Goon Ten, or Dancing Shrimp, is a popular Thai street food made with live freshwater shrimp that jumps off the plate when marinated alive.

A bunch of small, translucent shrimp trying to wiggle their way out of being eaten alive doesn’t sound like the most appetizing meal, but in Northern Thailand, it’s actually all the rage. Usually sold from double-basket carts, goon ten consists of live freshwater shrimp wriggling in a spicy marinade of ground chili, lime juice, fish sauce, mint, sliced shallots, and lemongrass. It is most often served with a variety of sticky rice. Often described as one of the freshest foods money can buy, dancing shrimp salad will literally jump off the plate, as the live critters try to escape the spicy marinade. It sounds barbaric to eat such a dish in this day and age, but most of those who have tried it were blown away by its texture and complex flavor combination.

Read More »

A Chinese woman suffered vision problems and subsequent depression following a botched double eyelid surgery in which her eyeball was accidentally sewn to the corner of her eye.

In 2021, Ms. Zhang, a woman from Weifang, in China’s Shandong Province, underwent a double eyelid surgery at the Weifang Kuiwen Lirendu Medical Beauty Clinic to correct an unevenness of the corners of her eyes. The woman claims that she felt discomfort during the actual surgery but pushed through it only to discover that her left eyeball and the corner of that eye had been stitched together. At first, the doctor who operated on her told her that everything was fine, but then Zhang started experiencing blurry vision and limited eye movement, and despite attempts to correct the damage, she is still struggling with physical and mental issues more than two years after the procedure.

Read More »

Swinging Bridge, a simple yet hard-to-master game that has been around for about a decade, has been growing in popularity all over China.

Ever try to keep your balance on a wobbly rope bridge as someone else was purposely shaking it to make you fall off? Welcome to Swinging Bridge, the competitive balance game that really puts players’ body coordination and balance to the test. It is usually played by a dozen or so players split into two teams on opposite sides of a wobbly bridge above a shallow pool filled with water or soft mattresses to cushion the fall of those who can’t keep up with the rhythm. Each team tries to swing the bridge from one side to the other to put the other team off balance until one side remains standing. It’s a simple premise, but staying on your feet as the bridge moves at dizzying speeds requires perfect balance and coordination.

Read More »

A Chinese company recently published a series of texts between its customer service and a woman who claimed her daughter had become pregnant after wearing underwear bought from the company.

The unnamed company made the allegations made by an alleged customer public as a warning that such stunts could put entrepreneurs out of business. Apparently, a woman claiming to have purchased underwear from the company on Taobao, one of China’s largest online retail platforms, contacted customer support to complain that her daughter had become pregnant after wearing a pair of brand-new underwear. Despite staff’s attempts to convince the disgruntled woman that such a thing wasn’t possible, she insisted that it was the only way her daughter could have gotten pregnant and demanded an explanation.

All attempts to convince the woman that her theory was physiologically impossible failed, so in the end customer service told her that its factory staff consisted exclusively of women and their boss had gotten a vasectomy, so the girl’s pregnancy had nothing to do with the company.

Read More »

The Nepalese capital city of Kathmandu is home to a peculiar shrine to goddess Vaisha Dev, the patron saint of toothache, where people suffering from dental problems nail rupee coins on an old tree trunk as offerings.

Located on a narrow street in Kathmandu, between Thamel and Kathmandu Durbar Square, the Toothache Tree is undoubtedly one of the most unusual tourist attractions in the Nepalese capital. The Vaisha Dev shrine is said to be a stump cut from the mythical tree known as Bangemudha, but it’s almost impossible to tell that it is a tree at all, as it is completely covered in Nepalese rupee coins nailed onto it. Although it is impossible to know just how old this unique shrine really is, some sources claim that it dates back to the Lichchhavi kingdom that existed in the Kathmandu Valley from approximately 400 to 750 CE. Even though modern dentistry has been practiced in Kathmandu for decades, people still come to the Toothache Tree to nail coins, hoping the goddess will release them of their dental problems.

Read More »

A suspension bridge stretching 150 meters over the Dadong River Gorge in Chongqing, China, has been dubbed the world’s scariest suspension bridge because of how unsafe it looks.

For the past couple of years, clips of heavy construction vehicles traversing a narrow, flimsy-looking bridge suspended about 300 meters above a wide river gorge have constantly been going viral on social media leaving people wondering about its safety. Although it spans 240 meters, this terrifying wonder of engineering has no towers or base for support, relying only on four steel cables to support vehicles up to 45 tonnes in weight. It’s only wide enough for one vehicle to traverse, and despite featuring safety nets on each side, one wrong move can spell disaster. It’s tricky enough to navigate in normal conditions, but imagine having to do so on a particularly windy day.

Read More »

A Wuhan beauty clinic is being accused of tricking a mentally-challenged 19-year-old man into getting a boob job by claiming that he could then make money through live-streaming.

The 19-year-old young man, whose mother claims he has the mind of a 5-year-old boy, reportedly applied for a job at the unnamed beauty clinic, which provided “full board and a monthly salary of 3,000 yuan ($400)”. However, after asking about potential job opportunities for men, he was told that he should first undergo a breast enlargement surgery and then begin working after he recovered. The man’s mother surnamed Lu, recently unveiled chat archives between her son and beauty clinic staff in which he is assured that boob jobs are ok for men as well and that such procedures were very popular among live-streamers. Despite expressing doubt at first, the impressionable youth agreed to get the surgery and even pay for it.

  Read More »

A 38-year-old woman in China has been living in a nursing home for the elderly after becoming ill due to overwork and looking for a way to slow things down in her life.

