A 54-year-old man from Jilin, China, is making international headlines for his bizarre exercise routine. Cong Yan claims daily walks with a 40-kilogram rock balancing on his head have helped him lose 30 kilograms in the last three years.

Cong Yan is a familiar, albeit unusual sight in Jilin parks. Every day, he can be seen walking on the narrow pathways, ascending and descending steps alongside other health-conscious Chinese trying to keep in shape. But what sets him apart from everybody else is the heavy-looking block of solid concrete dangling on top of his head.

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In what is one of the strangest stories of spousal devotion I’ve ever come across, a woman in China divorced her paralyzed husband, married his best friend, and together they are now taking care of her ex.

Xu Xihan and Xie Xiping, from the Chinese city of Ankang, in China’s Shanxi Province, got married in 1996, and had a daughter the very next year. Their life was happy one, and a few years later Xieping gave birth to a healthy baby boy who brought them even more joy. But tragedy struck in 2002, when Xu Xihan was involved in a terrible accident which left him paralyzed from the waist down. He received 40,000 yuan ($6,000) in compensation, but lost his ability to walk, forever. The man remembers their neighbors kept telling him that his wife was going to live him in just three months, but Xieping proved them all wrong, as years went by and she and the kids remained by his side.

However, Xu wanted her wife to be happy and started pressuring her into divorcing him and finding another man who could take care of her properly. The woman wouldn’t hear of it, though, and kept refusing his request for years. In 2009, Xieping finally gave in to the paralyzed man’s plea to divorce him, and married his colleague and best friend, Liu Zongkui. In 2012, she gave birth to Zonkui’s son, but she never abandoned her ex-husband. Instead, she and Liu began caring for her ex and the kids together.

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Loans are notoriously hard to get for Chinese college students, and some of them will agree to almost anything for some much needed funds, even providing nude photos of themselves as collateral to unscrupulous loan sharks.

The disgusting practice was brought to national attention when a victim – a university student going by the pseudonym of Li Li – desperately sought help from the police after loan sharks requested that she send them a photo of herself in the nude, holding her ID card. The online loan shark group had granted her a 500 yuan ($76) loan in February with a weekly interest rate of 30%. Unable to pay it back in time, the debt inflated beyond 10,000 yuan in a very short while, and at one point the loan sharks threaten not to renew her loan unless she also provided a nude photo of herself holding her ID, which Li reluctantly agreed to. However, after four months, her debt had inflated to 55,000 yuan, at which point she went to the police asking for help.

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A picturesque Chinese village where humans live alongside hundreds of macaques sounds like a great vacation destination, but for the local population it’s apparently a daily living hell.

A little over a decade ago, authorities in Xianfeng village, in southwestern Sichuan Province came up with an ingenious plan to boost tourism and turn their quaint settlement in one of China’s most popular destinations – attracting wild macaques from the surrounding mountains to their village. Locals spent 48 days drawing in 73 monkeys using food, and their plan worked like a charm. The animals started settling in, and as word about a real-life monkey village spread throughout the region, businessman interested in investing in the novel tourist attraction arrived in Xianfeng.

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In the span of just one year, a young Chinese conman reportedly managed to fool 11 other men into thinking that he was their dream girl before disappearing with large sums of money. Believe it or not, the guy even managed to trick one of them into a wedding after telling him that “she” was pregnant.

A man surnamed Wang, from China’s Huaiyang county, recently got the shock of his life after police told him that his “pregnant” runaway bride was actually a guy cross-dressing as a woman. Last October, Wang was overjoyed when his girlfriend, who he had met online, told him she was expecting a baby. The man’s family shared their happiness and immediately started planning a big wedding and grand feast. The joyous event went off without a hitch, but three days later, the bride simply vanished, taking with her gifts and valuables worth tens of thousands of Chinese yuan. He was probably to embarrassed to report his wife missing just days from the wedding, and his family thought they probably had a fight, so they didn’t alert the authorities either.

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Who needs a boat when you’ve got incredible core strength and balance? Two simple bamboo poles will do if you’re anything like this 51-year-old Chinese man who is able to cross a large river standing on one pole and rowing with the other!

A video of Fang Shuyun’s unique commute has recently gone viral on Chinese social media and millions were left baffled by the ease with which the middle-aged man navigates the waters of Fuchun River, sailing smoothly and swiftly on a 23-foot bamboo cane. He was reportedly traveling at a speed of 100 to 164 feet per minute.

