Chinese highway tolls hit international headlines a few months ago when a man from Henan was sentenced to life in prison for impersonating the military and evading more than $550,000 in fees. Things got more complicated with the firestorm of online controversy that followed. I think we can safely say that most people hate tolls, and those who do business on the roads sometimes use desperate measures to avoid them. Enter the Pyramid Truck! Three gigantic lorries stacked on top of one another to save on gas and toll fees. more ›

Via Micah Sittig on Twitter we learned of this spreadsheet that compares tuition fees for international high schools in Shanghai. Fourteen schools are included on the list and they range in annual cost from US$11,319 (Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation Private School), up 30% from last year, to US$30,689 (British International School), up 7% from last year. The only school whose tuition went down this year was the Shanghai American School, down 7% to US$22,092. Time to stock up on the ol' birth control. more ›

They say the Germans invented the art of bureaucracy but the Chinese perfected it. This may be true if a recently compiled list on Tianya forum is anything to go by — it contains over 3,000 permits/licences/fees a Chinese citizen may be subjected to through the course of his/her life. China Digital Times translates just a handful of them, and as they correctly pointed out, some sound reasonable while others just make you go huh:... more ›