While good food might sell itself, there’s nothing like some good ol’ ‘ripped’ charm to boost sales. The owner of a Chinese fast-food stall is using this fact to his advantage. In a brilliant marketing move, he recently employed a muscular male model to flip and sell burgers to his customers. The humble stall has now become a hit with the ladies, sales are through the roof and he’s making a killing!

Wang Meng, who owns a small food stall at a night market in Shenyang city, said that he decided to employ a man known as ‘John’ because of his impressive physique. John doesn’t speak much Chinese, but Meng seems to have made up for that by having John flip hamburgers topless. After all, there’s no language like body-language. Meng said he specifically chose hamburgers because he didn’t really want to challenge his new chef’s culinary skills (or lack thereof).

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Kung Fu master Liu Fei, from Mianyang, South-West China, can exhale smoke and fire from his mouth, sort of like a dragon. And I’m not talking about the kind of fire breathing performances you get to see at the circus, either; this man seems to be able to produce fire from within his body, exhaling it through his sawdust-packed mouth.

The viral video of Fei’s performance and is really quite mind-blowing. He starts off by stuffing large quantities of sawdust in his mouth. Then, he makes a hole into the sawdust, with his finger, and starts  to blow out small puffs of smoke through the dust.

Later, he uses a fan to blow air into his ear and even more smoke comes out of his mouth. The performance culminates with actual flames coming out of his mouth, which get bigger and and more frequent towards the end. The whole thing seems miraculous, but after watching the video, some forum users came up with a few plausible explanations.

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An elderly Chinese couple were recently forced to go to court to teach their freeloading son a lesson. Xu Qing, the 29-year-old son, never went to work because he found it too boring. He chose a life of comfort at his parents’ home instead, where all his needs were being met. But the situation got out of hand when he brought his girlfriend to live with him, and expected the same service for her as well.

It all started when Qing, an only child, left university; he simply refused to go to work like other people his age. His mother, Xu Hsing, cooked and cleaned for him out of love. Qing was the typical spoilt son – he ate, slept and surfed the internet all day long. His father Ku managed to find him a job, but he quit after only three months because it was too dull.

Soon, Qing managed to meet a jobless woman online, and the pair hit it off. She moved in with the family after dating Qing for only a month. The parents were horrified, and much to their chagrin, discovered that they were expected to cook and clean for the girlfriend as well! This was the last straw – they put down an ultimatum asking Qing to get a job or move out.

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Sports officials in Tonghe County in northeastern China’s Heilongjiang province have built the world’s first and only rectangular running track. That’s a weird shape for a track, but their reason for building it is weirder – because they couldn’t get an oval one ready in time for an inspection!

The running track was built as a part of a larger, big-budget project – the renovation of Tonghe County’s 10,000-square foot stadium. Local authorities were behind schedule and time was running out. With a Communist Party inspection looming over their heads, the managers of the project simply decided to ditch the traditional oval design and go for a simpler rectangular one instead.

While the rest of the stadium looks brilliant with its perfectly laid grass and excellent seating facilities, the rectangular track sticks out like a sore thumb. The original track at the stadium was actually oval, but the officials explained that it was so worn out that it couldn’t just be used as a template for re-painting. The inspection was a last-minute decision, and the managers had to complete the track in a hurry, so they simply decided on a rectangle with 90-degree bends that were easier to measure and lay out.

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Zhang Wei, a retired soldier from Qingdao city, China’s Shandong Province, is a huge fan of Transformers. The 38-year-old has been collecting Transformers models of varying sizes since 2002. And when he got married, his wife joined him with great enthusiasm. Today, the couple’s home is filled with a massive collection of 380 models worth a whopping US $32,000.

Optimus Prime, Megatron, Bumblebee, Red Spider, Metroplex and pretty much every other transformer feature in Zhang’s collection, neatly arranged on special shelves fitted on to his living room walls. His favorite pastime is to dismantle each model and assemble it again.

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When 63-year-old Ding Liang was found crying on a street in eastern China’s Hangzhou city, her story attracted widespread media coverage. The poor woman had traveled five hours from her village to meet her son and his newborn child. Unfortunately, the son refused to see her for the strangest of reasons – because she’s too ugly!