Fang, a native of Hangzhou city, first tried out the feat one night in 2014 after he missed the last boat ride home from work. He spotted a bamboo pole floating in the river and decided to use it to get to the other side. He failed in that first attempt, but came away with the feeling that he could complete the ride if he worked on his sense of balance. So Fang spent the past two years practicing, and it appears that he has finally managed to master the skill. “The leg you put forward carries the center of the body weight so you should use it to step on the bamboo pole evenly,” he explained, speaking to local media. “Then you use the big toe of your other leg to stop the stick from rolling in water. As long as you achieve a balance and stop the bamboo from turning, it’s possible to cross a river on a single bamboo pole given you’re fit enough.”

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In a blatant display of patriotism, a Chinese newlywed couple spent their first night of wedded bliss copying parts of the Communist party’s constitution, by hand. Most people would find this incredibly unromantic, but for Li Yunpeng and his bride Chen Xuanchi, there couldn’t have been a better way to kick start their married life. In fact, they viewed the task as a way of creating “beautiful memories” of their wedding night.

Both Li and Chen are government employees from China’s Jiangxi province. On Monday, photographs of their wedding night appeared in online newspapers, along with a brief account by their employers, the railway bureau of Nanchang city. “Laying down a sheet of paper and neatly copying down out the Party Constitution left blissful memories of their wedding night for these newlyweds,” the report read.

The photos later went viral on social media. The couple can be seen seated next to a double bed decorated with balloons, but they appear oblivious to the romantic decor, completely engrossed in transcribing parts of the 17,000-word, 11-chapter text. They apparently did it as a part of a government-backed challenge called ‘Copy the Communist party constitution for 100 days’.  The initiative was launched in March in a bid to raise awareness of party’s rules, its constitution, and the speeches of general secretary Xi Jinping. As reported by the Global Times, the challenge meant to target party members whose confidence in communism and socialism is beginning to crumble, and those who “advocate western values, violate party rules, work inefficiently, or behave unethically.”

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In a bid to get the attention of his crush, a young man from China spent three nights arranging 846 Rubik’s cubes to create a giant 2.6m x 1.3m pixelated portrait of her. Sadly, the grand gesture got him nowhere – the gift was eventually rejected by the girl of his dreams and he now has no idea what to do with it.

Tong Aonan, a 27-year-old mechanic from Shenyang, spent two whole months mapping out the portrait design before he actually got to work on the project. He also spent $460 on the Rubik’s cubes, and solved each one of them to fit his design. He then stacked the cubes in a wooden frame one by one to make the actual portrait, which he gifted to his crush. And she refused to accept it.

Surprisingly, Tong isn’t taking the rejection too seriously. “I’m not giving it too much thought,” he said. “I simply wanted to surprise her and tell her I like her… but I was rejected.” Not everyone is able to share his nonchalance though – lots of people online are leaving comments about ‘feeling his pain’ and questioning her for rejecting him.

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23 years ago, Yue Jin lost both his legs and nine of his fingers in a freak accident. He thought his life was over, but somehow found the strength to start over and today he is one of the most sought-after bicycle repairmen in Jilin City, northern China.

In 1993, while he was cutting firewood in the mountains of Jilin province, Yue Jin accidentally fell into a deep valley and almost died. His injuries were so severe that doctors had to amputate both his legs and all but one of his ten fingers. For a man who made his living with his hands, it was almost a death sentence. And it was even more devastating considering Yue had also lost his wife just three days after childbirth, leaving him to take care of their daughter. After the accident, he couldn’t see any other way to do that than go out and beg for a few coins and some food, so he left his daughter in the care of some neighbors and ventured out on to the streets.

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Proving that every cloud has a silver lining is 24-year-old Deng Mei, a young entrepreneur from China who is making the most of her Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). She has managed to leverage the frustrating condition to her advantage, using it to set up a successful business that helps wealthy people organise their wardrobes.

Deng Mei recently made headlines in Chinese media for her job as a professional wardrobe organiser for wealthy clients in the city of Chengdu, China’s Sichuan Province. Although she credits her previous jobs as salesperson at a fashion boutique and as a nanny as inspiration for her unusual business, the young entrepreneur admits that her obsession with tidiness also helped a lot.

