A 90-year-old Chinese woman unknowingly used an old hand grenade to crack nuts and hammer nails for two decades after finding the unexploded ordinance in a field one day.

The woman, surnamed Qin, told Chinese reporters that she was working on her farm in Xiangyang, Hubei province when she found this strange “metal lump” with a wooden handle. Convinced it was a makeshift hammer, she took it home and used it to pound all kinds of tough objects, from nuts to metal nails. It was only last week when a team of men working on demolishing her old house noticed the hand grenade that the retired woman learned she had been gambling with her life every time she used it. And she used it a lot, as police reported that the grenade’s wooden handle had become smooth and glossy from years of use, while the metallic head was full of dents.

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A military buff in China alerted authorities after discovering that the discarded books he had bought from a recycling station for just one dollar were classified military documents.

China’s Ministry of State Security recently took to social media to praise the actions of a military enthusiast surnamed Zhang who had alerted authorities after buying some military books from a recycling station without knowing that they actually contained confidential military secrets. Realizing the seriousness of the situation, Zhang called a hotline to report the incident and then handed over the documents to the appropriate authorities. The Ministry praised his responsible reaction, acknowledging that things could have been very different had the military secrets ended up in the hands of bad actors. But how do such secrets end up on the open market, especially in a strict country like China?

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The unusual love story between a 23-year-old woman from China’s Hebei Province and an 80-year-old man she met at a nursing home sparked a heated debate in Chinese society.

23-year-old Xiaofang (pseudonym), met the love of her life while working as a volunteer at a retirement home in Hebei Province. 80-year-old Mr. Li (pseudonym) was a resident there and the two quickly became friends after realizing that they shared many interests and hobbies. But, as time went by, their friendship evolved into something more, as Xiaofang was attracted by Mr. Li’s maturity, stability, and wisdom, while he was moved by Xiaofang’s youthful vitality and kindness. Unfortunately, the young girl’s family did not approve of her romantic relationship with a man old enough to be her grandfather, but she decided to follow her heart and severed ties with her parents to be with Mr. Li.

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A Chinese zoo has given up on its plans to help an overweight leopard lose weight after two months of efforts yielded virtually no results.

Back in March, a leopard at the Panzhihua Park Zoo in China’s Sichuan Province became an overnight internet sensation after photos and videos of him went viral online. The overweight feline quickly became known as ‘China’s Officer Clawhauser’, a reference to the overweight police officer from Disney’s hit animated movie, Zootopia. Many people joked that the fat leopard resembled a seal, while others took his deformed frame more seriously, expressing concerns about the animal’s health and general well-being. Due to mounting criticism, the zoo was eventually to put out a statement, promising to make a series of changes to make the leopard lose some of its extra weight. However, it recently announced that its initiative failed miserably, as the real-life Officer Clawhauser hasn’t lost any weight in two months.

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Spring onions and coffee definitely don’t sound made for each other, but spring onion-infused lattes are apparently all the rage in China these days.

A simple search for the #springonionlatte hashtag on TikTok or Instragram will yield dozens of photos and videos with scallion-topped latte cups. They first went viral last month, when multiple Asian publications covered the unusual drink, calling it one of the most surprising combinations ever attempted. Apparently, to make a good green onion latte, you first have to mash a few green onions in the cup, then add ice, milk, and coffee, before finally topping it off with lots of chopped green onions, because why not?

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China’s Yuntai Waterfall is generally regarded as Asia’s most impressive waterfall and is often described as a natural wonder. However, it turns out that its spectacular water show is artificially enhanced.

Yuntai Waterfall is the most popular scenic spot in the Yuntai Mountains, drawing millions of tourists annually. The tallest waterfall in Asia (a sheer drop of 314 meters) offers stunning vistas and a breathtaking spectacle that was recently revealed to be the result of modern technology. A Chinese vlogger managed to make their way to the top of Yuntai Waterfall where they spotted large metal pipes feeding water into the waterfall for an enhanced video effect. At first, the viral video of the discovery was criticized as fake, but sources from the Yuntai Mountain Scenic Area acknowledged that the waterfall is slightly enhanced to ensure a pleasant experience for tourists, regardless of natural factors.

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There is a bizarre craze sweeping China’s primary and secondary schools. Students are adding all sorts of smelly ingredients to plastic bottles to create the stinkiest recipes possible.

Chinese media recently reported multiple incidents involving bottles of foul-smelling water created by young school students using online recipes. Apparently, they were related to a strange craze where students add all sorts of disgusting ingredients to a plastic bottle of water and let the mix ferment to create the stinkiest concoction possible. They write the recipe on the bottle, and if stinky enough, share it online so that other can take the experiment even further. It has been dubbed the “stink-raising water” craze and education authorities are scrambling to prevent it from becoming even more popular, as experts believe it puts public health at risk.

