This title might seem a bit shocking, but considering China’s total population, 30 million really isn’t very much. Still, millions of people living in caves in this modern era is kind of strange, wouldn’t you say?

According to a report by The Los Angeles Times, millions of Chinese people have gone underground, to live in caves. So I guess calling someone a caveman in China really shouldn’t be taken as an insult, especially if you consider many of these burrowed dwellings have all the facilities of modern homes. Because they take advantage of the existing landscape, China’s cave houses don’t require too many other building materials, and since the hills and mountains they are dug into act as natural insulation all year round, they are more energy efficient than most conventional family homes.

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It appears in China the saying “study till you drop” is taken quite literally by some, as photos show students receiving amino acid IV drips as they hit the books during late evening studying session for college exam.

You thought you were studying too hard? Well unless you’ve ever needed intravenous medication to keep you from passing out or collapsing due to excessive studying, you have it pretty good compared to these young students at a high school in Xiaogan, central China’s Hubei province. Photos taken late one evening, and posted on popular Chinese site Sina Weibo, show a brightly lit classroom full of students studying National College Entrance Exam, commonly known as “gao kao”. Students appear buried among piles of books, with dozens of IV bags hanging from lines traversing the classroom.

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Don’t you ever which you could just experience eating in a jumbo jet without actually having to pay a ticket and fly to who knows where? Me neither, but apparently there are people out there who love to eat on an airplane, otherwise why would anyone open an A380 jumbo jet themed restaurant, right?

Recently opened in Chongqing, China, the A380 restaurant tries to replicate the interior of the world’s largest passenger airliner, and comes complete with a crew of waitresses trained to talk and act like real stewardesses. The windows, adjustable seats, carpets, and even the cabin lighting have all been inspired by the A380, but luckily you’ll find more than the usual airplane food on the menu. The restaurant covers and area of 600 square meters and currently has 18 employees, including 9 flight attendants that had to go through a series of courses on how to apply their make up and act just like actual stewardesses.

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‘Fake’ just keeps growing to epic proportions in China. The latest to join the bandwagon is a fake police academy that was allegedly duping students into believing they would receive a real degree. The Jiamusi People’s Police Academy in the Shandong Province offered three-year courses on law enforcement studies, at the end of which students would receive a degree and also employment with crime-fighting police teams. The £2,000 ($3,200) course was supposed to be taught by veteran officers. It was all the doing of Wei Zhenhai, the president of the fake academy.

Everything was going according to plan for Mr. Zhenhai and the Jiamusi Academy, until a suspicious parent tipped off the real police in September of last year. A couple of police constables then paid a visit to the academy undercover, dressed as students. During the interview, Mr. Zhenhai couldn’t help himself and ended up boasting about his contacts in high places that would help him secure employment for his students. The constables saw through his flimsy lies and immediately pounced on the ‘president’ and his staff. They were arrested and the academy closed down.

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The New South China Mall in Dongguan, China is the biggest in the world. With an area of over 7 million square feet that can accommodate 2,350 stores, and attractions such as roller coasters, ghost trains and a replica of the bell tower of St Mark’s Square in Venice, you would think the place would be swarming with people. So did the owners of the mall, who expected over 70,000 visitors a day when they started building it. But today it stands empty, with almost no customers entering its gates. The 553 meter indoor and outdoor roller coaster hasn’t been operated since it was installed and 99% of the shops have never been leased out. The only ones that do operate are a series of fast food joints at the entrance of the mall and another few shops inside the huge complex.

New South China Mall was built in 2005 by Hu Guirong, who made his millions making instant noodles. He started the project with great enthusiasm, sending teams all over the world in search of ideas for his dream mall. And most of these ideas were even translated into reality. Where else in the world would be able to see a gondola on a mock Venetian canal inside a mall? But then something went horribly wrong, because when the place was completed in 2005, it simply failed to take off. It wasn’t even a dead mall, where tenants simply depart and business winds down slowly. No, Guirong’s mall never attracted merchants in the first place, as they felt it wasn’t a realistic place to set up shop.

