More news from the seamy underbelly

First the sad news: Man kills prostitute, gets the death penalty. Much to everyone's surprise they found the woman's diary -- 60 pages worth, all letters of love and devotion to her husband.

Not the brightest crayon in the box: A different guy was haggling with a prostitute over prices; she wanted 20 RMB more than he was willing to pay. He got tired of arguing with her, so they started having sex. He pays her the price he has in mind -- she notices and starts to intimidate and threaten him. The man forks over the extra 20 RMB and leaves. Despite this, he can't get that 20 RMB out of his mind (it's called inflation, buddy), so he does the logical thing and reports to the police that he was robbed of 300 RMB at some massage parlor. Now both of them have been arrested and are facing charges.

Maybe his stands for 'playa hatin' degree': You'd think that in comparison with that guy, who only had an elementary school level education, a university professor would be slightly more savvy about things. A 58-year-old professor at a research institute in Hangzhou, who had been divorced (or separated?) for many years, went online looking for much needed TLC. He found it in the person of "Ning Ning", and they had some wild internet sex (OK, they probably didn't ... we're just embellishing), and everything seemed hunky dory, until she told the professor that she had a drug problem and needed money for the rehab programs. So he gave her money -- just a few thousand, at first. Later on, as she switched phone numbers and rehab centers, he sent more money to her, until she ended up in Hong Kong -- and he began to get suspicious. When they did nab "Ning Ning," she had already taken RMB 540,000 of the professor's money -- and she had spent all but 30,000 of it. We think the wedding is off. The funny thing is that he was moved by not only her story -- but her online photos -- some of which included picures of Zhang Ziyi. She claimed this was her, in younger, better days. The caption beneath the picture of ZZY on the report says "the professor surprisingly did not know that this was a famous movie star." This from simpletons who have no frickin' clue how much work it takes to complete a Ph.D. and conduct academic research.

We need more anger management professionals in this city: Back in 2004, a Shanghai woman was infuriated when a male colleague of her repeatedly rebuffed her advances and instead became close to and eventually married another female colleague of theirs. She exacted revenge on this woman by pouring hydrochloric acid on her head. Ouch. Anyway, they're back in court -- civil court, not criminal -- with the injured party asking for 400,000 RMB for continued expenses and psychological "damages" (or whatever you call it in legalspeak).

Photo of what your internet girlfriend might have looked like in her late teens to mid-20s (or even early thirties?) from huash.com.