A 7.4kg (15.5lb) boy born to a 29-year-old woman in Xinxiang, Henan province is now officially the heaviest baby in the history of China. Both mom and child are fine. The world record for heaviest baby was a 10.8kg baby born in Ohio in 1879. more ›

A hepatitis epidemic believed to be caused by intravenous injections has broken out along the Henan-Anhui border. more ›

A kindergarten school bus collided with a truck in Puyang, Henan province this afternoon. All 10 children and 2 adults were saved and only suffered from slight injuries. more ›

Yesterday around 3pm in Runan County, Henan, a police car veered onto the sidewalk and knocked down a lamppost, killing four and injuring three according to state media. Other sources said the man driving the car was a heavily intoxicated policeman, and that the accident led to six deaths and one injury. more ›

The 34-year-old man who kept four women in a dungeon in Luoyang, Henan as sex slaves has been sacked from his position and stripped of his party membership:

Li Hao was fired from the inspection team under the Bureau of Quality and Technical Supervision of Luoyang, Henan Province, after he was detained for forcing the women into prostitution and to feature in porno videos uploaded on the Internet to make money, Guangzhou Daily reported today. more ›

A tourist visiting Beijing named Zhao Zhifei (赵志斐) was recently mistaken for a petitioner, and was dragged from his hotel by a dozen unidentified men, and packed into a van on the evening of September 15th. Zhao was then discovered the following day lying unconscious on Yingcai Road (英才路) in Luoyang's Luolong District, in what appears to be a straightforward case of mistaken identity: Zhao was unlucky enough to share a hotel room with three other Henanese men who actually were petitioning in the capital. more ›

Li Xiang, a reporter for Luoyang TV in Henan province, was found dead early Monday morning after having been stabbed 10 times on his way home from a KTV sessions with his friends. His laptop had been stolen, and police are treating the case as a robbery-murder. But AFP reports that he had been investigating swill oil in Henan, and had even been at odds with the food safety commission: "The last post on Li's micro-blog on September 15 said web users "had complained that Luanchuan county (in Henan) has dens manufacturing gutter cooking oil, but the food safety commission replied that they didn't find any". Bloggers said they suspected Li's death was related to his previous reports on the "gutter" cooking oil cases." While this link between his inquiries and his murder is pretty weak, recently the heat has been turned up on illegally reprocessed cooking oil (called 'gutter' or 'swill' oil) and it's not unreasonable to assume that there are some very nervous manufacturers out there. more ›

Inspired by the rousing vision of the end times that was Roland Emmerich's '2012', a welder in the Henan city of Luohe (漯河市) has had his own private Noah's Ark constructed, in the hopes that he and his family can ride out the mountainous waves that shall engulf us all survive any future water-based cataclysms. more ›

An incident like this occurring again is going to ensure that even when distances are laughably short, parents and grandparents will continue to walk their kids to school. At approximately 9am this morning, a 30-year-old farmer allegedly attacked parents and kindergarteners on their way to school in the Henan city of Gongyi (巩义市), killing three adults and one child. Another adult and child were also injured in the incident (though some sources claim the death toll has reached six), with reports stating that Wang used an axe to cut his victims in the head. Locals report that the man, Wang Hongbin (王宏斌), has a history of mental illness. And unlike other incidents that took place last year, this latest attack on schoolchildren happened outside of school grounds. Wang is currently in police custody. more ›

Moral outrage and hand-wringing over teaching kids about sex? Staying up nights worrying over the thought of innocent children learning the function and geography naughty bits? An unnamed kindergarten in the Henan capital of Zhengzhou has managed to transcend traditionally retrograde attitudes on sex education, having reportedly taught 4 and 5-year-old children sex-ed since 2008. more ›

Henanese migrant workers staged a self-burial in protest of wages they were owed Tuesday in Zhengzhou, Henan province. more ›

(Warning: gallery contains graphic imagery) 41 passengers perished in a bus fire that occurred outside of Xinyang city (信阳) in Henan province at approximately 4am today. 47 passengers were on board an overcrowded double-decker overnight bus designed to seat 35, with the six survivors all having suffered burns to various degrees. At least one survivor is in a critical condition at a nearby hospital. more ›

Water gushes out from the Xiaolangdi (小浪底) Dam on the Yellow River in Jiyuan, Henan Province, in an operation to clear out sand and silt deposits:
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An investigative report by Henan Television uncovering the abuse at an old folks home in Zhengzhou has shocked people in the provincial capital and sparked a nationwide outrage. more ›

Via Tudou: "Watch as a Henan man climbs up a ladder of large blades with nary a grimace or a wince. Rather unbelievably, his feet remain largely intact despite the razor sharp knives, he comes away with only the slightest of indentations! The 25-year old performer was raised in Henan, the hometown of China’s martial arts, and has been working on the skill for years and years. Who knew that it was possible to stay so calm and collected!"
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"POLICE in central China said they had busted a gay pornography website and detained 32 young women, including a 17-year-old, who allegedly wrote gay fictions for the site. Police in Zhengzhou, capital of Henan Province, said they had detained the website owner and his contracted writers for spreading obscene materials, the local Orient Today reported today. Police said the site provided nearly 80,000 gay fictions, including 1,500 with illegal porn descriptions, to about 600,000 registered members. Some fictions were open only to VIP readers who paid fees via cell phone. Its owner surnamed Wang, 28, said most fictions were written by women in their 20s in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chongqing and other cities. Most writers said they were paid less than 100 yuan (US$15.23) for each short fiction and some hadn't received money yet. One writer, Long Juan, said she took the job out of "curiosity" because gay novels were quite popular online." [Shanghai Daily] more ›