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Addictions are a life-long struggle for most people. There are very few who manage to successfully kick self-destructive habits for good. 39-year-old Chinese millionaire, Qijang Zhang Yongqiang, is one such person. He was able to get rid of his gambling addiction by taking up a unique hobby – mining.

Zhang is the owner of a couple of supermarkets and a few other properties in China. As a rich person, he had taken to gambling and soon got addicted to it, losing up to 80,000 Yuan ($12,700) on some nights. On one such night, after losing a huge amount of money, he realized that he needed to do something to save himself from destruction. So in 2008, the millionaire decided to put gambling behind him, and took up a job as a miner. Initially, he did it just to keep away from the nasty habit, but soon he fell so much in love with the work that it became his full-time job. His wife and parents are quite supportive and help by operating the supermarkets while he is at work.

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In a world where Internet and Smartphone app startup companies are a dime-a-dozen, it’s not every day that you see a startup that makes submarines. And definitely not one that is run by one man, from his basement. Yet, that’s exactly what 37-year-old Zhang Wuyi has been doing after he was laid off from his job in a textile machine factory.

Wuyi, from China’s Hubei province, builds mini submarines in a makeshift workspace in the basement of a disused building. When he started off, he worked alone. Today, he has three orders under his belt and also employs ten workers. His submarine models are capable of diving up to 30 meters under sea level and travel at 20 kmph for 10 hours. They can seat two people and also contain oxygen tanks and video cameras. The walls are made of wrought iron. It takes Wuyi up to a month to build a submarine, and each one sells for about $31,000.

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It might look like the set of a new low-budget Transformers movie, but Mr. Iron Robot is actually a newly-inaugurated Transformers-themed park in Jiaxing City, China’s Zhejiang Province.

49-year-old artist Zhu Kefeng and his team have spent the last 10 years building giant metal robots from recycled iron and steel parts. He started out by making a realistic model of a car, then opened his own studio and began creating more intricate sculptures. He soon started doing commission work for people who liked his art, and for large orders he even set up a recycle bin where people could donate discarded metal parts. Zhu started working on Mr. Iron Robot theme park in 2010, with the money he had raised for selling his metal sculptures and his apartment in Shanghai. He and his team of collaborators worked hard and managed to turn an old abandoned factory into a modern attraction featuring over 600 Transformers-inspired sculptures.

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To celebrate the 40th anniversary of a village-owned business, Changjiang Village, in China’s Jinagsu Province, has given every one f its 3,000 villagers 100-gram bars of gold and silver.

It’s no secret that China has the world’s fastest growing major economy, but some of its residents like to flaunt their riches anyway. Take Changjiang village, for example. This little settlement happens to own the Jiangsu Xin Chang Jiang Group, one of the top 20 private enterprise in China. It is involved in eight different industries, including electricity, chemicals and metals, and it’s apparently very successful in all of them. At least that’s the signal they’re sending through their latest gesture of generosity. Following a promise made back in 2009, the village’s party leader recently ordered over 600 kilograms of gold and silver, and  handed it to every villager in 100-gram bars.

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If a man came at you with a meat cleaver, your first instinct would obviously be to run for your life. But  not for the people of Hsinchu, in northern Taiwan. Because for them, being tapped with the sharp end of a cleaver is actually a form of therapy that is known to cure many ailments. They line up in large numbers to meet the therapist, who prepares by sharpening the instrument on a wet stone and rubbing iodine all over the blade.

The Chinese knife massage is probably a treatment you’d only expect in hell, but in reality it’s said to increase blood flow, release the body’s stored energy and wash away harmful toxins. The treatment itself is pretty simple: all the therapist does is hold a couple of cleavers and strike the patient repeatedly with the sharp edge. No, don’t be horrified, there’s no blood involved. The trick is to bring down the cleaver with just the right amount of force, and then to not push or pull it once it touches skin. The up-and-down movement of the cleaver is said to release static energy, which leads to self- cure. “Chop, chop, chop, and the pain will go away,” is the motto that the knife therapists use to convince clients. Read More »

“There’s no place like home!”, I believe the saying goes, and this modest migrant family from China proves it applies even when home is an abandoned public toilet in the city of Shenyang.

