Chinese social media is abuzz with the story of Guo Gantang, 45, who has spent the last 18 years on the road in search of his missing son. Guo’s ordeal began on September 21, 1997, when his two-year-old boy, Guo Zhen, was abducted from the front gate of his home in Liaocheng, Shandong Province. According to a little girl he was playing with at the time, Zhen was snatched by a middle-aged woman. Since then, the heartbroken father has dedicated his life to finding the boy. Guo has traveled over 400,000 kilometers to all of China’s provinces, except Xinjiang in Tibet, wearing out 10 motorcycles in the process. In the hopes that someone might recognize the boy and give him some useful information, Guo always has two flags with an old photo of him strapped to his motorcycle. Read More »

A  young groom from China’s Hubei province was so disappointed after seeing his bride for the first time, he actually tried to kill himself at his own wedding!  33-year-old Kang Hu was all set to marry 30-year-old Na Sung, a woman chosen by his parent, who he had never even seen before. But after laying eyes on her for the first time, at their wedding, he Kang found she did not meet his high standards. He stunned everyone by actually telling Na Sung that he found her ‘ugly’, and, claiming that she would be ‘bad for his image’, he simply walked out of the ceremony and tried to drown himself in a nearby river. Read More »

A bizarre men’s toilet at a restaurant in Taiyuan city, in northern China’s Shanxi province, has a trio of realistic female mannequins placed behind the urinals. The weird arrangement has men standing face-to-face with these scantily-clad dolls while relieving themselves! Predictably, several of the restaurant’s male customers have expressed discomfort with the toilet setup. They complained that they weren’t able to urinate because of the “sexy” models were staring at them. “I walked back out again when I saw the women there because I thought at first I was in the wrong place, but then I realised it was the proper place and I tried to relieve myself, it just didn’t work,” said 24-year-old customer Sun Kao. “It was very off-putting having a good-looking woman even if it was a plastic one apparently staring at me as I tried to do my business.” Read More »

A father-and-son duo from Hunan, China, have come up with a fun and profitable business idea – creating giant Transformers robots replicas from used car parts and scrap metal. Although they are farmers by profession, Yu Zhilin and his son Yu Lingyun switched to building the models in 2007, when they realised the potential in the Chinese market. And their hunch has proved right – they’ve managed cash in on the nation’s obsession with Transformers, the highest grossing film of all time in China. They now make one million yuan a year (nearly $170,000), selling their army of robots. Read More »

A Chinese man was recently presented with the ultimate test of love – he was forced to choose between saving his current and ex girlfriends! The two love-struck women jumped into a river to see which one he would save. The poor man in question is 21-year-old Wu Hsia, who recently broke up with his long-time girlfriend Jun Tang, 20, after falling in love with 22-year-old  Rong Tsao. The ex-girlfriend took the split rather badly and began to harass Wu in the hope that he would leave Rong and come back to her. Tired of the bickering women, Wu decided to meet with both of them and make his intentions clear. “I was sick of being nagged from both sides,” he said. “Rong was moaning about Jun and Jun was moaning about her and it all got too much.” Unfortunately, the meeting turned out to be a bad idea. Jun and Rong got into an argument, which ended with Jun throwing herself into the river. Rong quickly followed suit. Read More »

Wang Weibu is one of the few remaining Chinese hairdressers practicing the ancient hair-cutting art of ‘Dahoujia’. The rather extreme technique involves the use of a pair of red hot metal tongs to burn hair off, instead of cutting it! Weibu, 72, starts by heating the clamp in a wooden fire until it is red hot, and cooling it slightly in water. He then uses it like scissors to chop of the hair to the desired length. Later, he slides the hot metal all over the remaining hair. The technique is rather baffling – after all, who would want to walk around with a head of scorched hair? But surprisingly, the final effect is rather nice – sort of like a perm – and lasts for about three months. Read More »

Every year, with the coming of spring, thousands of Chinese tourists flock to the The Gorges Reservoir to see an elusive turtle-shaped island rise from the waters of the Muodaoxi River. The event, dubbed ‘spring turtle rising from water’, is celebrated by local residents because turtles are considered auspicious and a sign of longevity. It sounds like a fascinating natural phenomenon similar to the Jindo Moses Miracle that takes place in South Korea, but in this case the “magic” is man-made. The water level of Muodaoxi River is controlled by the Three Gorges Dam. In spring, the reservoir supplies water to the areas downstream, bringing down the water level and exposing the island. Read More »

Jia Haixa and Jia Wenqi are the most unlikely pair of environmentalists we’ve ever come across. The former is blind, while the latter is a double-amputee. Yet, they’ve managed to use their symbiotic relationship to plant over 10,000 trees in the past decade. Haixa and Wenqi began their beautiful partnership when they were unable to get jobs due to their impairments. They have now become each other’s eyes and hands, and taken on the task of transforming a three-hectare stretch of riverbank in Yeli village, in north China’s Hebei Province. “I am his hands,” said Haixia. “He is my eyes. We are good partners.” The 53-year-old was born with congenital cataracts that blinded his left eye. Then, in 2000, he lost sight in his right eye as well after a work-related accident. Wenqi, on the other hand, lost both arms in an accident when he was only three years old. Read More »

