Videos of people grilling ice cubes and seasoning them with sauces and spices have been doing the rounds on Chinese social media and leaving people with unanswered questions.

Move over, stir-fried stones, it’s time for grilled ice cubes to enjoy their time in the social media spotlight. According to a number of news reports from China, the bizarre street snack was made famous by a short clip shot at a street food stall in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province. In it, we can see large ice cubes being cooked on an open grill and seasoned with sauces and spices, before being served on a plate. We can’t see anyone actually eating the dish, but it is apparently very popular on hot summer days, especially since it’s offered as a free treat.

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A Chinese man can consider himself extremely lucky to be alive after being struck by lightning twice in less than five minutes.

The chances of a person being struck by lightning during their lifetime are about 1-in-15,300, which is much lower than it seems, but the chances of getting struck by lightning twice are significantly lower. There is a reason why they say lightning never strikes in the same place twice, And yet, sometimes incredible things happen, like a person getting struck by lightning twice in just 5 minutes. Liu Nan was outside his home in Zunyi, China’s Guizhou Province during a thunderstorm last month, when he saw a white light before losing consciousness and falling to the ground. He barely had time to register what had happened when he saw the bright light again and once again got knocked out.

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A HaiDiLao restaurant in Wuxi, China, has gone viral for launching a shampooing service for loyal customers who want to get the smell of food out of their hair after a meal.

Enjoying a bowl of tasty hotpot is usually an enjoyable experience, but carrying the smell of the food with you in your hair for hours or even days, not so much. Luckily, if the pilot program of one popular hotpot restaurant chain proves successful, hotpot enjoyers across China won’t have to worry about their hair smelling like a kitchen anymore. HaiDiLao, China’s largest hotpot restaurant chain, recently launched a shampooing service at one of its restaurants in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province. The hair salon-like experience is only available to loyal customers who accumulate enough loyalty points, called ‘Lao coins’, by spending enough money at HaiDiLao locations.

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The removal of two prominent Chinese female track runners from the IAAF world rankings has reignited the debate surrounding their gender following previous accusations that they were actually men.

Liao Mengxue and Tong Zenghuan first made international news headlines during the 2019 National Athletics Championships, when they won the 4x400m relay race as part of a team representing Hunan Province. However, people didn’t focus on their athletic prowess as much as on their appearance. People didn’t think they looked feminine enough and accused them of being men posing as women to gain an unfair advantage in women’s athletic competitions. Some claimed they had Adam’s apples or that they had too much ‘junk’ in the groin area to be women, but the controversy eventually died out. Until recently anyway, because now the debate has been reignited by Liao and Tong’s exclusion from the new IAAF (International Association of Athletic Federations) world rankings.

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After arguing with his mother about overdue homework, a 10-year-old boy in China ran away from home and straight to the local police station to complain and beg to be put into an orphanage.

Chinese media recently reported a bizarre incident that took place in Chongqing. CCTV footage shows a young boy storming into the Huixing Police Station in Yubei and being approached by two policemen. They start chatting and the 10-year-old boy tells them that he had been reprimanded by his mother for not completing his homework, so he left the family home to join an orphanage. After a bit of convincing work by the officers, the boy gave them his parents’ contact information, so the police contacted his mother who confirmed their argument about the overdue homework. However, she never imagined that her son would run away from home to join an orphanage because of it.

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In the foothills of Shenyang, an industrial city in northeastern China lies the mysterious State Guest Mansions project, a real-estate complex of more than 250 luxury mansions, all of which are abandoned.

The story of State Guest Mansions began in 2010, when business in the Chinese real estate sector was booming. Property giant Greenland Group bought up hectares of land in the foothills around Shenyang and began work on what was supposed to be a retreat for the region’s rich and powerful. 260 European-style villas began rising out of the ground, complete with marble floors and gilded chandeliers hanging from the ceilings, but for some strange reason that has yet to be revealed, development stopped in 2018 and the place has been a ghost town ever since.

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Tucked away on the sixth floor of a Nanjing shopping mall is one of the fanciest, most impressive public bathrooms in the world. To some, it is the world’s most beautiful public bathroom.

Designed by X+Living, a Shanghai-based architecture firm, the bathroom on the sixth floor of the Deji Plaza shopping mall in Nanjing, China makes you feel like you accidentally walked into a whimsical palace. That’s not usually the feeling you get from most public bathrooms… It starts out with a long corridor lined with plants coming out of the walls. This part of the bathroom was designed as “an immersive walk-through-a-garden experience”, but it’s hard to focus on the green decor with dozens of giant lamps shining on you from above, and with the light reflecting on the glossy floor.

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A Chinese man turned up at the emergency room of a Zhejiang hospital with the screw base of a light bulb sticking out of his mouth, after trying one of the dumbest online challenges imaginable.