Ding’s confession has pretty much shocked the nation – her story is currently one of the most discussed in Chinese social media with hundreds of thousands of hits and comments. It all started when 53-year-old local man Hsin Pai spotted Ding standing outside a housing complex. He asked her what the matter was and the tired old woman spilled her guts to him.

Ding told Hsin that she was from a village outside Yuyao city, in the same province as Hangzhou. Years ago, her son moved to the city to pursue a college education – he did well at school, landed a job at an upmarket car dealership and got married. When Ding attended the wedding dressed like a peasant, the son was apparently mortified and too embarrassed to admit his relationship to her.

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While most elderly men go to the park for a leisurely stroll, retired railway worker Zhou Chengli prefers a more ‘hardcore’ workout. The 70-year-old practices a nut-crushing routine of hitting himself repeatedly in the crotch with hammers, metal weights and bricks. He doesn’t flinch, even for a second, as he pounds on his ‘balls of steel’.

Zhou, who hails from China’s Hubei Province, says that he has been practicing the ancient art of ‘iron crotch qigong’, which is one of the rarest and most difficult disciplines of Shaolin kung fu. The practice involves daily exercises that train men to sustain severe blows to the groin area.  Locally known as ‘Tie Dang Gong’, iron crotch qigong is a secret Daoist technique taught to only the most trusted disciples. Once mastered, it is believed to make a man invincible in the battle field.

The exact technique is still largely unknown; it has been carefully guarded for fear of misuse and only passed on from teacher to student in utmost confidence. A few rare photographs show masters using their crotch to lift heavy weights. Some of them can be seen taking hard kicks and hammer-blows to their privates without batting an eyelid. Read More »

When Chinese banking regulator Li Jianhua sat down to work on the night of April 22, he probably had no idea that he was writing his last report. The 48-year-old simply collapsed the next morning, having overworked himself through the night. His sudden death elicited mixed reactions from various sections of Chinese society. While his employers – the Chinese Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) – are calling him ‘a model for party members and cadres’, many people are taking to social media to express outrage over the incident.

Li, who joined the Communist Party in 1985, worked for the government in securities and banking regulation. He was brought into the CBRC in 2005, to improve the standards of trust financing – one of the most sensitive areas of China’s financial sector. Li was personally responsible for overseeing investments worth at least $6 trillion. His colleagues remember him as a busy man who never discussed his personal problems, and had very little time for his family.

According to news reports, Li had little regard for his health and always chose work over personal well-being. He had once suffered a terrible outbreak of shingles, but he still chose to carry on with an inspection tour to Hunan province. In early April, his doctor noticed a few disturbing symptoms and advised him to visit the hospital for a checkup. In response, he simply smiled and said he didn’t have any time. A few weeks later, he was dead.

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Drinking red blood-like drinks has been a growing trend in China for a few years now, but it really became a social phenomenon among teenagers after the launch of the fifth season of American TV drama, The Vampire Diaries.

Now you can find red “Blood type energy potions” pretty much everywhere. They can be ordered online, or enjoyed in the company of fellow would-be vampires at themed cafes. One such establishment recently opened in Liaoning, and quickly became a hit with youths fascinated by Dracula and other popular blood-suckers. The staff is dressed as doctors and nurses, drinks are only available in plastic blood bags inscribed with different blood types, coffins adorn the walls and vampire-themes music plays in the background.

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While some people enjoy luxurious travel, others are more than happy to make do with the bare minimum. A clever Chinese hotelier has used this fact to his advantage – he constructed a highly unusual, low cost hotel by reusing industrial grade concrete tubing.

The ingenious young man, from Henan Province, managed to acquire several meters of recycled concrete tubing and sliced it into 15 separate mini structures. Each sturdy structure, designed to accommodate two people, is equipped with a double bed, a restroom, and a few ‘extra touches’ like air conditioning and sound proofing. The exteriors of the circular dwellings have even been decorated with some street art to make them look more appealing.

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A jilted man impulsively purchased hundreds of IMAX tickets to the latest Transformers film, last week, and posted photos of the receipts online. Even as his bizarre move shocked movie-goers across Beijing, the crazed gentleman gave the tickets away for free to everyone who shared his post on social media. It turns out it was all just a desperate ploy to prove to his ex-girlfriend that he is no longer poor.

