Thirteen students killed themselves last year - five more than in 2010 and seven more than in 2009, the Shanghai Education Commission said in the annual Primary and Secondary School Students Safety Report. more ›

The activist group Free Tibet reported on Monday that a Tibetan man had been killed, and thirty others wounded, after police opened fire on protesters in the Sichuan county of Luhuo (also known as Drango or Draggo to Tibetans). It has now been revealed that the following day a separate protest in neighbouring county Seda (Serthar) resulted in at least one fatality, with as many as five claimed by various Tibetan media organisations. more ›

"I will change sorrow into strength and courage and remain faithful to respected Comrade Kim Jong Un," says the woman at the end of this video from Korean Central News Agency. more ›

"In fact, it's not as complicated as outsiders think. We all use rifles, stand about four meters from the condemned prisoner with a barrel one meter-long, take aim, press the trigger, and that's that," Hu told the newspaper. more ›

A man has plunged to his death after trying to flee from the police during a crackdown on prostitution, Guangzhou Ribao reported. more ›

WARNING: Graphic image after the jump. Reader discretion advised! Luzhou Evening News brings us a report from October 20 that in Luding County, Sichuan Province, Luzhou City, a truck knocked down a five-year-old child returning home from school, causing the child to die on the spot. Luzhou citizens have claimed the accident was actually cold-blooded murder. more ›

Xinhua News Agency has refuted earlier reports by Hong Kong broadcaster ATV and other foreign news outlets that former paramount leader Jiang Zemin (江泽民) has died. more ›

Rumors were flying on weibo last night that Jiang Zemin, the former Chinese president, has passed away. It looks like the rumor originated on dissident website Boxun and were reported by Epoch Times, a newspaper funded by a certain unpopular religious group in China. So I think we'll hold off on drafting our tributes just yet. Which reminds us, you should read what ESNW has to say about the ballooning weibo rumor mill. more ›

"A MAN in a southwest China city beheaded his wife in the hospital where she had recently given birth. Long Jiulie refused to surrender to police after the incident on Monday afternoon and was shot dead, China News Service reported. Two visitors were also injured in the attack. According to nurses at Qiandongnanzhou Hospital of Kaili City, Guizhou Province, Long suddenly entered his wife's ward about 4pm. Patients rushed out and raised the alarm. When nurses went to investigate, they found Long's wife, surnamed Yang, had been beheaded by her husband, using a kitchen knife. Nurses told the newspaper that 42-year-old Yang had given birth to a baby boy days earlier, and that there had been no signs of trouble between the couple. According to police, an elderly man, also surnamed Yang, and his wife, who were distant relatives of Long, were visiting the mother at the time. Long's wife was having chicken soup when her husband entered the room and attacked her. The elderly couple tried to stop him, but were injured by Long. The elderly man underwent emergency surgery and was still in a life-threatening condition last night. His wife was slightly injured. Police from Kaili City arrived and surrounded Long in the room. Negotiators tried to persuade him to surrender, but Long refused to drop the weapon. Just after 6pm, fearful for public safety, officers shot Long dead." [Shanghai Daily] more ›

At about 2pm today, the Shanghai Telecom Building on Wusheng Road near People's Square caught fire and cased an explosion, killing four people. From Shanghai Daily: "Rescue efforts are continuing in the Shanghai Telecom Building at 333 Wusheng Road, according to the Shanghai TV breaking news. More then 10 fire engines have arrived at the scene. The area has been cordoned off to traffic. The fire reportly broke out around 2pm but smoke was trapped in the building and failed to cause alarm on the outside, witnesses said. The fire was put out by 3pm and its cause is immediately unknown." more ›

Yongjia Internet Technique Co Ltd is currently exploring the possibility of offering 'space burial' services from China, whereby they cram your remains into a lipstick-sized tube, attach you to a rocket, and blast you into space. You then orbit for a while (depending on how much you pay, of course) as another piece of China's space junk, and eventually burn up. Sounds like a business almost as wasteful as it is useless. But then again, rich people who decide they want to shoot their ashes into outer space aren't exactly doing it to save the planet. They're probably doing it because, well, it sounds AWESOME. more ›

Here's another case to go up on the Bloody Map. A 49-year-old man here in Shanghai has died under somewhat mysterious circumstances while trying to protect his house from demolition. Update: Xinhua has apparently confirmed it was a heart attack. more ›

Here is a news story that seems like it could be straight out of Hollywood. A former SuperGirl contestant from Chengdu has just died from plastic surgery complications. 24 year old Wang Bei, who participated but did not win the popular talent competition in 2005, went under the knife to shave down her jawbones at a plastic surgery hospital in Wuhan. On November 15, Wang and her mother both went in for cosmetic enhancements, Wang Bei going in first. However, complications arose when the doctor punctured a blood vessel. Although she was transferred to another hospital, it was too late to save her. more ›

Remember the frightening stories earlier this year of men taking butcher knives to children? Turns out that, though it wasn't really mentioned in Chinese press (or the relevant authorities), at least half of the murderers were suffering from schizophrenia and other mental problems. Not excessive anger over housing situations, or frustration at not being heard... but actual hallucinations. The New York Times examines the dearth of mental care in China, in terms of how mentally ill people are treated and the willingness of the government to admit it's a huge problem. It's a situation where everyone is a victim - the mentally ill, and in some cases, the people they end up hurting. more ›

Holy cow, this makes me think twice about enjoying beautiful weather outside. A Japanese-Canadian guy eating outside the Grand Gateway Wagas in Xujiahui was stabbed to death (seemingly randomly) at around 5pm yesterday. The victim, unnamed, had been enjoying his meal outside when a middle-aged man came up and stabbed him, according to witnesses. A suspect was arrested at the scene, but there are very few other details. Strangely enough, the story was pulled off Xinmin. Are foreigner deaths too sensitive for the Chinese public? more ›

