Of all the Mother’s Day events this year, I think this one was the most befitting – putting men through the pain of childbirth. A local TV station in Nanchang City, in south China’s Jiangxi province, had about 20 men volunteering to put themselves through the excruciating pain of labor . They were hooked up to a special machine that simulated the pain using electric shocks. Needless to say, the men couldn’t even last 30 seconds.

The theme of the TV show was to have men submit to the pains that women endure during childbirth. The challenge consisted of 10 levels of pain, with an agony scale ranging from 50 to 500. Electric shocks were sent into the abdomens of the male volunteers in order to achieve the desired effect. Predictably, the men were writhing in pain within seconds, begging to stop the experiment.

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24 years ago, when this poor Chinese man’s wife got sick, he had no money to pay for her treatment. Mei Guanghan, 66, had no choice back then but to borrow 70,000 yuan ($11,000) from hundreds of neighbors. Since then, he’s had just one mission – to repay every neighbor, down to the last penny. And here’s the good news – after years of sacrifices and living in poverty, he has managed to achieve his goal.

A long time ago, the Gunaghans were quite the happy couple with a 15 year old daughter, but their lives changed forever in 1990. Ren Chun’ai woke up early one morning in April and rode the tractor into town to buy some food. On her way back to the village, she was involved in a horrible accident. “In the mountains, two tractors were traveling in the same direction,” she said. “I took a sharp turn, the tires slipped and I fell into the valley.” She hit a rock and slipped into a coma soon after.

The medical fees required to save her life were huge, so he went from door to door, begging people for whatever cash they could spare. He carried a little brown book with him, carefully noting down the name of each person and the amount they had loaned him. He made a promise to all the donors: “One day I will be back, knocking on your door with your money.”

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Money might not grow on trees, but it sure can buy you lots of them. Proving this point is a rich businessman’s wife in China, who has rented a whole mountain just so her her daughter can learn more about nature and the great outdoors.

33-year-old Gan Lin, a former teacher, now spends most of her time dreaming up innovative ways of spending her husband’s money. The family lives in China’s Chongqing municipality, where Yin Gan, the daughter, attends fourth grade at a primary school. Gan recently discovered just how little Yin knew about nature, so she decided to solve the problem by throwing some of her excess money at it. She paid a local council to lease a mountain, including a 1.3-hectare farm located there.

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Chen Qingzu, a 56-year-old health worker from South China’s Hainan province, has a very bizarre hobby – he collects brassieres. In the past 20 years, he has amassed over 5,000 bras of various colors, shapes and sizes. Chen now wants to start a museum to display his entire bra collection.

Now, before you write-off Chen’s hobby as a fetish, you might want to hear his version of the story: “It’s my job to educate the public about the importance of health checkups, but my special interest is as an advocate for female health relating to their breasts and this was a good way of going about it,” he said. “Many women wear tight or smaller-size bras to show off their figures, which would do harm to their breasts.”

Chen said that most of his bras were donated to him by college girls after he visited their campuses to talk about breast health. He told the girls about the dangers of wearing ill-fitting bras and asked them to give him theirs. “Many girls thought I was a bra fetishist,” he said. But when he explained that he was only trying to promote well-fitting bras, the students were convinced and handed over their ill-fitting ones to him.

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For over 30 years, a man in China has been living with a horn growing out of his neck. 62-year-old Li Zhibing, from Shiyan in Hubei Province, said that the unusual growth first appeared on his neck in 1980. Since then, the horn has been growing at an alarming pace so Li’s friends actually help him saw it off twice a year.

Li’s greatest wish is to find out more about the mysterious horn and what caused it. Earlier, he used to visit a local doctor who treated it with herbs from the nearby mountains. But Li now suspects that this treatment actually made the horn grow faster. At its longest, the horn has grown up to 15 centimeters perpendicularly from the nape of his neck. And when it gets too long, his neck gets swollen and he runs a fever. So he needs to saw it off from time to time.

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When this wealthy Chinese businessman purchased an 18^th floor penthouse apartment in Guangzhou city several years ago, he appeared quite contented with it. But soon, he began to make changes that the neighbors thought were weird. At first, he planted all kinds of huge trees and thick bushes on the roof, which neighbors assumed were meant to protect his privacy. But then he took it one step further, by surrounding the property with camouflage nets filled with plant foliage, which was very unusual.

That’s when the neighbors began to worry for his sanity, but it turns out the businessman wasn’t insane at all. He was actually using all the camouflage as a cover up for the additional two floors that he was secretly adding to his apartment. While he told everybody that he renovating, he was actually adding a 19^th and 20^th floor to his already massive apartment. And he did this in secret to work around the local planning laws.

