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 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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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 video doing the rounds on Chinese social media these days has gone viral for showing how easy it is to use AI-powered deepfake technology to transform into virtually anyone online.

App filters and deepfake technology have been around for years now, but the advent of artificial intelligence has elevated them to a whole new level, one which makes it almost impossible to tell what is real on the internet. Take this recent video shared by a Chinese engineer where he demonstrates how easy it is for him to pass as an attractive young girl. All he has to do is put on a wig, enable a piece of software and the AI takes care of the rest. It is able to replace the man’s face with that of an attractive girl but otherwise mimics all of his actions, including eating with chopsticks, pinching his own face, and speaking with the appropriate mouth movement.

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Chinese runner He Jie’s victory at last week’s Beijing Half-Marathon has been overshadowed by a scandal involving three Kenyan runners who appear to let the Chinese competitor win the race.

Sunday’s Beijing Half-Marathon saw 25-year-old He Jie crossed the finish line first, in 1:03:44, under a second ahead of an African trio of runners who collectively claimed second place. It was an impressive achievement for the Chinese runner, especially since one of the runners-up was former 5km world record-holder Robert Keter of Kenya, but his win was quickly called into question on social media after suspicious videos recorded during the race made their way online. The fact that He seemed to be the only one sprinting as he approached the finish line was bizarre enough, but one clip shows Kenya’s Willy Mnangat signaling his countryman Keter and Ethiopian runner Dejene Hailu Bikila to hang back and waving He Jie to overtake them.

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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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A Chinese man recently set a new Guinness Record for the longest time to spray water from the mouth continuously, a whopping 5 minutes and 51.88 seconds.

Water sprouting is a fairly old trick that dates back to the 17th century. It involves drinking large amounts of water and then regurgitating it using muscle control. It’s not something that everyone can do, obviously, but we’ve seen some pretty impressive human water fountains over the years. However, none nearly as impressive as Ma Hui, a 35-year-old Chinese man who recently set a new Guinness record for the longest time spraying water from the mouth. To say that he smashed the previous record would be a gross understatement, considering that he managed to sprout water from his mouth for nearly six minutes, while the previous record holder, Ethiopia’s Kirubel Yilma, had managed to do it for “only” 56.36 seconds.

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In a high-profile divorce case that sparked heated debates in China, a man divorced his wife of 16 years after learning that none of the three children she birthed during their marriage were his.

In December 2007, Chen Zhixian married Yu Hua, a woman eight years his junior, soon after meeting her for the first time. She seemed like a simple, down-to-earth woman, and his parents had long been pressuring him to settle down, so he never really took the time to know her. Soon after tying the knot, Yu Hua informed Chen that she was pregnant, and he was so overwhelmed by the news that he was going to be a father, that he never realized his wife had to have already been pregnant when they met to have a child when she did. Yu gave birth to the couple’s first daughter, and her husband became a long-distance freight driver who was away for most of the year, only coming home, in Dexing, Jianxi Province, for short periods of time.

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A young Chinese woman who went to sleep every night for two years by playing music in her headphones now has to wear a hearing aid to compensate for the hearing loss.

Ms. Wang, a young woman from Shandong, China who works as a secretary at a local firm, recently went to the hospital for an ear exam after noticing that she had hearing problems. Often, when her supervisor would whisper to her during meetings, she had trouble understanding his words and she was worried that this would end up causing problems at work. A thorough examination revealed that the woman had suffered permanent neurological hearing damage in her left ear, which accounted for her trouble hearing her boss. Asked if she had suffered any trauma or if her ears had been subjected to loud noises for long periods of time, Ms. Wang said that the only thing she could think of was listening to music through her headphones every night.

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Stressed Chinese parents are reportedly suffering heart attacks and strokes while helping their children with homework, especially math.

One evening in January, Ms. Dong, a 40-year-old mother-of-two from Hangzhou, was helping one of her sons with his math homework when she lost her cool because the child didn’t understand a problem. Soon after this outburst, the woman felt a splitting headache, followed by vomiting. She tried laying down for a few hours, but her condition didn’t improve at all, so she went to the hospital. After a thorough examination and a CT scan, Ms. Dong was diagnosed with spontaneous subarachnoid hemorrhage, a minor stroke most likely caused by constant long-term stress. The sudden outburst while tutoring her son was just the final nail in the coffin, but this is a scenario that is becoming worryingly frequent in Chinese society.

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For the last 12 years, Chinese professional actor Lu Jingang has been making a living by playing a poor beggar in a popular scenic spot and collecting money and food from kindhearted citizens.

Seeing Lu Jingang on the job, you’d think he was nothing but a poor beggar looking to make ends meet, but that’s only because he is really good at his job. Lu is a professional actor who has been playing the role of a beggar at the Qinming Shanghe Garden scenic area in China’s Henan Province for the past 12 years. With his dirt-covered face, sad puppy eyes, and modest clothing, he has perfected the art of getting tourists to dig deep in their pockets and help a poor guy out. Only he is very good at pretending to be poor because, in reality, he is anything but that. The talented actor reportedly earns up to 70,000 yuan ($9,730) per month, plus more food than he could ever hope to eat.

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A Chinese makeup artist known as Tuzi (Rabbit) has been getting a lot of attention on social media for her ability to completely transform her clients to the point where they are impossible to recognize.

Tuzi runs the Starlight Rabbit Portrait Studio in Yunan Province, but she gets most of her clientele from social media, particularly Douyin (China’s version of TikTok) where she regularly posts clips of impressive makeup transformations, where she either makes her subjects look decades younger than they actually are, turns them into heroes of Wuxia tales, or simply makes them unrecognizable. Over the years, she has had collaborations with fellow influencers and celebrities, including celebrities, actors, and singers.

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