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.

Read More »

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.

Read More »

When it comes to dairy alternatives, we already have a lot of “milks” to choose from, but the latest alternative could prove to be a game-changer due to how available and cheap its main ingredient is.

Potato milk doesn’t sound like the most delicious thing in the world, but then again, neither does oat milk or soy milk and look how popular they turned out to be. Not to mention that this new dairy alternative is apparently “deliciously creamy” and works great for homemade lattes and cappuccinos. Plus, the humble potato uses a lot less land and resources than other plants that are currently used for milk, which makes both the vegetable and the milk more affordable.

Read More »

A Spanish woman got the shock of her life when she received a $570 fine from a town she visited six months ago, for failing to pick up her dog’s poop from a sidewalk.

The unnamed woman from Paterna, in Spain’s Valencia region, had all but forgotten about that time when she chose not to pick up her Bull terrier’s poop while vacationing in Benalmadena, last August, when she received a fine for it last month. So how did authorities in the seaside town located 650 kilometers away, in the province of Malaga, know about it after all this time? They clearly knew it was her dog, as the notice she received in the mail featured the street that the excrement had been found on and the date, August 26. Little did she know that her “crime” had been discovered thanks to advanced DNA analysis…

Read More »

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.

Read More »

A Gentiana flower discovered only a couple of years ago in Tibet has been dubbed the world’s shiest flower for its ability to close in as little as seven seconds after being touched.

Chinese scientists recently published a study conducted on four species of Gentiana discovered in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, focusing primarily on the flowers’ ability to quickly respond to being touched. Plants are generally perceived as static organisms, with the only notable exceptions being carnivorous plants capable of movements designed to trap inspects inside. However, the four new species of Gentiana flowers discovered in the plateaus of Tibet have faster reactions than any other plants observed before. According to the above-mentioned study, these flowers can close completely in just 7 seconds. This ability has earned the Gentiana the unofficial title of ‘world’s shiest flower’.

Read More »

A 79-year-old man who underwent a series of cosmetic procedures to make himself look young found himself unable to fully close his eyes, and having to tape them shut at night.

Pete Broadhurst decided to go under the knife in 2019, after the mother of his two children allegedly broke up with him over his looks. A dental procedure he had done earlier had left him with puffy hamster cheeks, so he decided to get those fixed and smooth out some of the wrinkles on his face as well. He ended up paying £11,000 for a neck lift, under-eye blepharoplasty and a rhinoplasty, but despite being discharged from the hospital soon after the nine-hour procedure, he immediately knew something was wrong.

Read More »

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.

Read More »

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.

Read More »

An Australian man who has given up on finding a human partner claims to have found the next best thing – a humanoid robot named Emma.

Ever since his mother died a decade ago, Geoff Gallagher from Queensland, Australia, had only his dog, Penny, to soothe his loneliness. But then, a couple of years ago, he read an article about robots powered by artificial intelligence and decided to look into them. He found some intriguing commercially-available models, but at $AUD 6,000 ($4,350) each, they weren’t exactly cheap. Still, they looked so lifelike, could move their head and neck, smile, and even talk, so he decided they were worth the shot. He was not disappointed…

Read More »

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.

Read More »

A Chinese man was recently convicted of theft after reportedly drugging his ex-girlfriend and then opening her eyes to unlock her smartphone and transfer money from her account to his.

Breakups can be difficult, painful even, but sometimes it’s not just your heart that’s left broken, but your bank account as well. Take this strange case that recently went viral on Chinese social media. A 28-year-old man was sentenced to over three years in prison for drugging his ex-girlfriend and unlocking her phone while she was unconscious in order to deplete her bank account and settle his gambling debts. He managed to transfer 150,000 yuan ($23,500), before making himself scarce and taking her mobile phone with him.

Read More »

A Chinese art student recently conducted an intriguing experiment in which she spent three weeks living the good life in Beijing without spending a dime, by pretending to be a well-off socialite.

Zou Yaqi, a 23-year-old art student at the University of Beijing has been getting a lot of attention for her unique graduation project which saw her disguising herself as a socialite in order to enjoy special treatment and help her survive for three weeks without spending any money. For most of May of this year, the young student slept on plush sofas in the lobbies of five-star hotels in the Chinese capital, sipping wine at various events and stuffing her face at free buffets. And she did it all just by pretending to be a rich socialite.

Read More »

A Chinese man recently went through the worst week of his life after being arrested five times in only three days due to his uncanny resemblance to a prison escapee.

In October of 2021, a criminal by the name of Zhu Xianjian managed to escape from a prison in Northeast China’s Jilin Province. Authorities scrambled to locate him, but after spending valuable and time and resources they were forced to offer a 150,000 reward, which was then bumped up to 700,000 yuan, for any information on the fugitive’s whereabouts. This made Zhu a valuable target in a part of China where the average monthly income is only 2,000, and an unlucky doppelganger of the criminal suffered the most for it, after being arrested by police no less than five times in three days.

Read More »

A 25-year-old man wound up in the emergency room with a collapsed lung after straining himself while singing karaoke at a friend’s birthday party.

Chinese media recently reported the bizarre case of a young man from Changsha, in China’s Hunan Province, who suffered a serious lung injury by trying to reach the high-pitch tones during a karaoke session. The man, known as Wang Zhe, reportedly attended a friend’s birthday party and decided to show off his voice by singing “New Drunken Concubine”, a song famous for the high-pitched tones it demands. When he reached the high-pitched part for the song, the 25-year-old man really gave it his all, only to feel a sharp pain in his chest which made him cut his act short. The pain was bearable, though, so he didn’t pay too much attention to it until the next day, when he found that he could barely breathe.

Read More »