Yao Ming might be accruing guanxi up the wazoo with his new standing committee gig, but it's Shaquille O'Neal who truly speaks to the people! Shaq showed up for Hunan TV's Spring Gala Festival to run around on stage with kiddie monks, and went through his usual patented brand of kung foolery while trying not to step on the children. more ›

Broad Group, a Chinese sustainable building company, has constructed a 30-storey tall hotel prototype in 360 hours near Hunan province's Dongting Lake. They claim the hotel can withstand a 9 magnitude earthquake, is five times more quake-resistant than conventional buildings and five times more energy efficient, with indoor air 20 times purer than the air outside. Make of that what you will, but the resulting timelapse video is pretty damn impressive. more ›

more ›

more ›

Police have arrested a 34-year-old man named Li Hao on charges that he kept sex slaves in a dungeon buried beneath a residential complex in Luoyang, Henan province. He is suspected of kidnapping a total of six women from KTV bars, murdering at least one, and keeping them prisoner for periods of up to two years! more ›

A new report from Caixin Online states that scores of sane individuals are regularly committed to mental health institutions after going through informal diagnostic procedures, sometimes only after brief 20 minute mental health checks. Patients are then unable to leave their respective institutions due to a lack of proper oversight in verifying their mental health status. This one issue is part of a larger pattern of systemic failure in China's mental healthcare system, which includes outmoded methods and outdated attitudes in treating the mentally ill, along with a general scarcity of proper resources and funding. These images are a stark look at a darker aspect of Chinese society that rarely ever sees the light of day. more ›

A new maid-themed cafe has opened in the Hunan capital of Changsha, featuring a female-only waitstaff composed of adolescent-looking giggly schoolgirl types. Servers are outfitted in black and white French maid fetish cosplay outfits, and greet you at the door with a 'Is there anything I can do to serve you, master/husband?' (the term for husband is the same as master [主人] in Japanese). more ›

"A 31-year-old man in central Hunan Province was sentenced to death for killing his wife and mother-in-law with a car because they had a dispute over divorce, Hunan Morning Post reported today. Ding Daili became estranged from his wife Xiao Ying, who on July 17 last year went to Ding's home with her mother Li Meirong and her elder brother Xiao Jian to reach a divorce agreement, according to the police in Changsha, the provincial capital. After that, Ding was about to drive away from his home and he was stopped again by Xiao and her family as they demanded Ding to return Xiao's ID card and salary card. Ding was enraged by their abusing language and mowed them down with his car. Xiao and her mother were killed instantly and two other men at the scene were slightly injured, Changsha police said." [Shanghai Daily] more ›

A Hunan man has been detained by Taiwanese marine police after he rowed over from Xiamen to Taiwan's Kinmen Island on a makeshift boat put together with several styrofoam boards, using badminton racquets as oars. After spending a good five over hours rowing across the straits, the man looked clearly exhausted as he was intercepted by the police. He says he made the journey with the aim of defecting over to Taiwan and join the Kuomintang. Taiwanese authorities however are unlikely to grant the man asylum and are expected to deport him back to the Chinese mainland. We dread to think what will happen to him when he returns to the embrace of the motherland. more ›

The story of corrupt local officials in Hunan snatching children from poor rural families to sell to adoption agencies isn't a new one--the LA Times covered this story two years ago--but the issue is garnering far more attention after a recent in-depth investigative report from Caixin came out on the 9th of this month. In this video, an Al Jazeera reporter heads to Shaoyang, Hunan to interview families who've lost their children. more ›

Via NoCommentTV: "Huitong County in Huaihua, Hunan Province was hit by rainstorm [last Thursday night]. Within 10 hours, the rainfall was over 100 millimeters in the county town. Landslides and road collapses occurred in several villages and towns, with many houses destroyed or damaged." more ›

A scandal involving family planning officials trafficking in newborns has just come to light in Hunan province. more ›

Last April, we told you about a grisly gay sex murder case in Hunan, which involved a gay singer and the death of six men in elaborate sex games involving sado-masochism, erotic asphyxiation and hanging. more ›

This one's just for fun: Apparently (and adorably) the Changsha Underwater World conducted a systematic health check of all its female animals in honor of Women's Day last week. This involved sending an 80-year-old sea turtle to the local Children's Hospital for a CT Scan, which because of her size was the only way to check on the health of her internal organs. Weighing in at around 70kg, this was clearly no easy feat. more ›

