Wechat roundup I

For the last post of every month I am going to do a quick summary of stories making their way around Chinese social media. My goal is not to make fun of or put down China, though I will be looking for interesting and fun stories, but simply to share the stories from China that you may not have heard.

Love conquers a mountain

 

A man whose wife has been bedridden or wheelchair bound since 2001 carried his wife on an 8 hour trip up a mountain. Since her illness she had expressed her desire to her husband to see the top on the mountain close by their village, which is considered one of the five great peaks of China. The husband trained by lifting 10 kg sandbags every day. He finally carried on his back, while she was in her wheelchair, all the way to the top of the 1,533 meter mountain.

 

Cheese-lovers across China are rejoicing

 

The Chinese government lifted the short-lived ban against cheese with live bacteria i.e. blue cheese and Roquefort type cheese. Most Chinese didn’t care about the ban of course, but certain parts of the expat community felt it, especially the French. The ironical part of the story is that while it was the EU who convinced China to life the ban, the main importers to China of that type of cheese are Australian and New Zealand companies, who now have an open Chinese market again.

The woman who sewed public bench covers

 

Some of you may have heard of the classic story of the man who planted trees, but have you heard of the grandmother who sewed public bench covers? An 84 year-old woman in Harbin (up in the far freezing north of China) has made it her work to sew covers for the public bus station seats to save her fellow citizens from freezing their butts off on the metal seats.

The wrong way to throw money at a problem

 

There’s been a disturbing trend recently of Chinese grannies throwing money into airplane engines for luck. For the second time now, an elderly Chinese woman has thrown coins in a jet engine on the tarmac while “praying for good luck.” The flight was delayed until the next day and the woman was detained by police. What I want to know is how these grannies are getting onto the runway.

 

Free noodles for all (if you’re a street sweeper)

 

A noodle shop in Guizhou province gave away 20,000 free bowls of noodles to city street sweepers. The owner felt that street sweeping is a difficult job, especially in winter, so he decided to provide breakfast for them as well as to members of the military and senior citizens.

This is Africa?

 

A museum in Wuhan took down an exhibit titled “This is Africa.” The controversial segment of the exhibit which made waves in the local African community and eventually in the African community in China was a series of pictures titled “outward appearance follows inner reality” in which pictures of Africans were set side by side with African wildlife portraying the same facial expressions. Some apologists insisted nothing was meant by it due to the fact that Chinese are associated with animals through the Chinese zodiac but all the same the museum took it down early once the outcry began.

 

New glass bridge testing heart conditions

 

A new glass bridge in Hebei has decided that just having the fear of its floor breaking is not enough. The builders decided to put it glass floor tiles that made fake cracks appear in the floor complete with sound effects. Let’s just say the first people to experience it probably needed a change of pants afterwards. I do hope future visitors have strong hearts.

 

Wechat decides to no longer use the N-word

 

Wechat’s translating service had started using the N-word for black people whenever the sentence it was translating referred to them in a negative way. Wechat blamed this incident on its translating software and promised the problem had now been fixed.

 

It’s the GPS officer, I swear

 

A Chinese woman drove 10 kilometers on the wrong side of the Shandong expressway. She explained to the cops that eventually stopped her that everything was alright because she was following her GPS. She claimed she hadn’t noticed she was going the wrong way even though video shows her car inching along at a snail’s pace. She got 12 points deducted from her license and a 200 yuan fine.

 

Fake Korean news in China

 

A story about Chinese women who went to Korea for plastic surgery and who were then not allowed to leave the country due to the fact that the border guards could not recognized them on their passports turned out to be fake but at least it gave the internet an awesome picture.

 

 

Big Father and Mother replace Big Brother

 

A primary school in Liaoning decided the best use of its resources was to install cameras in every class, allowing parents to keep an eye on their kids throughout the school day. Parents had to pay an extra fee to use the service. Thousands of schools in china have decided that the best way to catch kids misbehaving was to crowdsource it out. Streaming classroom footage onto live-streaming sites, millions of netizens leave comments pointing out misbehaving children. An article in the Beijing News caused some of these streams to shut down but others still remain open.