The Hongyancun subway station in Chongqing, China is 116 meters deep and the difference in air pressure will often leave users with clogged ears when accessed via its elevator.

When the air pressure outside of the eardrum becomes different than the pressure inside, you experience ear barotrauma. It occurs most often during steep declines and descents and is usually associated with plane takeoffs and landings, or driving up or down mountains. Most subway stations don’t usually cause ear barotrauma, because they aren’t deep or steep enough for your ears to register a significant enough difference in air pressure. But using the elevator to reach the world’s deepest subway station might actually clog up your ears. That’s because it is located 116 meters below the surface, the equivalent of about 40 floors underground.

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The backbend is considered a crucial move in Chinese folk dancing, but it is also the main cause of severe spine cord injuries in children as young as five, leaving thousands of them paralyzed for life.

Ironically, the vast majority of parents pushing their beloved children towards folk dancing have their offspring’s best interest in mind, hoping to improve their physical fitness and overall health, but studies have found that one particular move taught in folk dancing schools is putting children’s lives at risk. Data analyzed by the Chinese Orthopaedic Association showed that the percentage of spinal cord injuries caused by the backbend exploded from just 4% between 1992 and 2002 to a whopping 33.9% of all pediatric spinal injuries between 2015 and 2019. Other reports show that, since 2005, over 1,000 children have been left paralyzed after doing backbends in dance classes, making this move the single greatest paralysis threat for young Chinese children.

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Ox Horn, a sprawling research and development complex built by Huawei in Shenzen, China, features 12 towns and 100 separate buildings, all inspired by European architecture.

If someone were to be teleported in the middle of Ox Horn and made to guess where they were, China would probably be at the bottom of their answer list. That’s because the Chinese tech giant’s new campus is heavily inspired by European architecture, including both replicas of well-known Western landmarks and buildings heavily influenced by various European architectural styles. Completed in 2019 at a cost of a whopping $1.5 billion, Ox Horn houses Huawei’s main research and development offices and features its own tram transportation system, but has come under fire for its obvious European inspiration.

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A Chinese nanny has been forced to take care of a toddler for months without any compensation after the child’s parents disappeared without a trace with money they had borrowed from her.

Ms. Yu, the victim in this bizarre case that has been making headlines in China for over a month, claims that she was hired by a couple in Harbin, Heilongjiang province, to take care of their newborn son for a monthly salary of 7,000 yuan (around $1,000). Shortly after striking a deal, the parents told Ms. Yu that they needed to travel to Tianjin to receive a sizeable inheritance, including property and luxury goods, and asked if she could help them out with a loan for lawyers and paperwork. As insurance that they would pay her back, the couple showed her photos of the goods they had allegedly inherited, as well as of the ownership papers for a hotel. Furthermore, they decided to leave their child with the nanny while they sorted everything in Tianjin, so Ms. Yu assumed that there was no reason to worry. She was wrong!

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A Japanese food restaurant in Singapore recently attracted criticism online for serving a bizarre-looking dish consisting of a raw octopus egg sack.

Known as tako tamago, the strange dish that landed Singapore restaurant Koji in hot water with social media users isn’t the most appetizing food we’ve ever featured on Oddity Central. It’s basically a large white sack with a very flexible membrane that conceals hundreds of oblong octopus eggs swimming in a viscous fluid. The sack is served raw and melted with a blow torch to release the eggs inside onto the plate. The eggs are usually served with soy sauce and have a taste similar to that of salmon roe.

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A Chinese woman who had an affair with a married businessman who died in a car accident used frozen embryos to conceive a child she claimed was his and then sued his family for inheritance.

In a case that sparked a heated debate in China, a Guangdong woman surnamed Leng sued her deceased lover’s wife for part of his fortune as inheritance for her baby boy, who she claimed was her lover’s heir. The unusual dispute began in 2021, soon after the tragic death of the man, surnamed Wen, in a car accident. Leng claimed to have frozen some of her eggs prior to the accident which were later fertilised using Wen’s sperm at a private fertility clinic. In December of 2021, she gave birth to a healthy son she named Xiaowen, and in August of last year, she sued her former lover’s family, asking for a part of their estate as an inheritance for her son.

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Armpit onigiri is a bizarre take on the classic Japanese snack where cute girls allegedly press the rice using their armpits and infuse it with their pheromone-containing sweat.

The origins of armpit onigiri, aka underarm onigiri, are not very clear. Some sources claim it was inspired by an iconic scene in the manga Mahōjin Guru Guru (Magicle Circle Guru Guru), where an old man assists the protagonist by rolling rice balls with his armpits. This theory is supported by the plethora of armpit onigiri anime-style artworks that can be found online, but as for how the bizarre treat transitioned into real life, that still remains a mystery. And it was weird enough to know some people are actually trying armpit-rolled rice balls in their own homes, but apparently there are restaurants that proudly serve armpit onigiri to customers willing to pay 10 times their regular price.

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In many cultures, ears protruding too much from the skull are considered a physical defect, but in China, people are more than happy to go under the knife to attain this physical trait known as “elf ears”.

