Sounds Like This Marriage Was Destined To Be

Ms Xue sits in front of a large sculpture in Qingdao, China
in the year 2000. The man in the background
met Ms. Xue in their hometown of Chengdue,
China 11 years later and got married. Then he
found the photo taken over a decade before they
actually met. Destiny?

In Chengdue, China,  Mr. Ye and a Ms. Xue met and fall in love back in 2011. Then they got married and are so far living happily ever after. Very nice.

Recently, according to Petapixel, Mr. Ye was going through soe of Ms. Xue's old family photos, and came across an old photo of his future wife visting the city of Qingdao eleven years before the couple met.

However, Mr. Ye noticed something interesting in the background of the photo. Namely, himself.

"When I saw the photo, I was taken by surprise and I got goosebumps all over my body....that was my pose for taking photos."

In the photo, Mr. Ye came across, Ms. Xue is sitting on a small stool, dressed in white, with an immense red sculpture behind her. On the right hand edge of the frame, you see Mr Ye striking a sort of "Vogue" pose for a camera person that's outside the field of vision.

Mr. Ye explained that he almost always struck that distinctive pose when somebody was photographing him, so as soon as he saw the image, he knew he was looking at himself.

The odds that the two would be in the same photo are slim. The two are from Chengdu, with a population of about 14 million. Qingdao, where the two independently visited on the same day 11 years before their marriage, has about 9 million people. Chengdu and Qingdao are about 1,100 miles from each other.

Not surprisingly, the photo has gone viral in China, with many people there and everywhere else using the photo as evidence the pair was destined for each other, though neither of them spoke to each other during that visit 11 years before the couple actually met.

Wild Road Crash, Explosion: Miraculously, No Serious Injuries

Check out this video of a terrible crash between two trucks on a Chinese highway.

The explosion was so intense that windows broke in nearby buildings.

The incredible thing is nobody got killed.

Watch:

Lucky Or Unlucky Motorists Feel Like They Were Hit By A Ton Of Bricks Because They Were

Watch the video below to see what happened when this
truckload of bricks tipped over on top of a car.

On March 14, in Chengdu Province, China, a truck loaded with a gigantic pile of bricks couldn't stop in time at a traffic light.

The truck swerved over the curb and initially avoided the cars stopped at the light. However, the truck tipped over.

Three of the motorists dodged the resulting avalanche of bricks but one did not. As you can see in the very scary video below, a car was totally buried beneath the bricks.

The good and miraculous news is that the two people in the car buried by the bricks were quickly pulled out and did not appear to suffer serious injuries.

But nevertheless, I'm sure they felt like they were hit by a ton of bricks.

Watch:

World's Cruelest Shopping Mall Kept "World's Saddest Polar Bear" Hostage In Terrible Conditions

This polar bear has been on display in a unnatural
enclosure in a Chinese shopping mall. It's the
height of cruelty to do this to an animal. 

This is the height of animal cruelty and no wonder the world is outraged.

A shopping mall in China kept a polar bear on display inside the mall, with no natural light, nothing to do, no stimulation, aside from the thousands of tourists snapping photos that were blinding the bear with their camera flashes.
Under intense international pressure, the mall owners have "temporarily" removed the polar bear but promise to bring the poor thing back.

The polar bear, named Pizza, was exhibiting signs of serious mental distress, as  you can well imagine.

Pizza was completely out of his element, not given any way to enjoy life. He was/is just a prop to make the mall owners money.

Pretty cruel, right?

It's obvious why this animal is now widely described in the media as "the world's saddest polar bear."

Sounds like a parody of a childrens book, but this is just awful.

According to the New York Times:

"Video footage showed Pizza pacing, rearing up on the side of his glass enclosure farthest from visitors, shaking his head from side to side, and sniffing and pawing at an air vent - distress behaviors, according to animal rights activists."

This Chinese animal welfare problem goes well beyond one polar bear in a mall.

Again, the New York Times:

"Animal welfare groups say shopping malls in China increasingly are using wild animals to attract customers in a bid to compete against a growing popularity of more convenient and often cheaper e-commerce. 

China does not have an animal welfare law. Animal welfare advocates say one is long overdue."

I'll say!

I get it that a lot of people know that there are even bigger problems in the world than Chinese mall owners badly mistreating wild animals.

But it says something bad about our humanity that this is allowed to go on, doesn't it?