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We’ve heard so many stories about the Chinese building temples, mountain villas and even entire farms on their rooftops that we’ve honestly lost count. And now we have a new one for you – a crazy man in Guangdong province who put a replica of a spacecraft on the roof of his home.

63-year-old Meng Ni had dreamed of becoming an astronaut ever since he was a little kid. But growing up in the remote village of Xiapu, Jiexi County, he realized early-on that there was little hope of his dream coming true. So he quickly decided to follow in his family’s footsteps and take up farming. Eventually, his farmlands grew in size and he sold them to the government for a small fortune.

But over the years, Meng never gave up on his dream. After considerable success as a businessman, he decided sell a part of his estate to build a life-size replica of a space shuttle on his roof. Although the structure does not have the NASA logo, it does carry an American flag on the side for an authentic appearance. And it’s possible to enter the craft as well; it offers a breathtaking view of the surrounding countryside.

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It’s no secret that China is one of the most polluted countries in the world. But things have gotten so bad that a few cities actually have free ‘fresh air stations’, stocked with individual bags of fresh air that users can breathe out of. These stations have become so popular that they are crowded with visitors lining up for just a whiff of fresh, clean air.

One of the stations is located in Zhengzhou city in central China’s Henan province. According to sources, Zhengzhou is one of the most polluted cities in China, with an AQI (Air Quality Index) of 158. In comparison, Bakersfield (the most polluted city of America) has an AQI of just 45. The air at Zhengzhou’s station is sourced from Laojun Mountain, a scenic spot in Luanchuan County consisting of 80 percent green land. Photographs show large crowds of locals waiting patiently at the station. When it’s their turn, a uniformed air hostess hooks them up to oxygen masks.

Feng Lin, a 75-year-old user, said: “The air is really good, but the time is too short. I had to stop too soon but it was really great until then.”

“I felt my baby move right when I breathed in,” said one pregnant woman. “I would love to walk in the mountain’s forests after my child is born.”

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A 47-year-old Chinese woman is so happy to have found true love that she hasn’t taken off her wedding dress for the past ten years. You might think that’s crazy, but wait till you hear everything she’s been through. At age 18, Xiang Junfeng was kidnapped from her hometown and sold to an elderly man. She was forced to marry him and lived for 15 years in captivity before she found the courage to run away.

A native of Jimo, in China’s Shandong Province, Xiang was sold to a man in the neighboring city of Linyi. He ended up using her as a slave, putting her to work in the fields. After several years of living in captivity, she managed to escape by running to Liujiazhuang village where a local woman helped her. Eventually, the woman turned out to be Xiang’s savior in more than one way. She introduced Xiang to her own brother, Zhu Zhengliang, and the couple tied the knot in 2004. This event made poor Xiang so happy that she’s refused to wear anything but her wedding attire ever since.

Although she got married with just the one dress, Xiang later had three more made – one for each season. “I bought one and made the other three,” she said. “I had only ever known a violent and abusive man and I avoided men until I met my new partner who brought me truly out of my shell and treated me so differently. I couldn’t believe it when he asked me to marry him.”

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Cui Juguo, from Changsha city in China’s Hunan Province, holds the Guinness World Record for a very unique feat – he can perfectly balance eggs on small needles. As a person who frequently breaks eggs just by holding them, I think what Cui can do is phenomenal!

In the video footage below, Cui demonstrates how he can balance an ostrich egg on a needle point but as you can see in these photos, he can pull off his balancing feat with any kind of egg. “Ostrich eggs are largest in the world and I can balance them on a pin. No one else could do this,” he said. “I set a Guinness World Record on August 19, 2011, and I am still the record holder.”

Cui has been practicing the balancing act for about 6 years now, and it takes him a mere 10 seconds to put everything in place. He used to be a truck driver and he developed the unique skill to counter sleepiness on the road. “I often take several eggs with me on the road,” he said. “Once I felt sleepy, I would pull over and start to stand the egg on the needle point.”

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There’s nothing quite like a grandparent’s love, and this sweet story from Yibin City in China’s Szechuan province proves it. Even though 14-year-old Fang Mei Qiu is handicapped, she doesn’t miss a day of school. And she’s always on time! All thanks to her 66-year-old grandmother who actually gives the girl a piggy back ride every morning. Together, they cover four kilometers of mountain roads on foot each day to and from school.