According to this Sina post (with a picture), Police cars and fire vehicles rush:ed to the Bund at around 6:50am, after onlookers found a man hanging from one of the trees. News about him seemed to have first appeared on various Weibo (Chinese twitter) feeds before showing up as a post on local forum KDS (now removed, it seems). According to Xinmin, he was middle-aged and was already dead by the time police found him. He has not been identified and police are still investigating how he got up there. (h/t to @Chinasmack) more ›

We had heard about one of the relief workers at the Dalian oil spill being drowned underneath the crust, but it felt like just another unfortunate China statistic until we saw photos of it. One Chinese photographer captured the whole event (Zhang Liang's drowning, and the rescue of his coworker) in harrowing detail - and as shocking and frustrating and anger-inducing as it was to see animals drenched in oil from BP's recent gulf spill, to look at a human struggling in the slick is even more so. more ›

Jeez, China likes to talk a lot about internet addiction, but maybe the relevant ministries should be turning their gaze towards a more analogue form of entertainment: Mahjong. In Chengdu, netizens reported that whole tables of Mahjong addicts continued playing their games, even as an old man (and fellow Mahjong player) fainted, was attended to by emergency services, declared dead and wheeled away by a funeral car. more ›

From RTHK via Xinhua: The twelfth employee to jump from Foxconn's Shenzhen plant this year became the tenth person to plunge to his death at the factory just now around 11pm. Earlier in the day, Foxconn CEO Terry Gou arrived in Shenzhen to bring the media for a tour around the factory's recreational facilities said to be available to employees, such as the swimming pool you see on the right. He bowed multiple times for the "unstoppable tragedies", adding that he was willing to stop making Foxconn employees sign the non-suicide pact. He also added that those who jumped did so because of boy-girl relationships, and that he was in no position to stop that from happening. Families of the suicide victims were seen outside the factory wailing, demanding for an investigation. more ›

A taxi driver died yesterday on Nanjing Road West but not from a traffic accident. more ›

Here's an incredulous real-life story that will likely make you go "WTF!?!" long after reading it: more ›

Gabyu writes:

I first thought that this man was very sick, at his end of his life. He felt extremely happy, overjoyed by experiencing what he saw. After he went outside, he still felt very dizzy, tired but could not help himself laughing and smiling. At the end of my visit, half an hour later, I found him as you can see him on the picture.

Eew:

A man has died after an eel that was inserted into his rectum gnawed away at his bowels, causing agonising injuries which were eventually fatal. more ›

According to a grisly piece of news that began floating around earlier this week, the bodies of 21 babies washed up on the banks of a river in Shandong province's Jining city. The good news: the babies were already dead when their bodies were dumped in the river by staff from a local hospital. The bad news: that they were dumped in the river by staff from a local hospital! Two hospital staff have now been arrested over their roles in not properly disposing of the infant corpses. Shandong media have explained the dumping as being an extension of customs followed during China's recent past. It was thought the death of an infant was a harbinger of bad luck and as a result, bodies were often buried in unmarked, mass graves - if at all -and babies' possessions and pictures were burned as if they'd never been born. Our question is this: where do the hospital bracelets and "medical waste" bags show up in this old "tradition"? more ›

Earlier today, Shanghai Daily reported that suicide remained the top killer for local college students in 2009. Thirteen students in Shanghai, including one international student, took their own lives last year. more ›

Tomorrow is World Cancer Day and the outlook on cancer in Shanghai isn't shiny - according to local medical experts, there has been a 10-fold increase in the number of children in Shanghai hospitalized for cancer in the past decade. The disease is responsible for 10% of local children's deaths and has risen to be the second leading cause of death for grade school kids, after accidents. We couldn't find much more info, but experts have said the rise is linked to unhealthy diets, second-hand smoking and exposure to toxic chemicals. more ›

• Abbey Road, the vaguely Beatles-themed pub which shut down for just a little while to "refresh," will be opening up again on January 7 AND they're extending their daily happy hour to 8pm. Opening party is this Friday (you get one free drink if you go).
• There's been significantly more dark ales and microbrews popping up in China, which means (glee!) we might finally be getting some beer culture. We'll believe it when we see something better than Reeb in the Kuaidi. [CNNgo]
• To make up for ragging on the USA Pavilion Expo team yesterday, here's a cool little fact about them: One of the Shanghai Expo Inc. trifecta, Nick Winslow, supervised the special effects for Star Trek - The Movie and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. [Urbanatomy]

Oof, just a day after the third H1N1 death in Shanghai comes the first child swine flu fatality. A five-year-old girl died of complications, including severe pneumonia and multi-organ failure at the Shanghai Children's Hospital yesterday afternoon. Despite the sudden rise in swine flu deaths, health officials say there is no epidemic outbreak in Shanghai communities or schools, and the general incidence of swine flu is stable. more ›

In light of World AIDS Day, the Shanghai health bureau has reported that from January to November 20, 886 people have been diagnosed as HIV positive, 392 people have become AIDS patients, and 25 people have died from AIDS. Unfortunately, these numbers represent an increase from last year, although 72% of new HIV cases were people from outside Shanghai. The good news is that, at at 2 per 10,000 people versus 5 per 10,000 people, the HIV prevalence rate is still lower in Shanghai than the rest of the country. To help combat unsafe sex (the leading reason for HIV/AIDS infections now), the government is helping us by installing condom vending machines in all public places prior to the Expo. So remember to stay safe and promote awareness.
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