Nearly 15 years after Hong Kong was returned to China, the Wall Street Journal reports that the new census results show the former British colony is now replacing English with Mandarin as the city's most commonly spoken second language. more ›

Chen Xilong (陈锡隆), one of the victims fortunate enough to survive, is suffering from massive memory loss and impaired cognition, while also experiencing great difficulty in speaking, in addition to other serious symptoms. When asked what one plus two is, he gave the answer "four" and reportedly smiled afterwards. more ›

Guangdong party chief Wang Yang may have won praise for his light-handed approach in dealing with Wukan, but has he actually opened the floodgates for a wave of land grab protests? Yesterday, 1,000 villagers rallied at the Guangzhou city government headquarters as the provincial people's congress met elsewhere in the city for the closing ceremony of its annual session, according to the South China Morning Post: more ›

What's worse than making a condom out of yogurt? How about finding a condom in your yogurt? Wednesday afternoon in Guangzhou, a woman bought 4 boxes of yogurt, and discovered a condom swimming in one of the cartons of yogurt... after she took a bite. more ›

In a strange story of in vitro fertilization (IVF) gone awry, a couple from Guangzhou injected eight fertilized embryos into three separate women and, surprise surprise, out popped eight babies! The biological mother had triplets, and also hired two surrogate mothers who gave birth to twins and triplets. The babies are now over a year old, but the story is still causing controversy because not only are they violating the one-child policy, but surrogacy illegal in China. Officials are promising to hold the participating medical institutions responsible. more ›

A 38-year-old South African woman by the name of Janice Bronwyn Linden (pictured right) has been executed more than three years after she was arrested for being found with 3kg of methamphetamine upon her arrival in the Guangzhou airport. Her death sentence was carried out by lethal injection (and witnessed by her own family members) just days after a Filipino was executed for a similar crime, sparking protests in the city of Manila. more ›

In a throwback to the bad old days, a loose collection of Chinese nationalists got together in the Shanxi provincial capital of Taiyuan on the afternoon of November 17th, to "angrily denounce" four "traitorous sellout" publications based in Guangzhou (汉奸媒体), by burning several hundred copies of the publications. The news outlets named by the group are the Southern Metropolis Daily, Southern Weekend, Southern Weekly and the Yangcheng Evening News. more ›

Andrew Steven, an Englishman who claimed he was robbed in Shenzhen, had been begging around the Guangzhou's Zoo Metro station. The man, who appeared to be in his 40s, was seen sitting with his passport and a request letter at the parterre adjacent to a Subway station. more ›

Another day, another rich drunk idiot crashing their expensive cars into shit and expecting clemency. This time the deed happened in Guangzhou, when a drunk 30-something woman drove her Porsche the wrong way down a one way street, smacked a taxi cab, then began verbally harassing the occupants before telling police "I know city leaders!" more ›

Our doubts that the koala-like animal on sale in the Guangzhou restaurant isn't really a koala have been confirmed. They are, in fact, far from similar, as you can see in the picture on the right. The city's New Express Daily tracked down Hotel Fisher, a restaurant known for its wild and exotic cuisine where the supposed koala meat was being sold at 139 yuan per half kilo. more ›

In a video spreading like wildfire around the 'nets, two students who reportedly caused their class's school bus to leave late are forced by their teacher to stand for five minutes and repeatedly hit each other across the face. more ›

An Aussie was recently gobsmacked to find a caged live koala for edible sale in Guangzhou's Panyu district, with the marsupial available either braised or stewed. Which we find offensive, since it doesn't pay nearly enough respect to Australia's rich culinary traditions of barbecuing, adding Vegemite, or sticking everything in a meat pie and calling it good. more ›

Mao Xinyu (毛新宇), the PLA general who is famous for being the grandson of Chairman Mao and little else, has a new part-time gig -- teaching at the Guangzhou University Songtian College. The general will be the new brainwasher instructor for 66 students in Mao Zedong Thought (is anyone surprised?), which, far from dying out, has been enjoying something of a resurgence with the revival of the left in recent years. more ›

In Guangzhou's Liwan district (荔湾区), a 16-year-old girl was suffocated to death by her mother, after the two had an argument regarding 5,900RMB. The girl, surnamed Xie (谢), had asked for the money from her mother to buy an Apple computer. The argument reportedly escalated into a fight, whereupon the mother tripped her daughter and then sat on her back while pushing her face towards a pillow on the ground. The mother said that she pushed her daughter's face into the pillow because her daughter was cursing at her, and that she called the authorities after her daughter stopped breathing. And so the specter of filicide, one of the most significant (and saddest) trends of 2011, can claim another victim. more ›

The internet is a lovely thing. Along with useful things like watching videos of cats play in cardboard boxes, it allows us the luxury of seeing just what people get up to when they're sitting around bored at work. more ›