Ms. Yang had been working as a screenwriter in the film and television industry for 11 years when the hectic schedule and extreme work volume started taking a toll on her health. Earlier this year, she became sick and needed to be hospitalized. Doctors told her that she needed to take it easy on herself or she would experience even more serious health problems, so the 38-year-old woman decided to find a way to slow things down. Both her parents had passed away and she had no other close family, so she started looking for a place where she could both relax and recuperate. While browsing the internet for answers, she read about a retirement home and about how calm and slow life was there, so she decided to try it for herself.

  Read More »

A Vietnamese woman has been dubbed a “sleepless mutant” because of her alleged ability to shun sleep completely. She claims to have remained awake continuously for the last three decades.

49-year-old Nguyen Ngoc My Kim is known as “the seamstress who never sleeps” in her home province of Long An, a nickname she gladly accepts because it apparently suits her. Every time Miss Kim’s reputation attracted the attention of the media, she confirmed that she hadn’t slept in several decades, adding that the complete lack of sleep hadn’t affected her health at all. However, the Vietnamese seamstress has always been quick to point out that she wasn’t born with the ability to function without sleep, she conditioned herself to stay up late ever since she was a little girl. At first, she would lose sleep because she loved reading late into the night, and later, when she started working as a seamstress, she worked late in order to complete her orders. At one point, she didn’t feel the need to sleep at all, so she didn’t.

Read More »

A Japanese man’s personal life has recently become the talk of the internet after he revealed that he is perfectly ok with his wife of three years having a boyfriend and even bringing him into the family home.

Prince Soy, a young Japanese chef and blogger who promotes and sells additive-free okara granola online, has recently been drawing a lot of attention for very different reasons. On July 8th, he took to X (formerly Twitter) to announce that his wife Seira would be returning home after spending six months studying abroad and that she would be bringing her new boyfriend along. The controversial post quickly went viral, sparking a heated online debate about Prince Soy’s marriage and the three-way relationship. The controversy didn’t seem to bother the married man who actually documented the visit of his wife’s boyfriend through short clips and multiple social media posts.

Read More »

A Chinese woman is asking 40,000 yuan ($5,500) from a work colleague and accusing them of slapping her on the back using a kung fu technique that left her unable to work for 12 months.

The woman, surnamed Zheng, recently told a television network in her native city of Hangzhou, China’s Zhejiang province, that she was working as a security guard at a metro station in the city last summer when a colleague ruined her life with a simple slap on the back. She was allegedly napping with her head on a desk during an afternoon break when a male colleague named Lu slapped her on the back to wake her up. Zheng recalls that she felt a sensation she could only compare to an electric shock before feeling her arms and neck go numb. She claims that a photo taken by another coworker clearly showed the mark of five fingers on her back. One thing is for sure, though, Zheng could not work for a year after the incident and now she feels like Lu owes her financial compensation.

Read More »

Japanese police recently arrested a group of unlikely criminals, three grandpas in their late sixties, seventies, and eighties accused of breaking into at least two homes and suspected of ten other burglaries.

Hideo Umino, 88, Hidemi Matsuda, 70, and Kenichi Watanabe, 69 allegedly met behind bars and decided to team up after being released in order to commit crimes more efficiently. The trio, dubbed “G3S” by police (homophonous for ‘grandpas’ in Japanese), stand accused of breaking into an empty house in Sapporo, the main city on the island of Hokkaido in May and stealing 200 yen ($1.3) and three bottles of whisky worth about 10,000 yen ($65). the following month, they allegedly robbed another empty house and stole jewelry worth approximately one million yen (US$6,400). Police is currently investigating the group’s involvement in 10 other burglaries in the cities of Sapporo and Ebetsu.

Read More »

Koi Pla, a popular traditional dish consumed in Thailand and Laos is said to be responsible for the deaths of around 20,000 people every year.

Considered a salad by the Lao people of Laos and Thailand’s Isaan region, Koi Pla consists of minced raw fish, lemon juice, herbs, and spices. As you might have guessed, the fish is the problematic ingredient in this dish, although technically, it’s the parasites living in the fish. Koi Pla is most commonly made with raw freshwater fish from the Mekong basin which are often infested with parasitic flatworms known as live flukes. These parasites have long been known to cause one of the most aggressive types of cancer known to man, cholangiocarcinoma, or bile duct cancer, which causes the deaths of around 20,000 people in Thailand alone.

Read More »

Pan Xiaoting, a 24-year-old Chinese streamer specializing in mukbang (eating large quantities of food for viewers’ enjoyment) recently died during her livestream due to consuming too much food.

China cracked down on mukbang streams and videos in 2020, in a bid to reduce overeating and ‘shameful’ food waste, with offenders risking fines of up to 10,000 yuan ($1,400). However, mukbang streams are still incredibly popular in the Asian country, with thousands of people putting their lives at risk by stuffing their faces with insane amounts of food for views. One such streamer was Pan Xiaoting, a former waitress turned professional mukbanger, who lost her life earlier this month during one of her streams after her body just gave out due to overeating. The autopsy showed that her stomach was filled with undigested food and her abdomen was severely deformed.

Read More »

A 36-year-old man has become known as “China’s most stubborn man” after taking the national college admission exam 16 consecutive years in an attempt to get accepted to the prestigious Tsinghua University.

Tang Shangjun took the gaokao, China’s notoriously difficult college admission exam, in 2009. He scored a mediocre 372 points out of 750, much too low to get into his dream school, Tsinghua University. He was unwilling to compromise, so he spent the next few years studying harder and taking the gaokao. By 2016, his score had improved to a respectable 625 points, more than enough to secure admission to several universities in his home province of Guanxi, but still not good enough for his chosen majors at Tsinghua. So he kept at it, year after year, ignoring all other universities, but never quite reaching the level required to get into his desired faculties at Tsinghua University.

Read More »