She first came up with the idea for the unique service towards the end of 2014, during a babysitting job. “I have a little bit of OCD,” she said. “I love cleaning my room. I can’t bear to see a mess. I was helping a client organizing her wardrobe out of my paid hours because I couldn’t stand it. Then my client said: ‘Why don’t you turn this into a business?’”

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In accordance with his wishes, revered Buddhist monk Fu Hou was mummified upon his death in 2012. But his companions at Chongfu Temple, in southeastern China, felt the need to do something more in order to commemorate his devotion to Buddhism. So they made the decision to cover his body in gold, an honor reserved for the holiest of men.

Born in 1919, Fu Hou began practicing Buddhism at the age of 13 and devoted his whole life to it, until his death at age 94. His peers and disciples remember him as a quiet, compassionate person who meticulously practiced his beliefs until the very end. Shortly before his death, he had expressed the desire for his body to be preserved. And after his passing, two mummification experts were brought in to wash, treat, and place his body in a sitting position inside a large pottery jar. Preservatives like Crushed charcoal and sandalwood were stuffed into the jar before being sealed shut.  

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Living by yourself can be scary and daunting, but this Chinese man has managed to survive in complete isolation for 10 long years. Liu Shengjia was recently discovered living all by himself in the completely abandoned village of Xuenshanshe, in northwest China’s Gansu Province, after his mother and brother’s death over a decade ago.

Xuenshanshe village was once home to about 20 families, but was slowly abandoned by its residents as resources became scarce. Families ended up moving away to towns and cities in search of work, and those left behind eventually passed away. By 2006, he was left alone to take care of his bedridden mother and younger brother, both of whom died within a year, making him the only inhabitant of the village. Anyone else in his position might have left for better prospects, if only for fear of losing their mind to loneliness, but Liu stayed behind and made a life for himslef.  “In the beginning, I wasn’t able to sleep at night while listening to the howling of wild dogs,” he admitted, speaking to the People’s Daily. “But after I started to tend a few sheep and they’ve become my companions, I slowly got used to living alone.”

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A college professor in China has been suspended after giving his students a rather controversial test during their final exam. In a bid to prepare them for real life, he asked his students to gulp down glasses of baijiu, a Chinese liquor, grading them based on how much they were able consume.

“You’re all going to do sales jobs after graduation, drinking baijiu is the thing you must learn!” Gu Ming told the students of his Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) class at Guizhou Anshun Vocational Institute. He had poured the alcohol into dozens of plastic cups and laid them out on the desk in his office, asking his students to drink up.

“Those who ‘ganbeied’ (finished) a full glass of liquor get a full 100 mark for their exam, half glass gets 90 marks, and a sip gets 60,” one of Gu Ming’s students later posted on Chinese social media website Weibo. “Those who do not drink at all will fail.”

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Meet Liang Xiang, a 61-year-old age-defying grandpa with a perfectly chiseled body and six-pack abs. Looking at his photos, you’d think he spent his whole life working out, but Liang claims he only started hitting the gym 10 years ago.  The sexagenarian is now so obsessed with fitness that he spends several hours a day doing intense workout routines.

Liang spent most of his youth running a lighting business in China’s Yunnan province, and later used his earnings to pursue his love of driving. After a few races outside the country, he realised that his physical condition was holding him back from performing well. So he started working out and eventually got this chiseled body that sparks the envy of men half his age. Uncle Liang –  as he’s come to be known online – has been pumping iron around a decade now, and also follows a diet plan that includes seven small meals per day.

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Problems in identifying identical twins makes for excellent comedy, but in real life it can be quite frustrating, especially if you have two pairs of identical twins married to each other. That’s why these newlywed twins from China have decided to get plastic surgery in a bid to make themselves less identical and thus avoid the undesirable complications that could arise from failing to tell each other apart.

Zhao Xin and his twin brother Zhao Xun, from Yuncheng in China’s Shanxi Province, have been confounding relatives and friends ever since they started dating twin sisters Yun Fei and Yun Yang from a neighboring village. Although they went to the same high school in Shanxi, they only got together last year after being introduced by a matchmaker. A month later, the four of them were engaged.

Both pairs of identical twins look so alike that it’s apparently impossible to tell them apart, even by their voices.  On their wedding day, their guests and even their own parents had a tough time identifying them, checking and double checking that they weren’t marrying the wrong partners.

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