WARNING: This video contains graphic images. more ›

The recent cold spell that swept across Guizhou and Hunan provinces have made roads impassable, stranded motorists and affected electricity supply in some areas. Here in the Xinhuang Dong Autonomous County, local children are now carrying their own coal burners to school to help them stay warm. The burners come in different shapes and sizes -- some are made from disused tin cans and others from old washbasins. more ›

Two Chinese men stripped off at Zhangjiajie, Hunan, and set a new world record for full body ice contact endurance. Chen Kecai and Jin Songhao, both from Heilongjian province, stayed in the ice for 118 minutes and 120 minutes respectively, breaking the previous record of 115 minutes set several days earlier by Wim Hof, a 51-year-old Dutch man, in Hong Kong. While he was in the glass compartment, Jin wrote two signs -- one proclaiming "Long live the people of China" (中国人名万岁!) and another "Long live the Chinese Communist Party!" (中国共产党万岁!) more ›

Photographer Ouyang Xingkai treats us to this stunning series of photographs showing the remnants of an anachronistic lifestyle in increasingly modern China. Ouyang, a Hunanese himself took most of these pictures in the town of Hongjiang, Hunan. more ›

A 40-year-old woman in Hunan province has been diagnosed with “mahjong-related deep-vein thrombosis”, having spent eight consecutive hours sitting motionless and playing the Chinese tile game with only a "small amount" of a soft drink for energy. The woman went to doctors with a painful swelling in her left leg, and an ultrasound showed the thrombosis, a severe blod clot. Having been hospitalized for two weeks, the woman is now on maintenance therapy with warfarin, a blood thinner. Whether she has laid off the mahjong marathons is, however, unknown. more ›

• A gay singer in Hunan province has been arrested for murder after allegedly killing six men in elaborate sex games involving sado-masochism, erotic asphyxiation and hanging.
• Up north in Beijing, a new group called Beijing Period has come together to host monthly LGBT events such as the Mr & Mr Dating Game Show at the highly popular White Rabbit club.
• Back home in Shanghai, new gay bar The Box has been hosting matchmaking sessions for young gay men and women seeking to come together in faux marriages.

Ah, Mao Zedong, so much about your life has been written in the annals of history. But there's always room for a little more, right? While you may have known that Mao loved spicy food because of his Hunanese roots, did you know that red braised pork (hongshao rou) was his favorite dish? Or that his consumption of the spicy meat is considered to be the the "'brain food' which provided Mao with the wits to defeat his enemies?" more ›

Ever watched Avatar and thought to yourself "I would really like to go hang out there?" Well, now you can, sort of: the government of Zhangjiajie, Hunan has renamed one of their iconic mountain peaks "Hallelujah Mountain" after one of the mystical places in the Cameron blockbuster. In fact, you can already find Avatar-themed vacation packages: we wonder if they'll have kitschier memorabilia than those iconic Chinese tour group yellow hats? more ›

It took us two viewings to figure out what these kids from a Nanxiang County high school in Hunan were doing: sports moves! We saw some practicing for ping pong, badminton, volleyball and lots of basketball and then the video went from being really really weird to really kinda adorable. more ›

What was meant to be a friendly game of basketball in Hunan Province has burst into a furious debate on the internet, after an American player tossed money out to a crowd of students... and some students actually scrambled to pick it up. more ›

That's it. We're packing our bags and moving to Hunan. Not content with having the best TV station, a decent claim to the best food, and some pretty stunning scenery, the south-eastern province also has a pretty cool party official. Well, relatively cool we mean. more ›

Yesterday morning, two young male to female transsexuals took to the streets of Changsha City, Hunan Province. They carried banners saying: "I want to have a sex change and live my life as a woman" and "Even if I die from it, I want a sex change, one day as a woman would be worth it". more ›

By 2015 it could happen, GoKunming reports. The journey currently takes 37 hours. According to GoKunming, "the Shanghai-Kunming passenger line (沪昆客运专线) will connect Shanghai and Kunming via the provinces of Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Hunan, Guizhou and Yunnan, passing through the major cities of Hangzhou, Nanchang and Changsha. Its target speed is reportedly 350 km/hr." more ›

Youku Buzz informs us that some entrepreneurial street vendors in Changsha, Hunan, are now selling fresh air from places like Inner Mongolia and Yangshuo at the really affordable rate of RMB50 per bottle. more ›

Making it to the front page of Youku, the clip has been viewed 1.3 million times and garnered close to 10,000 comments in less than a day. Another clip uploaded by another eyewitness shows a huge crowd gathering to behold this most loyal companion. more ›