Fang Mei was born with abnormal kneecaps that aren’t able to support her weight. So she can’t stand for more than a few minutes without excruciating pain, let alone walk to school. She is constantly in need of help to move around. Sadly, her father left when she was just a baby and her mother remarried soon, leaving Fang Mei in the care of her grandparents. And what loving grandparents they’ve turned out to be! While the grandfather is too old and sick to do much, the grandmother takes care of the small family’s needs.

Grandma wakes up at 5 am each morning and prepares for the day ahead. At 7 am, they begin their journey to school with Fang Mei on grandma’s back, stopping to rest at least five times during the trek. It takes them one-and-a-half hours to cover the two-kilometer journey on foot. And they are never late – grandma makes sure they reach school by 8.30 am every single day. They’ve been doing this for five years now, covering over 4,000 kilometers so far.

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One day, the workers at a scrapyard in China recently decided to get creative with all the metal junk lying around by building a giant Transformer statue. And when the life-size replica of the popular Autobot  started attracting the attention of visitors and passers-by, they decided to keep going. The team built over 40 Transformers in four months, which have now become tourist attractions in their own right.

The scrapyard where the Transformers are on display is located on a remote farmhouse on top of a hill, in Jinan City, Eastern China’s Shangdong Province. As you travel closer to the hill, the sight of these giant action figures in the middle of nowhere is arresting. And once you get there, it’s quite amusing to see the pigs at the farm live happily among the inanimate Transformers.

21-year-old Li Hung, a part-time worker at the yard, built the very first Transformer. The PR and marketing student said he wanted to make something ‘eye-catching’ using discarded parts. “I thought if people could see something spectacular made from junk, it would highlight what we do here and we could get more customers,” he said. Li was right. The robot became immensely popular, winning a lot of praise from locals.

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Wu Deqi is the proud owner of a brand new swanky BMW. Nothing special so far, I know, but that’s because you don’t yet know how he got it. Instead of money, he had to pay for it with a lot of pain. In a promotional contest held last Sunday in the Shapingba District of Southwest China, Wu stood on one leg with one hand touching the coveted car alongside 20 other participants. After a grueling 7 hours and 26 minutes, Wu was the last man standing – automatically winning possession of the 300,000 yuan BMW X1.

Of course, Wu’s feat is nowhere near the Guinness World Record for standing on one leg. That distinction belongs to Suresh Joachim, who balanced himself on one foot for a whopping 76 hours and 40 minutes. But you have to hand it to Wu for his extraordinary effort. I mean, I couldn’t do it for over 5 minutes even if they offered me two BMWs.

The actual event began on 1 March and attracted hundreds of participants. About 140 people entered into three elimination rounds, and 20 shortlisted candidates made it to the final competition on Sunday. This last round was the toughest; some of the contestants actually dropped to the ground in agony. The competition began at 9:30 am and by 1:30 pm, the going got really tough. That’s when the organizers asked participants to stand on tip of their support foot. Flour was spread under each person’s foot to make sure they didn’t cheat and rest their heels.

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A 23-year-old Chinese girl is being forced to leave her boyfriend for a weird reason – he can’t use his legs. Yang Nan’s parents permitted her to live with Yan Hongbo for three years, in which time he had to start walking again. But the time is up now and the boy is still wheelchair-bound.

Yang has begged her parents for more time, and they’ve allowed her another 6 months. But she has almost no hope that things might improve. “I don’t know what to do, I know that he can be cured but we don’t have any money now for medical treatment. We don’t even have enough money to properly get by day-to-day. We need a miracle,” she said. Yan on the other hand is being the sacrificial lover – he wants Yang to listen to her parents and leave him. “I don’t see any future for her with me, she has a bright future ahead of her,” he said. “If we can’t get my legs fixed I have made her promise that she will do as her parents want if we don’t get things sorted in the next six months.”

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When snow is free of cost, who’s going to pay for snowmen, right? Wrong! Apparently, people will buy anything if you sell it right. These two Chinese men have hit the marketing jackpot – making the most of heavy snowfall, they’re selling snowmen by the dozen.

The two men (we don’t know their names or who they are), make snowmen for cars in the suburb of Chengdu, in Southwest China’s Sichuan province. A photograph taken on 10 February shows them placing snowmen with orange eyes, noses and buttons, on top of a customer’s car.

According to some reports, they had sold over 100 snowmen before noon that day. Other pictures show several cars lined up in a street, all sporting snowmen on the roof. It certainly made for a festive display. It was as though the frozen figures were cheering on the traffic.

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