The woman in question had dumped our man, Wang, seven years ago. That’s a long time in terms of break-up years, but it looks like Wang still hasn’t gotten over her. He wrote on his Weibo microblog that she had ditched him when he couldn’t afford to take her to the cinema. To add insult to injury, she moved away from him, from their hometown of Nanjing to Beijing.

Clearly stung by the break-up, Wang spent the past seven years working hard to make his Shanghai-based business a success. And he was finally able to afford not just one, but hundreds of cinema tickets worth 250,000 yuan (US $40,000). He claimed that the amount is only half of his present monthly income. He booked all the seats in four of the six IMAX theaters in Beijing, for last Friday’s screening of Transformers: Age of Extinction.

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Toddler Cheng Cheng, from eastern China’s Anhui province, got his first taste of wine when he was only 10 months old. His father put wine-dipped chopsticks into his mouth just to get him to stop crying, and the boy developed a taste for it instantly. As he grew older, he started to consume alcohol in increasing quantities. Now, at age two, he is probably the world’s youngest alcoholic. He’s been dubbed the ‘Little Winebibber’ because he prefers alcohol over milk.

At first, Cheng Cheng’s parents and relatives joked about his affinity towards alcohol. They found it funny and cute as he guzzled an entire bottle of beer without any side effects – something highly unusual and unexpected of a child. He didn’t experience any of the symptoms of alcohol consumption, not even an increased heart rate. Cheng Cheng simply emptied the bottle without batting an eyelid, and then asked for some more! “At that time, all of us in the family have already thought that this child can really drink a lot when he grows up,” said his aunt, Cai Teng.

But now that the toddler’s story is out, the family has been severely criticized for encouraging such behavior. The local media has displayed outrage, while doctors have urged the parents to immediately put a stop to Cheng Cheng’s drinking habit. Several pediatricians have warned that since children of his age do not have well developed body organs, even a little bit of alcohol can seriously damage their health. Read More »

Who knew that the World Cup Fever could actually kill people? Football fans in China are actually succumbing to the ‘disease’ – three men have died so far just from World Cup excitement and exhaustion.

The first to go was 51-year-old Li Mingqiang, from Liaoning Province. He started feeling unwell during the match between Spain and the Netherlands, and his friends quickly called an ambulance. Unfortunately, the paramedics were unable to save his life; he died of a heart attack on the way to the hospital.

Just hours later, a similar incident was reported – a 25-year-old man was found dead in his apartment in Suzhou in Jiangsu Province, on Saturday morning. Once again, he was rushed to the hospital and declared dead on arrival. The police said that the man had been watching the World Cup on his computer.

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Seven years ago, a homeless man in China was scavenging in a garbage bin when he found something that would change his life forever – a tiny baby girl! He was so overcome with emotion that he decided to raise her as his own child. 50-year-old Xiong Jianguo now lives under a bridge in Nanchang City with his seven-year-old adopted daughter, whom he named Yanyan.

“I guess she was one of those children that was born to a family who didn’t want a girl,” said Xiong. “I had lifted the top of the rubbish bin and was looking to see if there are any plastic bottles I could sell to recycle, when I heard a baby. She was in a box in a blanket and I was absolutely stunned.” The box, apparently, contained a single note: “Was born on October 15, 2007.”

The baby looked so helpless that Xiong took her home; at the time, he lived with his wife in a tiny room. The couple bought a baby bottle to feed her, and that’s when he knew that he wanted to look after her for as long as he could. “No matter how hard it is, I intend to make sure that I raise her until she is old enough to stand on her own two feet. I don’t believe she would have had a good life in an orphanage,” he said.

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24-year-old Ting Tien has done something that’s not really expected of girls her age – she’s gone and given up all her material comforts to become a monk. In her former life, Ting lived in luxury; she was a fashion designer with access to the best of clothes and make up. But the shine of material objects wore off quite soon in Ting’s case and she chose to look for inner peace instead.

Ting, a native of Jinan City in Eastern China, attended the Qingdao University in Shandong Province, specializing in luxury goods design. But when she graduated, she became disillusioned with the lifestyle that she and her friends were leading. She found everything around her increasingly materialistic and too much to handle.

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