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The femur is widely considered the hardest or second hardest bone in the human body, but a 35-year-old man in China allegedly managed to break his just by coughing.

Doctors at the Second People’s Hospital of Fujian Province in China recently reported the shocking case of a 35-year-old man referred to only as Mr. Ye who suffered a fractured femur during a coughing fit. According to Dong Zhong, director of the Department of Orthopedics at the hospital, the unusual incident occurred during a coughing fit, which is unusual considering that men in Ye’s age range typically suffer femur fractures as a result of serious trauma, such as car accidents or falls from considerable height. Mr. Ye told doctors that he felt a sharp pain immediately after a particularly strong cough, but he simply brushed it off as a cramp. It was only after walking became difficult because of the pain that he decided to seek medical help.

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China’s Guizhou Province is home to about a dozen conical hills known as the Anlong Pyramids because of their resemblance to the much more famous pyramids of Egypt.

In recent years, Anlong County has become a popular tourist destination thanks in no small part to its pyramid-like mountains which have captured the imaginations of millions of people around the world. Apart from their pyramid-like shape, these formations also feature layers of rock stacked on top of each other so neatly that you could swear they were placed like that by someone or something. Ever since photos and videos of the Anlong Pyramids started circulating online around 2018, conspiracy theories about their origin began appearing as well, and despite experts’ best efforts to convince the public that these pyramids are completely natural, some people still believe that they are the work of an ancient human civilization or of aliens.

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Photos and videos of unmanned vending machines selling live animals like cats, small dogs, and rodents installed in various Chinese cities have been going viral and sparking outrage among the general public.

The significant technological developments of the last decade have created a fast-growing “unmanned economy” that continues to spread into almost every sector of the global economy. However, there are still some industries that are incompatible with unmanned, self-service devices. The pet-selling sector has so far been considered incompatible, but things are apparently very different in China, as more and more unmanned vending machines selling live pets are being spotted all around the country. One such video showing a pet vending machine in a busy part of Beijing recently went viral on Chinese social media, sparking a heated debate around the ethics of this controversial business model.

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A Chinese man wanted for murder managed to avoid police detection for over 20 years by pretending to be a deaf and mute scavenger in the mountains of Hubei Province.

On the evening of May 22, 2004, a young and quick-tempered man named Xiao got into a heated argument with a neighbor in his home village of Oumio Daying, in Xianyang’s Xiangcheng District. At one point, Xiao allegedly picked up a shovel and hit his neighbor over the head with it, killing him on the spot. That night, knowing that he risked spending the rest of his life behind bars or worse, getting the death penalty, Xiao decided to abandon his wife and 11-year-old child to go on the run. He ran into the mountains of Anxi County, in Fujian Province, where he became a scavenger selling scraps to survive. To make sure he never gave anything away about his past life, Xiao pretended to be deaf and mute for the next 20 years, only smiling at people and communicating through gestures.

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A Chinese man recently lost his life while performing a controversial type of exercise that requires practitioners to hang only by their chins to relieve neck and spine pain by reducing pressure on nerves.

Over the past decade or so, a bizarre form of exercise has been getting traction throughout China. It basically involves swinging one’s body while hanging in the air supported only by a leather chin strap. Reportedly invented around 2017 by Shenyang native Sun Rongchun as a way to relieve back pain, neck swings quickly became a familiar sight in parks and outdoor gyms all over the country. Although hanging in the air by one’s chin doesn’t sound like the safest thing in the world, paractiotioners swear by it, claiming it does wonder for neck and back pain. Still, doctors have been warning about the dangers of neck hanging for years and a recent tragedy suggests that when performed incorrectly, this type of exercise can be lethal.

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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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During the month of May, camel riding is such a popular pastime at the Mingsha Mountain and Crescent Spring scenic spots in China’s Kumtag Desert that local authorities use camel traffic lights to avoid traffic jams.

One of the last things you would expect to find in the middle of a desert is a functional traffic light, but you can find several of them in the sand dunes of the Mingsha Mountain and Crescent Lake Nature Park, in northwestern China’s Gansu Province. During the annual holiday at the beginning of May, thousands of people flock to these natural tourist spots and engage in a variety of activities, the most popular of which is undoubtedly camel riding. In 2023, there were around 2,400 camels available for riding, as well as tens of thousands of tourists per day at the Mingsha Mountain and Crescent Spring scenic spots alone, which resulted in serious traffic congestion problems. Luckily, local authorities came up with an ingenious solution – camel traffic lights.

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