It's beginning to look like China's animal parks are subtly attempting to lead the way in liberalizing attitudes towards nontraditional relationships in the motherland. Not two months after Harbin allowed two gay penguin parents to adopt, now the Yunnan Wild Animal Park is promoting interracial marriage! To celebrate the love between "Long Hair" (长毛) the ram and "Junko" (纯子) the deer, they will hold a wedding ceremony on Valentine's Day next week. more ›

November 21st, five people were killed in a massive chain of rear-end accidents involving 20 cars in Hunan, Dongkou, on the Shanghai-Kunming Expressway more ›

Hell hath no fury like a CCTV reporter scorned. We told you previously about the 35 security guards who attacked three young men outside a KTV in Kunming, leaving one dead and two hospitalised, only to realise later that they had beaten up the wrong guys. To clear things up, the Kunming Public Security Bureau and Dabanqiao Neighbourhood Committee Office held a press conference which lasted all of five minutes yesterday. And what a catastrophe it was. more ›

17-year-old Fu Guojun (符国俊) was with his cousin and another friend eating roadside barbecue opposite the KTV when a mob of 35 security guards armed with wooden clubs and iron rods attacked them. That's somewhat better than a ten-to-one ratio for security guards vs. unarmed kids. Unity is Strength, right guys? more ›

Yuck! Would you look at that?! Sorry to put this set of pictures up during lunchtime, but we just had to show you this. Last Friday, Kunming police busted into an illegal "swill oil" processing factory which is said to process up to 1 ton of swill oil per day. The "processed" swill oil was sold for RMB7.30 per kilo, and from records discovered by the police, this factory sold close to 50 tons of swill oil between June and August alone, and made over RMB300,000. more ›

Last month, international media had a field day when an American blogger in Kunming discovered a fake Apple store that showed an unusual level of fidelity to the original. But as anyone who's been to an electronics market in China knows, this isn't exactly news. However, there's a new well-conceived copycat concept in Kunming that's caught our attention this week: none other than Swedish furniture-for-lazy-people giant IKEA has received the royal shanzhai treatment! more ›

Finally! The Chinese men's national team did something besides indiscriminately embarrassing themselves, winning the second leg of their tie against Laos 6-1 in Vientiane last night. China previously stuck it to the Southeast Asian side in a 7-2 win five days ago in Kunming, meaning China goes through to the third round of World Cup qualification matches in the Asian Football Confederation. more ›

Is haranguing your girlfriend on street corners and subway stations not good enough anymore? Aren't the glances of passersby witnessing your romantic psychodrama sufficient? more ›

After receiving an unsatisfying ruling about a traffic violation, this man, surname Zhou, strapped 1 kg of explosives to his body and planted himself outside the High Court in Kunming, Yunnan. Armed with an electronic detonator, he threatened to blow himself up at any minute. Police cordoned off 100 meters around the entrance, and had to expand that area to 200 meters after a large crowd of observers gathered. After a little over an hour, negotiators managed to persuade the man to give up the explosives. more ›

Our favourite Yiddish-speaking reporter from Forverts returns with an episode on old people in China. He meets lots of elderly folks who're a lot happier than the abandoned grandma we just saw, and should his mom ever visit him here some days, he says he's found the perfect game that will connect them. more ›

Toilet seats instead of chairs, urinals on the wall, and turd-like ice cream -- this is not some skanky sex club in Berlin but a bathroom-themed restaurant which has recently opened up in Kunming, Yunnan province. The eatery is the latest addition to a chain of restaurants called Modern Toilet that started out in Taiwan and in recent years expanded to Hong Kong and mainland China. Other mainland cities that are home to a Modern Toilet restaurant include Shenzhen, Jinjiang, Foshan, Xiamen and Chongqing. There isn't any news of a Modern Toilet opening here in Shanghai yet, but they're definitely looking for a franchisee in case any of you thinks this sort of toilet humour will work here. more ›

For those of you looking to take part in a Shanghai flash mob, don't forget the one happening this Sunday -- and you won't need to be able to dance. more ›

• On the Rarity of Foreign Women and Chinese Boyfriends/Chinese Husbands [Speaking of China] "When I’m in China, I tend to turn a lot of heads, especially in the countryside — and that’s not just because I’m a foreigner. It’s because I’m often seen holding hands with my Chinese husband. It’s true — the sight of a foreign woman and Chinese boyfriend or Chinese husband is much rarer than its counterpart, the foreign man and Chinese woman."
• Tim’s Texas Roadhouse, R.I.P. [WSJ] "Roadhouse proprietor Tim Hilbert, who arrived before 9 a.m., was barred from entering, forced to watch the preparations from outside. Since the Journal’s article on Hilbert Aug. 24, he’d been forced to cancel his planned “beer, barbeque, and blues” party - which he billed as a good-will gesture to local officials - because police were afraid it would turn into a mass protest. Hilbert received several inquiries from Chinese reporters about his predicament since the Journal article ran, and articles were published, but he continued to be frustrated in his efforts to seek more compensation from local courts and other government offices."
• China's newest lead poisoning investigation underway in Kunming [Go Kunming] "More than 200 children in Kunming's Dongchuan district have been found to have unsafe levels of lead in their blood, the third major case of child lead poisoning in China this month. During routine blood testing in Dongchuan's Tongdu county, more than 200 out of 1,000 children tested were found to have blood lead levels of more than 100 micrograms per liter."