On July 25th, firefighters at the Yuyao City Fire and Rescue Brigade, in Zhejiang, China, were confronted with one of the most bizarre rescue cases yet. A local man, referred to only as Mr. Chen, burst into their station and tried to explain something to them. However, the man’s mouth was covered with a t-shirt, and instead of words, he only seemed able to utter muffled sounds. After removing the makeshift mask, the reason for his unusual speech became obvious – he had an LED light bulb sticking out of his mouth and was trying to get help removing it. Unfortunately, that proved too difficult a task for the firemen.

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A Chinese farmer who had recently relocated from his rural home to an urban apartment building in Sichuan Province shocked his new neighbors when he started raising seven calves on his balcony.

Imagine living on the upper floors of an urban residential complex and waking up one morning to the mooing of bovines and the smell of manure. That was the shocking experience of hundreds of people in Sichuan Province who were shocked to find that a new neighbor had started raising cattle on his small 5th-floor apartment balcony. The man had recently relocated from a village and had brought seven bovine calves, weighing between 10 and 20 kilograms, with him to raise as pets. Annoyed by the constant mooing and foul smell of the young bovines, many of the residents called the authorities, and the animals were forcefully removed on the first day in their new home.

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A 19-year-old man in China reportedly ended up with a hole in his lung while screaming his heart out at a concert of his favorite idol group.

A young man from Shenzhen, China, recently suffered a pneumothorax, also known as a ‘collapsed lung’, while screaming loudly during a concert of his favorite idol group. Chinese media reported that the 19-year-old was enthusiastically screaming during the band’s performance when he suddenly felt a sharp pain in his chest. he started experiencing difficulty breathing almost immediately and ended up passing out. The unnamed youth was taken to the emergency room of a Shenzen hospital where doctors concluded that he had suffered an alveolar rupture in one of his lungs due to screaming with excessive force during the concert.

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A young Chinese woman suffered a ruptured eardrum while sharing a moment of passion with her boyfriend, who, while kissing her ear, accidentally created too much suction pressure.

Chinese media recently reported the bizarre case of a young woman from Huizhou City, Guangdong Province, who came to the ENT Department of Huizhou First People’s Hospital because she experienced mild pain and hearing loss in her left ear. Upon examining the patient, the doctor on duty found dried blood on her eardrum and a closer inspection revealed that she had suffered a traumatic eardrum perforation. The woman’s medical history didn’t mention any sort of physical trauma at ear level, but when asked if she could recall anything that might have caused the eardrum perforation, she just said that her boyfriend accidentally sucked on her ear canal during a moment of passion…

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Chinese netizens have been reporting the presence of high-tech urinals capable of conducting quick urine sample tests at shopping malls, scenic spots, and other busy urban areas.

Photos of a strange-looking urinal at a mall somewhere in Beijing’s business district have been doing the rounds online and sparking heated debates. Apparently, it features a digital display complete with a built-in payment processing unit that allows users to have their urine tested after relieving themselves. The urinal presumably has hidden sensors that analyze the urine for a bunch of markers, including calcium, glucose, protein, ketone bodies, ascorbate, and others. The information displayed on the screen suggests that the developer has obtained some patents for the urine testing technology, but the accuracy of the results is a matter of contention…

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A Chinese man who has dedicated most of the last 22 years to trying to find his abducted son finally managed to find his son in a city 560 miles (900 kilometers) away.

On October 9, 2001, Lei Wuze left his home in Yueyang, Hunan Province without knowing that it would be the last time he would see his son for over two decades. The man left his 4-year-old boy, Yuechuan, playing under the supervision of one of his neighbors. The woman later told police that they had met a suspicious man on the street who had later laid a trap for the boy and abducted him when she wasn’t paying attention. Lei was devastated, but he never lost hope of one day seeing his boy again. He immediately embarked on long trips in and around Yueyang, holding pictures of his son and stopping people in traffic to ask if they had seen him. Years passed, but Lei Wuze persisted, and this year, his resilience finally paid off.

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A Chinese manufacturing company has come under fire for allegedly firing employees who can’t finish a 5 km (3 miles) race in 30 minutes, because ‘they lack hard-working spirit’.

Mr. Liu, a man living in Suzhou City, China’s Jiangsu Province, filed a lawsuit against his former employer for wrongful termination after allegedly being fired for not being able to run 3 miles in 30 minutes at 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit). Liu apparently applied for a job at a mechanical parts factory and, after passing a series of practical tests that involved electric welding and gas cutting, he was announced that he had gotten the job. After paying for a medical examination out of his own pocket, Mr. Liu started working at the company in a maintenance position. Little did he know that he still had one more big test to pass…

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Suodiu is a bizarre type of Chinese street food that consists of small river rocks stir-fried with a mixture of spices and herbs. You are supposed to suck on the stones and then spit them out.

Roughly translated as ‘suck and throw away’, suodiu is believed to have been invented hundreds of years ago by boatmen who would prepare the dish when they became stranded in the middle of the river with no real food while delivering goods. To trick their stomachs, they would stir-fry some river pebbles with various condiments and then suck the stones dry. The traditional dish was passed down through several generations, and today roadside vendors in China can sometimes be seen stir-frying bunches of river rocks with cilli oil, garlic sauce, garlic cloves and a mixture of spices.

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