and begging, while holding the reins of a camel. When the police approached them, they found that the camel had no hooves, and the wounds indicated that they had been deliberately cut off.

In another incident, Fuzhou Evening News reported the case of a camel found by the roadside. It had been led through the streets by a beggar, and then abandoned. News reports suggest that beggars have been spotted with injured camels in several other cities such as Shenzhen, Wenzhou, Shaoxing, Xiamen, Guangzhou, and Hefei. Read More »

A young tuhao (Chinese nouveau riche) from Shaoxing city, China, is making the news for his uncharacteristic behavior. A few nights ago, he was spotted getting out of his swanky new Porsche, only to set up a makeshift roadside stall on the pavement to sell scarves to passers-by. He was accompanied by a lady friend, who assisted him with sales.

Onlookers were so bewildered by this that they couldn’t help asking him what on earth he was doing. That’s when he explained: “I sell scarves here just to earn money to buy gas for my car.” He told reporters that while his parents had gifted him an expensive car, he didn’t think it was right to ask for gas money as well. The girl added that they were also interested in gaining experience in entrepreneurship and business, along with making some pocket money.

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When 57-year-old Shen Ailan got drunk on two whole bottles of baijiu – a type of Chinese vodka – she decided that a dip in the river was just what she needed to ‘clear her head’. So she dived into the waters of the Yangtze River at Huangshi city, Hubei Province, and passed out soon after. When she finally opened her eyes, she found herself in Ruichang City, Jiangxi province – roughly 75 kilometers away from where she had went into water!

“I decided a dip in the water would clear my head and I remember wading into the water,” she said. “It was the middle of the day and the next thing I knew was everything had gone black.”

Having blacked out in the water, it’s a real miracle that she survived. She was found suffering from acute hypothermia, and the medics who treated her speculated that she might have become semi-conscious after going into the cold water. They added that her body must have acted automatically to keep her head above water as the river’s current swept her downstream.

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A team of engineers in China is currently involved in developing something called the ‘Air Umbrella’ – a revolutionary new device that uses blasts of air to shield people from the rain. The high-tech umbrella, shaped like a plastic microphone, is capable of producing horizontal gusts of air that repel raindrops, creating a dry, one meter wide circle around the user’s head.

There is a small catch, of course – the device works only for a short while. In true Cinderella style, the ‘magic’ wears off at the stroke of the 30th minute – the umbrella stops producing air and you’ll be drenched in no time at all. So you’d probably want to use it only if you’re confident you can get out of the rain in 30 minutes or less.

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