Zeng Lingjun was born in a small village, in the Jilin Province of Northeastern China. As a boy, he dreamed of one day attending college, but because his family was too poor he had to abandon his dream and settle for becoming a cobbler and repair shoes for a living. But just because he couldn’t afford to go to college, didn’t mean he was willing to spend the rest of his life in his village. He had bigger plans for himself, so one day, with just 50 yuan ($8) in his pocket, he left for Shenyang, the biggest city in northeast China. Being a hard worker and a skilled cobbler helped Zeng make a living in the big city, and he was soon earning around 2,000 yuan (315) per month. But this wasn’t enough for him to get his own place.

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A creepy show capturing the last moments of criminals on death row – that might sound like the worst kind of reality TV, but “Interviews Before Execution” has been hugely popular in China, where it was first aired on Henan Legal Channel on 18^th November, 2006. After over 5 years, the show ended last Friday.

As a part of the reality show, journalist Ding Yu would interview a person on death row every week in almost cruel detail. So yes, every person featured on the show was a hardened criminal, whose fate had already been sealed – in death. Sometimes, the criminals were recorded speaking just minutes before their execution, many describing the details of their crimes, displaying remorse and even begging for forgiveness at times. It sure does sound like an unnecessary exploitation of people who are about to die, but the creators of the show have a different perspective. Lu Pejin, the director of the Legal Channel says that the purpose of the show was to warn audiences. “If they are warned, tragedies might be averted. That is good for society.”

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A 95-year-old Chinese woman, thought to be dead and placed in a coffin, terrified her family and neighbors by climbing right out after six long days. Must have scared the living daylights out of her neighbor Mr. Qingwang, who was the first to discover the empty coffin.

Ms. Xiufeng lives alone in her home in China’s Guangxi Province. She had recently suffered a head injury,  and Mr. Qingwang found her motionless one morning when he went to give her breakfast. “No matter how hard I pushed her and caller her name, she had no reactions,” he said. “I felt something was wrong, so I tried her breath, and she has gone but her body was still warm.” So believing her to be dead, Mr. Qingwang and his son made funeral preparations, placing the old woman’s body in a coffin. Fortunately, in Chinese tradition the coffin is retained for several days, until family and friends pay their respects. Also, he chose not to nail the box shut until the day of burial.

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A while back, we did this story on OC about a dog that wouldn’t leave his master’s grave. So I wasn’t exactly surprised when I heard about Wang Cai, but the faithful dog certainly deserves a mention. After all, he has waited for his master outside a local bank, from 9 am to 5 pm, every single day for the past 4 years.

Wang Cai was a homeless dog found wandering on the streets of Chongqing, China, four years ago, when a kind soul decided to adopt him. Ever since, he has been accompanying his new owner to work every morning and waited outside patiently for the next 8 hours, only to return home in the evening. According to the dog’s master, the behavior perplexed him at first, since he didn’t really train Wang Cai to do anything of the sort. The owner suspects that the dog might be waiting for his previous master, but he has no issues with the strange behavior.

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There’s a popular one-liner that’s been doing the rounds on Facebook for a while now – “If women ruled the world, there would be no wars. Just a bunch of jealous countries not talking to each other.” While that’s something we’ve all laughed at and forgotten, there actually does exists a Chinese matriarchal tribe where things are seemingly always at peace. Also known as the Kingdom of Daughters, the Mosuo Tribe have been in existence for the past two thousand years in the Lugu Lake region of Southern China.

In the Mosuo tribe, women rule. To such an extent that their language doesn’t even have a word for ‘father’. Property is handed down from mother to daughter, and sons are treated as simple inhabitants of the house. Even after they are married with children of their own, the men continue to live in their maternal homes, while children live in the home of the mother. In fact, there isn’t even a concept of formal marriage. Couples who fall in love meet in the home of the woman, and continue to refer to each other as ‘friends’. Vows and bonds have no place in a “walking marriage” system where mutual affection is valued.

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