Results tagged “offbeat”

Whilst not everyone loves the regular toothpastey Haibao, it would take a cold, cold heart not to love him in his new outfit.

We previously told you about one man's dream to build, and fly a tiny home-made helicopter between live power lines.

.... and no, he's not a eunuch or anything. 52 year old Chinese music teacher Li Wenxing (李文兴) is now practicing to reach six octaves plus one minor triad to break the Guinness record for world's widest vocal range, currently held by American Tim Storms. Just for comparison, the average person sings 1-2 octaves, professional singers with extensive training can sing about 3 octaves unstrained, and Mariah Carey is able to reach 5 octaves.

The personal ads at enjoyclassifieds.com are generally good for a guilty chuckle, and none more so than this honest young Shanghainese lady:

The "Guanxi" SMS service has bailed us out of trouble countless times, and for that we love them.

Dai Longquan, a 19-year-old man from Jiangxi Province is currently recuperating at Renji Hospital after having a 28cm drill bit removed from his brain by surgeons. He was adjusting the drill when a tiny little accident happened — the bit shot into his right eye socket and was embedded 18 centimetres into his brain. By the time Dai was rushed to the hospital, he was already in a critical condition and was lapsing into a coma. Doctors made two small openings on each side of his brain and not only removed the bit (three centimetres of which had been bent into a right angle), but also saved his eye.

Chinese farmer Wu Yulu came from an impoverished village outside of Beijing and did not have the chance to attain secondary education, but this did not stop him from teaching himself to build robots. This video features Wu's "30 second son" (as he affectionately calls it), a walking, talking, rickshaw-pulling robot which he says is now dearer to him than his own son. Having accidentally burnt down his own house and plunged his family into debt in the process of experimenting with robots, Wu has been hailed by the media as "China's cleverest farmer-inventor" and now works with universities and robotics companies, travelling around China to exhibit his creations.

This video capturing some classic auto showroom drama was uploaded by an intrepid Youku user and has garnered over 436,000 views in less than a day. The young woman, on hearing that her boyfriend was not going to buy the car, flies into a mad rage, gets behind the steering wheel and attempts to drive off with the car, much to the horror of both boyfriend and salesperson. Worried that his girlfriend might do some real damage to the store, the exasperated boyfriend eventually surrenders and decides to take all the damage upon himself. He whips out his credit card and yells out to his girlfriend saying, "I'm buying it! I'm buying it!"

"If there's a camel up a hill, then it's Gong Li with me, when I doooo, when I doooo... "

We chanced upon this old, but super awesome picture of a RMB50 bill recreated with eggs on Neatorama. The art installation was exhibited in Guangzhou about two years ago.

Yes, people are crazy and times are strange. Two days ago, a fashionably dressed young woman ate a RMB280 lunch at a Japanese restaurant somewhere near Nanjing Xi Lu and Chengdu Bei Lu. When it was time to get the bill, she told the wait staff that she had no money on her and needed to withdraw some cash. A restaurant employee followed her to a nearby China Construction Bank (CCB) ATM, whereupon the woman locked herself inside and forbade anyone to come near her, saying she had a knife and would kill herself if anyone tried to force their way in. CCB staff tried persuading her to come out but met with no success. Eventually the police were called in and the woman was finally brought out after three hours of self-imposed captivity. The woman is now being subjected to psychological tests to see if she is mentally sound.

This Chinese shepherd has found a novel way to both save money on a sheep dog and to keep his flock in line at the same time — by showing his flock a picture of a wolf! Ananova quotes a man from Xi'an by the name of Du Hebing who tells Huashang Daily he shot the picture by chance:

"After visiting Qinling Wild Animal Park, on the way home I saw a group of sheep walking along the road with a man holding a picture following behind them," he said.

Continue reading "Shepherd keeps flock in line by showing them wolf picture"

The public toilet outside the Shanghai Railway Station costs RMB1 per visit and is said to earn RMB100 million each year. To see whether there is truth to this rumour, Steward Du stood outside the toilet for a good five minutes to count the number of people entering the toilet and did all the math for us.

With Christmas right around the corner, many of you will be looking for gifts for that special princess (or queen) in your life.

From Inaction Hero: "China's 'S&M' Enterprises Seek Innovation"

Zookeepers at Polar Land in Harbin, China have observed a pair of gay penguins trying to dupe other straight penguins by placing stones in front of them before waddling away with their eggs thinking no one was watching. Eventually, the straight penguins realised what their gay friends have been up to and started to actively ostracise them from their social club. Keepers had to intervene by segregating the pair of three-year-old male penguins (how cruel!) "to avoid disrupting the rest of the community during the hatching season". The odd behaviour of the gay penguins has been explained as being a manifestation of the strong paternal instinct of male penguins that exists irrespective of sexual orientation.

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.

For those of you wondering how Chinese people can actually type all those weird-looking complex characters, this video will surely make you go WTF@*#$! With the help of a Yawei Steno Kit (亚伟中文速录机) which possesses only 14 keys, and which we're told appears at almost every press conference here, this lady by the name of Huang Xia hacks out 520 Chinese characters per minute. Apparently, the official record for stenotyping in American English today is 375 words per minute. As any China Twitterer will inform you, every 100 characters in Chinese can contain a ton more information than 100 characters in English. Hand this lady a 100,000 character novel and she will finishing typing it for you in 192.3 minutes.

If there's one business model that's sure to ride the current economic storm, it's a shop which sells nothing but useless gadgets.

Fans of TV show "Mad Men" might like to picture a scene where the boys (and girl) at Sterling Cooper try and come up with a way of selling Baijiu to non-Chinese drinkers.

‘Gays’ crack nearly causes international incident, says the Shanghai Daily

A CHINESE man nearly started an unintended fight with an overseas sailor when he greeted him in poorly chosen English words.

Continue reading "Chinglish, homophobia and silly sailors"