The Shaolin monks are famous worldwide for their impressive kung fu styling and recognisable yellow robes, but it seems that David Beckham and Lionel Messi had better look out. After bringing you something reminiscent of a scene from Shaolin Soccer back in July last year it seems Shaolin monks are intent on taking over the (footballing) world. more ›

Just yesterday we were floored by a five-year-old Chinese amputee boy that has mastered the art of holding chopsticks and writing with his feet. Today, our inspiration comes from a 19-year-old girl from Henan Province, Zheng Guigui (郑桂桂). Born with only five fingers on her left hand, Zheng's dream has always been to play the piano. Undeterred by her physical condition, Zheng would always put in extra hours playing on the piano while her peers at school were busy having fun. more ›

Shanghaiist's good friend and colleague, Rebecca Kanthor, a journalist who moved from New York to Shanghai eight years ago, recently got married with Liu Jian, a man from Dong'an in Henan Province. Their traditional Chinese wedding was a riot of colours -- the groom had to ride around on a horse while the bride was carried around town by four men announcing the marriage. Catch all the action on Reuters' slideshow of the amazing party here. Have pictures of your own big fat Chinese wedding to share with the world? Send them to us at info(@)shanghaist(.)com. more ›

Check out this nifty machine bought recently by the fire department of Luoyang in Henan province. It's a little monster that Shanghai should have had to fight against that catastrophic Jingan fire late last year. Built especially to fight high-rise fires, the RMB3 million ($456,000) jet-powered water cannon can spew up to 4 tonnes of water per minute at a range of 50 metres. If the city had invested in this little machine ahead of time, imagine how many more lives we would have been able to save? more ›

With rising religiosity in China's Hui Muslim community, marrying within the faith has become a lot more important today than it was before, as is adhering to Islamic requirements on modesty in dressing. On Sunday, January 23, dozens of young Hui men and women -- and their parents -- participated in a matchmaking event conducted for them at the Beiyao Mosque in Luoyang, Henan province. more ›

Been having a baaaaaa-d week? Here's a sheep chaser. more ›

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

• Beijing had its earliest snowfall in a decade and - of course - it was because the Weather Modification Office decided to work its magic again, spraying clouds with 186 doses of silver iodide. It was to ease drought. [BBC]
• While labor reeducation camps may have been de rigueur a couple decades ago, now it's kind of embarrassing to admit you have them around. Unfortunately, China has them around. [France24]
• Oh really? NOW China is planning to repair that TVCC tower that was gutted by fire eight months ago. NOW. Allegedly, the building can "be repaired" and it won't be a "complete rebuilding." [WSJ]

• China will start providing two imported HIV drugs, Viread and Kaletra, to patients who have started developing resistance to cheaper, domestic alternatives. This means that nine of 20 drugs to combat AIDS are now available to patients in China.
• The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) has condemned China's deportation of a musician from Cape Town, South Africa, who was ordered to leave China within 48 hours when health authorities found she was HIV-positive. Apparently, the woman was not even informed or counselled about her HIV test.
• Health authorities in Henan province claim that significant improvements have been made in controlling HIV/AIDS and that death rates there are "closer to the normal mortality rate and lower than the national average". According to them, Zhumadian, one of the cities hit by illegal blood sales in the 1990s, has seen death rates more than halved to 5 percent in the past six years.

The music in this video shot in rural Henan totally gave us a headache. Steven Lim of Youku Buzz couldn't quite make out whether this was a wedding or a funeral. Well, yeah, as we told you before, things can get pretty noisy and wild at Chinese funerals, with sexy strippers and paper condoms and what have you. Someone needs to fly these girls down to Shanghai and bring them to The Shelter. We're sure it'd be a RIOT. more ›

Some reporter from Henan TV Station went into the public service hall of Neihuang Country (内黄县) and captured these images of civil servants playing online poker, knitting and even sleeping soundly in their armchairs when they should be working. That service standards in government bodies remain poor is to be expected, all the more when you're talking about a small and relatively poor county of just 700,000 in inland China. What took us more by surprise was the tone that this journalist used to shame and put down the already-embarrassed civil servants in front of the camera. In comments by Youku users translated by Youku Buzz:
• “Why did the journalist talk like a policeman?”
• “How can the reporter be so cocky?”
• “He will be beaten down by some gangsters tomorrow on his way home.”

Move over Pyongyang. The county government in Henan Province's impoverished Tongbai County (桐柏县), population 420,000, has built itself a massive building with a very expansive square that even the Shanghai municipal government could only dream of. The entire compound appears to be designed in accordance with fengshui principles with giant gates and sculptures of mythical creatures that locals have never even heard of before. more ›