The number of disabled people in China could exceed 100 million in 2015, if numbers from the 2007 census are anything to go by. Say researchers at Peking University, there were 83 million people with disabilities three years ago, but that number is set to increase rapidly as the population ages, and the environment disintegrates. Hopefully, new initiatives to subsidize daily expenses for those with handicaps will help some. more ›

When the Expo opened, people quickly figured out the best way to skip those annoying lines: pretend to be handicapped. Now, after bringing us his collection of Expo sleepers, photographer and Shanghaiist reader Etienne Guist is back with images of a Shanghai miracle: people who were in desperate need of wheelchairs when they entered the Expo, only to leave walking on their own two legs! more ›

The problem of people pretending to be disabled and abusing the faster queues has gotten so bad that some pavilions have shut down their "green lines" altogether. The Saudi Arabian, Swiss and Thailand Pavilions have all done away with the lines indefinitely thanks to not just fake handicapped, but the crowds of people who try to muscle their ways in with the fake handicapped. more ›

Embarrassingly, that seems to be what a bunch of people are doing. According to an Oriental Daily newspaper article, couples entering with grandparents will often request a wheelchair, which automatically gives them VIP line access for all the pavilions. Sure it's clever, but gosh, doesn't it feel wrong? more ›

Sure this feature is from April, but we were so happily bemused by it that when we discovered the video (finally), we thought "Gosh, anything to get more news about this guy out there." Beijing retiree Li Rongbiao, who came face-to-face with the dismal state of China's handicapped facilities, made a "walking chair" out of over 1,000 spare parts. more ›

We've caught ourselves thinking about the difficulties of being disabled in China on many occasions: a significant amount of city spaces and public transport are simply handicapped-unfriendly. Besides the occasional beggar, you rarely see disabled people in public, which is probably thanks to the many social factors constraining handicapped people. But at a very basic level, it's more troubling to think of the difficulties a set of stairs are for someone incapable of using them and the effect it would have on both their ability to travel and their quality of life. more ›

Our parents and sister just visited China for the first time. We won’t bore you with the details on what we did in Shanghai, but since many of you are hosting visitors and/or visiting China for the first time for the Olympics, here are some of the highlights from our travels to Beijing including suggestions for elderly and disabled (something we couldn't find anywhere else online). more ›