Giant Moon Rolls Through Chinese City, But All Is Fine

It was cloudy and gusty in the city of Fuzhou, China the other day because of a typhoon lurking offshore.

An inflatable moon that broke loose takes a
trip down a freeway in a Chinese city. 

But then, what's this? A giant inflatable moon comes rolling through town, crashing through intersections, bouncing over cars on the freeway and skittering off cargo ships docked at the port.

The city is having a mid-autumn festival that features the moon. Since clouds from the typhoon were blocking the view of the real full moon overhead, people set up these inflatable ones.

The gusty winds from outer fringers of Typhoon Meranti broke one of these moons loose, resulting in this funny video you see below. Nobody got hurt and there was no real damage:

Lot Of Work To Steal This Bicycle

Timber! Surveillance video captures guy stealing bike
by cutting down tree.  

Some idiot in China decided to steal a bike.

I know, I know, that happens a lot. People steal bicycles all the time.  

But as you see in the surveillance video below, this guy really, really wanted this bike.

The bicycle in question was tied to a tree, a pretty good sized one. So our thief took out a hand saw, and spent lots of time cutting down the tree to steal the bicycle.

It's amazing no bystanders caught the guy, but he got away with it. The tree fell, he grabbed the bike, put it on the back of his motorbike and took off.

Here's the weird, amazing viral video:

Sharp-Eyed Cop Prevents Sinkhole Disaster

This cop in China spotted a weird crack in the road
at a major intersection. He then prevented LOTS
of problems 

There's a wicked busy, congestion main road in the large city of Hangzhou, China, where traffic slows to a crawl at a major intersection.

Recently, a cop there noticed what seemed to him to be an odd, worrisome crack right in the middle of the intersection.

Security cameras caught what came next. He was nervous enough about it, to direct all the traffic around the crack.

He got his cop cohorts to grab some orange traffic cones and place them around the crack in the road, so drivers would go around them.

This caused quite a little traffic backup and probably some steamed motorists who had to maneuver around the cones.

But good thing. Had it not been for this cop, things would have gotten worse for some motorists than some annoying traffic cones:

Watch:

Turns Out Robot Waiters Aren't As Good As Humans After All

Turns out, thank goodness, robot waiters aren't nearly
as good as humans for the job. n

A restaurant in China decided to obtain robots to serve meals to customers rather than deal with the expense, messiness and, well, human-ness of actual people as waiters.

It didn't go well, which means at least for now, the legions of waiters at all those restaurants out there can keep their jobs, unless of course they keep forgetting orders, dumping beer on customers or steal from the till.

Luckily, almost all human waiters are better than those described in the above paragraph, which is more than I can say for the robot waiters in China.

According to The Verge, the Chinese restaurant chain bought several waiter robots at $7,000 a pop, but the robots couldn't even pour drinks right. Or serve soup. Or take orders from customers and understand them correctly. Plus they kept breaking down.

Two of the restaurants had to close down due to the incompetent robots. A third restaurant in the chain was able to stay open, but only because it hired flesh and blood humans to serve customers.

Apparently, robots can handle repetitive tasks well, but have trouble when interacting with us quirky, weird humans.

Maybe you don't have to tip robot waiters, but its probably worth tipping humans if it means you actually get the food and drinks you want at the restaurant.

Scary! Toddler Falls Out Of Van Into Heavy Traffic

Toddler falling out of a van into heavy Chinese
traffic. He was rescued and uninjured. A 

A viral video making the rounds shows a toddler falling out of the back of a van into heavy traffic on a Chinese highway.

Happy spoiler alert: The kid was rescued and wasn't hurt.

The van had stopped at a red light amid heavy traffic. The two year old boy was in the van, getting restless and moving around and found himself in the back of the van.

When traffic cleared, the van began moving, the hatchback unlatched the the boy tumbled out onto the pavement.

The back door of the van had been malfunctioning because the vehicle had been rearended a couple days earlier, SkyNews reported.

The van was driven by the boy's grandfather. He at first was unaware the kid had fallen out. When the kid stood up, he tried to chase after the van in the middle of the road but it was too late. Luckily, another motorist scooped up the kid and brought him to safety.

Meanwhile, another motorist tailed the van and honked his horn, trying to alert the grandfather. Finally he noticed.