China’s ‘elf ears’ cosmetic craze received worldwide attention in 2021 when it was covered by some of the world’s largest news outlets after becoming a trending topic on Chinese social media. It all started with a before-and-after photo posted on Weibo, China’s version of X (Twitter), by online influencer Chen Jianan who had recently undergone a procedure to make her ears more visible from the front. Chen was of the belief that this minor change made her face look slimmer and younger, and judging by the number of Chinese cosmetic clinics offering the ‘elf ears’ procedure, she is definitely not the only one. Many people are willing to go under the knife and pay big money to get protruding ears.

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An 18-year-old Chinese girl who became so obsessed with her boyfriend that she tracked his every move and called him 100 times per day was eventually diagnosed with a condition called “love brain”.

Chinese outlet Yueniu News recently reported the case of Xiaoyu, an 18-year-old girl from Sichuan province who became so obsessed with her boyfriend that she made both their lives a living nightmare. The girl’s unsettling behavior began in her first year of university when she became romantically involved with a boy whose name has not been revealed to protect his privacy. According to Du Na, a doctor at The Fourth People’s Hospital of Chengdu, Xiaoyu quickly became unnaturally obsessed with her boyfriend, wanting to know his whereabouts at all times and freaking out when he didn’t immediately reply to her texts. Sounds like your average control freak behavior, but according to the doctor, Xiaoyu suffered from a rare mental disorder called “love brain”.

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A Chinese woman was recently sentenced to prison for kidnapping an 11-year-old girl whom she planned to raise into the perfect wife for her 27-year-old son.

The woman surnamed Yang met the underaged girl on February 13, 2023, while visiting a village in Liupanshui City in the southwestern province of Guizhou. Convinced that she would make a great bride for her much older son, she asked the girl’s parents if they would allow her to come back with her to Qujing City, Yunnan province. The girl’s father refused the proposal, but that only made the woman go ahead with her backup plan. She conspired with her 27-year-old son to kidnap the girl, and on February 14 they waited until the target was home alone and abducted her.

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A Chinese woman is being accused of trying to terminate a co-worker’s pregnancy by poisoning her water to prevent her from taking maternity leave and thus avoiding a higher workload.

In one of the most shocking cases of work-related incidents reported in China, a worker at a government-affiliated institution in Hubei Province allegedly tried to terminate a co-worker’s pregnancy by repeatedly poisoning her water in order to avoid the higher workload caused by her maternity leave. The nefarious plan reportedly came to light when the victim noticed that her water kept tasting strange, regardless of its source. At first, she was convinced that it was the office’s water supply, but the taste persisted even after she switched to bottled water. That’s when she decided to investigate further.

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Filipino online influencer Abby Domer Salle has come under fire for alleged animal cruelty after being spotted wearing a live chick in a small metal cage on her head on the streets of Manila.

Inspired by Japanese Kawaii culture, the so-called ‘duckling fashion’ has become very popular in Southeast Asia in the last few years. The exact origins of this fashion trend are unclear, but it has been linked to anime series or characters. There are multiple variations of this trend all over the world, but in its simplest form it involves wearing decorative plastic or plush ducklings on one’s head. However, one Filipino influencer recently took this already unusual fashion trend and took it to an all-new level of weirdness by caging a live chick and wearing it in public as a bizarre hat.

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Vietnamese doctors recently saved a young man’s life by removing a live 30-cm-long eel from his abdomen, where it had caused intestinal perforations.

On March 20, a 34-year-old man was admitted to the Hai Ha District Medical Center in Quang Ninh Province, Vietnam, with severe abdominal cramps. Since the patient was in too much pain to be questioned about his symptoms, the hospital staff conducted an X-ray and an ultrasound which revealed a foreign body in his abdomen, as well as intestinal perforation and peritonitis. Doctors decided that the best course of action was to conduct surgery, remove the suspicious object, and try to mitigate the damage to the man’s intestines. Upon opening up the patient’s abdomen, doctors were surprised to find that the foreign object was a 30 cm live eel.

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Virtual news anchors and presenters have been around for quite a while now, but they’ve gotten so good that Government organizations are using them to replace actual humans and save money.

The provincial government of Jeju Island, in South Korea, recently hired a news anchor to conduct its weekly YouTube program, Weekly Jeju, for a fraction of the cost of its former employees. J-na seems very experienced at her job despite her young age, but that’s only because she isn’t a real human, but a computer-generated virtual avatar managed by a private contractor. The news she appears to read on-screen is also a script generated by AI language models like ChatGPT. According to the island province, switching to a virtual news anchor was a much cheaper option, as J-na and the news generation script reportedly cost only 600,000 won ($450) per month.

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A couple of Taiwanese university students are being accused of faking frostbite injuries that eventually warranted a double amputation to defraud insurance companies.

Taiwan’s Criminal Investigation Bureau has accused a university student surnamed Chang of conspiring with a former high-school colleague named Liao to orchestrate a bizarre insurance fraud in January of last year. Evidence presented to prosecutors shows that in early January of last year, Chang took out policies covering disabilities, injuries, health, and travel safety from at least five insurers. On the night of January 26, both Chang and Liao rode their motorcycles through Taipei, to make it seem like one of them suffered frostbite because of the cold weather. In reality, the frostbite was self-inflicted and caused by a bucket of dry ice.

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