Mandy Zuo

The last thing Shanghai man Tony Qian expected while walking with his wife on grassland below the 28-floor residential buildings of their community was to be hit by a falling piece of dog excrement. And yet, as he looked up to see where the foul missile had come from, he saw a tissue fluttering to the ground which, on closer inspection, was stained with the same muck which had struck him on the shoulder. Qian was lucky. There have been numerous reports in recent years of critical injuries and deaths caused by people flinging dangerous items – including a bicycle, stroller and even a kitchen knife – from their high-rise windows. But his efforts to bring the poo perpetrator to justice went now

Pig farms in China are fighting a high-tech war with gangsters reportedly plotting to profit off a national pork crisis. A pig farm in northeastern China deployed anti-drone equipment following rumors that gangs were trying to spread African swine fever by airdropping the virus into farms. The goal was to scare farmers into selling their livestock at a discount. African swine fever poses no risk to human health but is fatal to pigs. The disease has reduced China’s hog herds by over 40% due to mass culls designed to stop further spreading of the disease. The Chinese authorities uncovered the use of anti-drone devices after a number of pilots complained about losing GPS signals while flying ov

A Chinese professor has been sacked by a prominent university in Shanghai after a sexual assault allegation against him prompted public outrage.  Last weekend, a part-time graduate student at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics accused the associate professor, 55-year-old Qian Fengsheng, of sexual assault.  In a detailed online post, the student said the professor had been sending her suggestive WeChat messages since September. On November 16, he offered to answer the student’s academic questions in his car – only to drive to a deserted road, where he allegedly locked the car, kissed her forcibly and sexually assaulted her, according to the post.  The 28-year-old student, who w

Scientists throughout human history have been on a neverending search for the elixir of life, but most of them didn’t have to deal with social media.   More than 20 traditional Chinese medicine doctors in southwestern China are being investigated over a “longevity drink” they developed. They claimed it could help people live to be 120 years old. Health authorities in Binyang county, in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, which borders Vietnam, said they would look into the case, Nanguo Morning Post reported on Monday. The case came to light after a photo of the doctors preparing a concoction in front of a banner for a “longevity drink” was widely circulated on Chinese social media over th

Beijing motorists desperate to use their cars are resorting to sham marriages to get around strict license plate rules. The rules are designed to limit the number of vehicles allowed on the city’s congested roads. Some drivers were willing to pay the equivalent of tens of thousands of dollars to marry someone with one of the prized plates, according to CCTV. They then have the license transferred to their name before getting a divorce. Specialist agencies charge over $20,000 to help clients use this method to obtain a license for a gasoline-driven car. It costs over $15,000 for an electric-powered one, according to the report. The scam is a strategy to get around a license lottery first int

A small village on a hillside in central China is leading the way in addressing one of the great issues of the modern era – how to eliminate humanity's impact on the environment. Only some 20 residents, all of them elderly, remain in the village of Liantang in Guiyang county, Hunan province. The rest have moved away over the years, seeking the opportunities and modern conveniences of urban life. But one man has returned to the place where he was born and raised, determined to remake it as a zero-waste community. Tan Yiyong, 39, founded a non-profit organization in 2013 called Jiao Dao Xiao Dao, promoting waste sorting as well as an eco enzyme which can be made out of household scraps and use

Homebuyers promised “park views” in a new residential development were in for a shock on the weekend when they picked up the keys to their flats in the central Chinese city of Changsa. Imagine being pitched “high vegetation cover” and a “park lifestyle” only to discover a public area covered in a blue plastic material to look like a lake and a small timber bridge on pavement.  “So I’m supposed to be standing in the middle of blue water, which in fact doesn’t exist. There is no rock or plants,” one owner said, according to a report from Hunan Satellite TV’s City Channel from Sunday. Instead of grass, residents could “enjoy” a grass block paving, covered with yellow mud and dotted with wither

Doctors spent four weeks removing pieces of paper from the eyes of a 7-year-old girl in China after an extreme bullying incident. Three boys stopped the young girl on her way to class and forced scraps of paper into her eyes. Doctors, who plucked-out dozens of paper fragments, said they had never seen a case like it, mainland media reported on Monday. The incident occurred in Yuzhou, a city in the middle of the central Chinese province of Henan, in September.  The girl said she was accosted by the boys as she returned to class after lunch one day.  “They opened her eyes wide … crumpled a few scraps at a time and squeezed them in,” her mother, surnamed Li, said. The girl complained of poor v

A young woman in eastern China found her life turned upside down when plastic surgery altered her appearance so drastically that she was banned from online payment gateways and unable to sign in to work. The issues she faced underscore the extent to which daily life in urban China has come to rely on one’s face, with the country embracing cameras and facial recognition technology. The woman, who was identified only by the pseudonym Huan Huan, told her local television station in eastern China on the weekend that her troubles began a month before, after she had cosmetic surgery on her nose. The change in her appearance was too much for China’s widely-used facial recognition software, which wa

Chris Zou had just broken up with her boyfriend when she learned she was pregnant. She shared the news with him and, despite his opposition, decided to raise the baby alone. Three years later, Zou is blazing a legal trail for China’s growing number of single moms. Zou, 43, works at a multinational company in Shanghai. She has managed to provide for her son Xinxin alone and has navigated the complex process of getting him identity papers.  But she has so far been unable to make a claim for her employer-provided maternity insurance. Local authorities told her she could not lodge a claim without providing a marriage certificate and the father’s information details. Believing single mothers had