At an age when people usually start forgetting things, this Chinese woman has managed to do the opposite – she’s actually memorized the entire Oxford English-Chinese dictionary from cover to cover! Li Yanzhi, 51, from China’s Shaanxi Province, can not only recite all 220,000 entries in the 2,458-page dictionary, but can also accurately describe their meanings. Ms. Li works as a lecturer in Financial English at Xian Transport University’s Economic and Banking School. But she needs an extra income to be able to support herself and her 26-year-old autistic son who is unable to care for himself. A mother and divorcee of 20 years, Ms. Li said she took on the Herculean task in the hope of receiving more translating work. Read More »

Chinese construction company Broad Sustainable Building recently released an online video showing how they managed to build a 57-storey building in a record time of 19 days. ‘Sky City’, located in Changsha city, comprises 800 homes and office space to accommodate a total of 4,000 people. The company’s original proposal for the site was actually a 97-storey building that would have been the world’s largest skyscraper. But just after 20 stories were completed, construction work was stopped for one year because local officials wanted to review the plans. Ultimately, they had to reduce the plan to 57 stories due to the building’s close proximity to the airport. In spite of the major delay, the entire construction from start to finish was completed in less than three weeks of work. The 4-minute clip shows employees building each storey offsite and delivering it to the location. A timelapse sequence shows the assembling of the mammoth building which require a total of 19 days to complete – that’s exactly three floors per day! Read More »

Five elderly women in China have dedicated their lives to the care of nearly 1,300 stray dogs. The enterprising women run their very own custom dog asylum, where they feed the lucky canines 400 kg of tasty dog-food every single day. The shelter, located in China’s central Shaanxi Province, was established in 2009 by 60-year-old Wang Yanfang. She said that she felt sympathetic towards strays that were taken away by regulators, so she decided to apply for permission to open the asylum, solely supported by donations. Since then she has gained the support of four other women, and together they wake up at 4am each morning just to prepare food for the dogs. They are so dedicated to the cause that they even chose to forgo the extravagant display of fireworks on New Year’s Eve, and instead spent the day with the abandoned dogs. Read More »

In an attempt to make long-term inmates more comfortable with modern technology, a Chinese prison has built a fake mini city within its walls. Located in Beijing, the prison campus features a small supermarket, internet café, and even a fake subway station! These structures are meant for inmates who have spent the last 20 years locked up and have no idea of the developments that have taken place outside during this time. “The project aims to give a micro view of the new society that now exists,” said guard Liang Chiu. “Prisoners were very often finding it difficult to adjust to life outside and now they are being taught how bank cards work, mobile phones and even computers, which most of them would have had no experience with before they ended up being jailed.” Read More »

While most people would love not to spend a single day of their lives in a hospital, one 55-year-old man in China refused to leave the hospital for three whole years, despite being healthy! When a Beijing court finally ordered him to leave, he chained himself down to his bed in refusal. The police finally had to intervene; they cut the locks and hauled a struggling man out of the building. It all started in August 2011, when Mr. Chen was admitted to Beijing Jingmei Group Hospital to receive treatment for minor injuries he had sustained during an accident. He remained in the hospital for a month before going home, only to return a couple of months later complaining of leg pains. Read More »

This little girl from Huzhu, China’s Sichuan Province, looks like an ordinary preschooler. Except she is actually 19 years old! Zeng Yushan apparently suffers from a rare medical condition that caused her to stop growing at the age of seven. When she was seven years old, Zeng was diagnosed with a tumor on her pituitary gland, which caused a deficiency in growth hormones. While the condition is treatable, her parents unfortunately couldn’t afford it. Instead, they fought bitterly and divorced, leaving Zeng in the care of her father Yul Wei. Shortly after the divorce, Yul was also diagnosed with a serious illness. Unable to pay for either of their medical bills, the father and daughter duo were forced to beg on the streets. They frequently traveled from their home to the cities of Zigong, Chengdu, and Guiyang, in the hope that Zeng’s unusual appearance would earn them some cash. Read More »

In a desperate attempt to cure himself of his internet addiction, a Chinese teenager simply chopped off his own left hand. The 19-year-old, from the city of Nantong, in Jiangsu province, took the drastic measure last week. “We cannot accept what has happened,” said the kid’s mother, who refused to be identified. “It was completely out of the blue. He was a smart boy.” She had gone to her son’s bedroom at 11pm last Wednesday, only to find him missing from his bed. Instead, she found a handwritten note that said: “Mum, I have gone to the hospital for a while. Don’t worry, I will definitely come back this evening.” In the meantime, the boy had snuck out of the house with a kitchen knife. Once safely out of sight, he severed his left hand at the wrist. He then called a taxi to take him to a nearby Emergency Room, leaving the hand lying on the ground. Read More »