This is the decidedly low-tech parallel to the Anthony Weiner sexting scandal, and it involves Wang Xiangui (王先贵), a department chief at the taxation bureau in Guiyang, Guizhou province. more ›

Investigations by South Korea into the sex scandal at its Shanghai consulate which saw several diplomats exchanging fistpunches over a Chinese mistress have concluded. more ›

Chongqing Normal University (重庆师范大学) and Southwest Normal University (西南大学), both located in Chongqing prefecture, became the first two institutions to ban their students from "being an escort, a mistress or having one-night stands" recently, a move that has caused wide debate about what students do and how to police them. more ›

• Changsha sculptors are carving a giant 100-foot-tall statue of Mao ZeDong out of granite, but many are complaining it doesn't look like Mao. Netizens say it reminds them of the Sphinx while one British paper has drawn a comparison to Lord Byron. [Telegraph]
• Even more than wanting to see the pictures from Taiwan's largest gay parade ever, you probably want to hear what Chinese netizen reactions were on it. Lucky we have Chinasmack, eh? [Chinasmack]
• Get to know a little more about the "Father of Chinese Aerospace" (aka "Rocket King") Qian xuesen, who helped launch the P.R.C.'s missile program after, ironically, leaving the U.S. over accusations of having Communist ties. He passed away this weekend. [Wall Street Journal]

• On the Arrest and Detention of a Man in China…As Documented By His Wife [Aimee Barnes] "This evening I picked up on a simple tweet from Beijing-based @niubi who wrote: “beijing haze: Arrest and Detention http://bit.ly/T9ENI wife blogs trying 2 get hubby out of beijing jail 4 seeing hooker….” While sexcapades with consequence in China aren’t altogether unusual, this particular storyline written from a wife’s perspective happened to catch my attention. I therefore proceeded to check out the links provided which led me to the blog, Beijing Haze, launched less than a month ago by an American woman..."
• Beijing sets 'recycling' day and offers door-to-door collection [China.org.cn] "Beijing's eight urban districts have set down the last Saturday of each month to collect recyclable waste materials such as used paper and plastic bottles. On Saturday municipal authorities set up 18 collection spots in various city communities and made public contact numbers for collection companies designated for each district. Now residents can enjoy door-to-door service by making a phone appointment with collection agencies."
• China Concubines Return Thanks To Increasing Capitalism [Huffington Post] "Concubines are no longer kept hidden away behind closed doors. In modern China's far more open society, concubines can be seen in the shopping malls and cafes of the cities, especially in the south, where there are thousands of what are known as "er nai" or "second breast". By some estimates, more than 90 per cent of the country's most senior officials punished on serious graft charges in the past five years have kept mistresses."

So it seems like people who are douchebags in one way are highly likely to be douchebags in another way as well. AsiaTimes Online reports that an anti-graft official recently acknowledged in public that 95% of corrupt officials had a woman on the side. In fact, keeping mistresses has become so fashionable that its seems like "concubinism is back." These mistresses are often given houses, money to play with and sometimes contracts for profitable projects. One banker in Shenzhen was reported to have spent 18.4 million RMB (of his bank's money) on his fifth mistress in almost three years. Another man in charge of infrastructure projects in Eastern China, had more than 140 women at his beck and call. Gross. The anti-graft official warned that mistresses were an easy way for an official to become corrupt. But we're inclined to believe that if an official's interested in keeping mistresses, he probably wasn't pure and true to begin with. more ›

Heating up the Netease forums is this sorrowful story: a Guangdong husband brazenly brought his affair back home after 10 years of marriage. If that wasn't enough, he even made love to his mistress in front of his wife and requested her to sleep with them. more ›

Remember that incredibly entertaining (if somewhat morbid) story about a woman who lost a best mistress contest and then drove her lover and his four other mistresses off a cliff? Well, apparently it might have been complete fiction! Damn it! more ›

UPDATE: Sadly, the person who first reported this story made it all up. It's fake. more ›

Do you know of a marriage that failed after the couple became expats? Karen Mazurkewich, who previously worked in Hong Kong for the Wall Street Journal, is seeking interviews over the next few weeks about how the unique aspects of living and working abroad could spell ruin for the wedded. more ›