Yet another nail-house (钉子户) confrontation involving angry residents and anti-government banners took place recently in Guangzhou, though at least this time it all ended happily. On September 6th, 2011, Yao Runzhen (姚润珍) engaged in a heated negotiation with housing officials, protesting against their eviction and refusing to move, despite the reality of their neighborhood turning into rubble and fine dust. After a successful negotiation involving a satisfactory compensation package however, the couple willingly backs down, while the "Good Life" (好生) demolition company tears down their abode. more ›

Two Hong Kong TV officials have taken responsibility and resigned for broadcasting a false report of Jiang Zemin's death in July. Since 9/11, there have been more than more than 35,000 terrorism convictions in the world, and half of those took place in China and Turkey. Most of the arrests in China were, unsurprisingly, made in Xinjiang. In his new memoirs, Dick Cheney explains how he wishes he could have gotten just a little more intimate with Hu Jintao, instead of getting cockblocked during his first meeting, and spied on in the next! His inability to whisper sweet nothings led eventually to "the end of all conversations between the two politicians." more ›

Presumably because they didn't want to put in the effort to best the world's tallest Ferris Wheel (located in Singapore), the Chinese have gone ahead and created a completely different category of world's highest Ferris Wheel. more ›

Now, normally, an information and training session to teach weibbing (aka writing something on a Chinese microblog) to the members of any major city's Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) is no big deal. However, for the gathered local Party members at the 'Weibo as a Platform to Discuss Politics' event (微博议政平台) in Guangzhou, there was a somewhat awkward underlying subtext to the whole affair: one of their own was recently caught literally with his pants down, unwittingly posting naked pictures of himself that were available for anyone to see on his weibo. The career-ending move apparently came as a result of misunderstanding his weibo's privacy settings. DOH! more ›

The past week has seen an unnerving amount of violence and unrest in China. Here's a roundup of what's happening: more ›

"Very few low-income households have their own cars. If tolls for roads and bridges were abolished, the government would still have to repay the banks. This money could be used by the government to develop other public or social security services. Would this then not be unfair to low-income families?" more ›

Sorry guys, there will be no super fast connection to Guangzhou in the near future. Rumours of the high speed railway line between Guangzhou and Shanghai being launched in July have just been disclaimed by Guangzhou Railway (Group) Corporation. The speedy seven-hour connection to China's first developed city is still under construction, and the completion date unknown, as Sun Zhang, a transport professor with Tongji University, has told Global Times Sunday. Still, this is just a minor setback for China's existing, planned and under-construction high-speed rail network - check that amazing feat here. more ›

"HEALTH authorities are investigating an illegal trade in human placentas that was said to be thriving in a hospital in south China's Guangdong Province. Authorities with the Health Bureau of Baiyun District in Guangzhou City said the Red Cross Hospital of Baiyun District will face punishment and fines if tip-offs they received were verified, yesterday's New Express Daily reported. A whistleblower identified as 'A Hui' said human placentas - considered a rich source of nutrients by some people - were being sold at 20 yuan (US$ 3.08) each by nurses at the hospital's department of obstetrics and gynecology. According to the whistleblower, the nurses kept fresh placentas they obtained from women who had given birth in a fridge in an office. He said his wife, who gave birth at the hospital last year, had her placenta taken away without receiving any notification. He then began to pay attention to the hidden business, which was banned by China's Health Ministry in 2005. A New Express Daily reporter went undercover to purchase a placenta. After receiving 20 yuan, a chief nurse took out one in a plastic bag and told the reporter that it should be stewed with lean meat and Chinese dates for about an hour. Human placentas are banned from trade due to health concerns. They supply oxygen and nutrients to the fetus during pregnancy and allow fetal waste to be disposed of via the mother's kidneys. The placenta can be infected during labor or carry viruses such as hepatitis B from the mother, according to doctors." [Shanghai Daily] more ›

Fierce hail and wind storms swept through Guangdong province on Sunday, hammering buildings, people, and crops with up to 50mm of rain (about 2 inches), winds reaching over 150kph (93mph), and hail as big as 8mm. 17 people were killed, mostly when walls and sheds collapsed from the winds. Trees were uprooted, houses knocked down, and newsstands said to drift 20 meters. Over 1000 hectares of crops were affected, and estimates put the total cost of damages at around 5.5 million RMB. Pictures above are mostly of Foshan, but Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhongshan, Dongguan, and many others were also affected. more ›

Football fans rejoice! This summer brings us not one European giant of a football club, but TWO. Both Liverpool and Real Madrid have announced plans for preseason games in China to cash in onappease their enormous Chinese fan bases. Real Madrid has two games planned, Guangzhou on August 3 and Tianjin on August 6. Liverpool will play three matches across Asia in July, beginning also with Guangzhou, then moving on to Kuala Lumpur and Seoul. more ›

"If the Jing'an Fire had happened in Guangzhou, we would have been able to bring it under control in no time. Guangzhou's fire-fighting capabilities are tops in China." more ›