• Protest at China TV tower [The Straits Times] "Demonstrators gathered outside a fire-gutted tower near the new China Central Television (CCTV) headquarters in Beijing on Tuesday, protesting against what they called forced eviction, state press said. About 30 residents accused the state-run television station of trying to get them to move from the area to make way for the massive and nearly completed construction project, Xinhua news agency said. After about an hour, police persuaded the protesters to put away their banners and leave, the report said. "
• China Backs Off Latest Rio Tinto Claims [WSJ] "Chinese officials distanced the government from allegations on a state-backed Web site that employees of mining giant Rio Tinto PLC had used years of "deceit" to obtain state secrets that cost China's steel industry more than $100 billion — spotlighting the murky and often confusing way China handles such secrecy cases. The allegations, published over the weekend, had quickly gained widespread attention, as they appeared to represent the government ratcheting up pressure over the case of four Rio Tinto employees, including an Australian citizen, who were detained last month by the Shanghai State Security Bureau on vague accusations of using bribery to obtain secrets that harmed China's national interests."
• Another suspect dies in Kunming police custody [GoKunming] "A man being held in detention in Kunming died in a hospital on Saturday with no clear cause of death, according to a Xinhua report. According to a police spokesperson speaking to reporters on Sunday, 43-year-old Wang Shukun (王树坤) had been held in the Guandu District Detention Center since July 19 before being checked into a hospital by police on August 6. After undergoing emergency procedures to save his life, Wang died early Saturday, the spokesperson said."

In May, two sisters who were attending an elementary school in Kunming, Yunnan, were suddenly arrested by the police. Their charge: prostitution. The girls' parents were also caught and beaten for allegedly attacking police officers. more ›

• What do you notice in this view of Kunming? [James Fallows] "Every roof as far as you can see has solar-thermal panels for hot water heating. More to come shortly on China's general environmental/climate situation, but I think this vista is different from that in many US cities — among other details you might notice, in the prevalence of the panels."
• Smoking kills - but few aware [People's Daily Online] "One-third of doctors in the country do not know smoking causes coronary heart disease, and nearly four in five do not know passive smoking can cause sudden infant death syndrome, a report revealed yesterday. Also, three in five smokers do not know that smoking causes heart disease, and four in five do not know it could lead to a stroke, the national tobacco control office of the Ministry of Health said in the report."
• 'Oldest pottery' found in China [BBC News] "Examples of pottery found in a cave at Yuchanyan in China's Hunan province may be the oldest known to science. By determining the fraction of a type, or isotope, of carbon in bone fragments and charcoal, the specimens were found to be 17,500 to 18,300 years old."

The New York Times reports:

Police officials say that a man who died Christmas Eve after trying to plant a bomb at a coffee shop in the southwestern city of Kunming was also responsible for a pair of bus bombings there in July that killed two people and wounded 14, state news media reported Sunday. more ›

Scary news just in from our friends at GoKunming:

This morning at 10:30 the bustle of Wenhua Xiang's cafes and restaurants was violently interrupted by an explosion at Salvador's Coffee House. more ›

Chris Horton of GoKunming informs us of another abnormal incident involving a bus in Kunming Monday evening. No reports of any bomb or explosive device were made, but eyewitnesses say they heard a "loud explosion-like sound", as rumours of another explosion spread like wildfire via text message. Meanwhile, in a separate incident at the Kunming airport, several irate passengers "clashed with airport police, smashing computers, desks and other items". more ›

Police said yesterday they had cracked down on a Shanghai terrorist cell planning violence at Olympic soccer matches in the city. Shanghai’s Olympic security office head Cheng Jiulong said police, who were put on “crisis” level several days ago, had learned of several international terrorist organizations and staged raids successful in arresting potential attackers. Information not mentioned in Jiulong's report included how many people were arrested, when they were taken into custody and where they are being held. more ›

The three consecutive bus explosions in Kunming, capital of Yunnan Province, and nearby Minshan that killed three people and injured 14 this morning were "cases of man-made, deliberate sabotage", according to a spokesman from the Yunnan PSB. According to Reuters, the Kunming blasts "came two days after Yunnan police opened fire and killed two rubber farmers in the province's Menglian county in a clash that also saw 41 police officers injured" and so there is the possibility that the explosions were related to the clash. Meanwhile, Mr Li Jiheng, deputy party chief of Yunnan, has been flown in to investigate the clash. More updates to be available by our friends from GoKunming. more ›

We're somewhat late bringing this to you, but yes, over the weekend, anti-French protests took place over the weekend all over China outside Carrefour stores in Hefei, Qingdao, Wuhan, Shenzhen, Xuzhou, Zhengzhou, Luoyang, Jinan and Kunming. Although these were mainly anti-French anti-Carrefour protests, they were described by People's Daily as "protests against Tibetan independence". more ›