China’s Miao ethnic group reveres trees, believing that they symbolise the life of humans; they also worship vegetation at important stages of life. The Miao people, whose population numbers over 10 million, inhabit central and southern China’s Guizhou, Yunnan, Guangxi provinces, and have a traditional Flower-Jump Festival every year. At this time, people gather around a 10-metre-tall flower tree made by the revered elderly in the village with evergreen tree branches, and dance around it on...

An enterprising 19-year-old student in China heads a start-up tech company and is also a philanthropist who donated 100,000 yuan (US$15,000) to sanitation workers at his school. Wei Siyuan graduated from Baoan Middle School in Shenzhen, southern China’s Guangdong province, last year and was admitted to Hunan University. He also has another identity: the chief executive officer of a company that develops unmanned aerial vehicles and artificial intelligence (AI) powered equipment. As a result, he...

A Chinese man climbed out of his 27th-floor flat after eating self-cooked jianshouqing mushrooms at home and having hallucinations. The man, surnamed Xue, from southwestern China’s Yunnan province, said he believed his family was inviting him to “train himself to cross the tribulation and attain immortality”, a practice often seen in Chinese fantasy novels. Xue said he unconsciously clambered out of the window of his flat and climbed down a water pipe, scratching his belly as he did so. Luckily,...

The case of a seven-year-old Chinese boy who had to be sent to an intensive care unit (ICU) after drinking two iced drinks has triggered a heated online discussion. The boy from central China’s Henan province was admitted to the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University recently. He showed symptoms of stomachache and vomiting, and was diagnosed with acute volvulus, a bowel obstruction resulting from a loop of intestine twisting around itself and its supporting tissue. A doctor at the...