The grandfather later told reporters, "After passing the intersection, a car chased me and kept sounding the horn. The driver told me a kid fell out of my van. I looked back, parked my van aside and went back and searched for my grandson," according to SkyNews.

Grandfather and grandson were reunited, and I'm sure the kid was strapped in a seat belt but good after that.

Here's the video. Yikes!

Scary: Suspension Bridge Collapse As People Are Walking Across It; And Glass Bridge Cracks

The New Zealand suspesion foot bridge after it partly
collapsed, sending people in the gorge below  

Recently in New Zealand a group of hikers were crossing a suspension bridge over a gorge along a hiking trail.  The bridge then abruptly snapped, flinging at least three people off of it.

Amazingly, the people who plunged 28 feet down landed in the water, not the rocks, so they weren't badly hurt, says stuff.co.nz 

The hikers, one of whom was filming, said the bridge suddenly let out a loud crack, and three people were pitched over the side into the water. A fourth person clung on to a piece of the bridge and was able to hoist himself back up.

The video, which you'll see at the bottom of this post, shows the hikers calmly walking across the bridge, then the view goes off in all kinds of wild directions as they fall, then the view plunges under water. Then you see people emerge.

The glass walkway in China that
later cracked whe somebody dropped
a stainlesss steel mug on it.  

Officials in New Zealand said there was a manufacturing fault in a cable on the suspension bridge, which led to the collapse.

Before we get to that video, there was another scary bridge accident, this one in China. There's a glass bottomed walkway more than 3,500 feet above s gorge.

It would be scary enough to venture out onto the walkway to begin with. Then, somebody dropped a stainless steel mug as they walked across the bridge and part of the glass bottom shattered.

Understandably, this set off a rush of people trying to get the HELL off the walkway now if not sooner.

The People's Daily Online, via Mashable, said only one of three layers of glass broke, so nobody was in any danger. Plus the glass is designed to kind of hold together even if it does crack.

The walkway is closed, however, until repairs are made.

Here's the video of the New Zealand collapse. The slow-mo version near the end is especially terrifying:

Chinese Traffic Jam So Bad It Makes Me Want To Pound My Own Steering Wheel In Frustration

How would you like to be stuck in traffic like this?  

I live in Vermont, a place not known for its terrible traffic jams.

Since I'm not used to traffic, when things do get snarled on Interstate 89 on the way to work because of a car crash or something, my blood immediately begins to boil.

You can imagine me exploding, then, if I lived in China, where they have traffic jams that boggle the imagination.

The aerial view you see below was taken near Beijing recently, when many motorists were returning to town after a holiday.  Hat tip to Sploid for alerting me to this. 

I don't know if any of the people in all these cars actually made it home.

 

Sinkhole Grabs People Minding Their Own Business At Bus Stop

These people aren't on as solid ground as they think. 

A bunch of people were milling around a bus stop in China this week, as people tend to do.

The problem is, the ground would have nothing to do with it.  In a dramtic video, we see a sinkhole open up beneath the crowd.

Five people were hurt, none seriously.

No word on what caused the sinkhole

Here's the video from a nearby security camera:

Let's Hope He Doesn't Drop The Air Conditioner - Or Himself

Workplace safety is no accident, but
this guy is testing the odds.  

A video is making the rounds of a guy in China installing an air conditioner.

Sounds boring, but watch the video and see how dangerously this guy lives.

Note that he's just wearing socks not sturdy shoes, and especially note what would happen if he slipped and fell.

If I were him, I'd just forget the air conditioner and put up with any heat waves that come along.

Watch:

Chinese Government Demands People Stop Hiring Strippers For Funerals

A new low in tastelessness? People are hiring
strippers in China to perform at funerals.  

Ever been do a funeral and all of a sudden strippers came out in the middle of the proceedings and did sexy, slutty pole dances?

Didn't think so.  

Unless you were in China, where apparently, this is a thing.

Apparently, families of the dearly departed hire strippers for funerals in the hopes of drawing larger crowds.

Sex sells. Even at funerals.

I know, I know. Strippers at a funeral doesn't make for an especially dignified, poignant send off to the dearly departed.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the strippers would draw this big crowd I metioned, which is supposedly a harbinger of good fortune in the afterlife.

"It's to give them face,' one village explained, 'Otherwise no one would come," reports the Wall Street Journal.

The Chinese government, though, is a party pooper, and is cracking down on these funeral strippers.

Again the Wall Street Journal is on it, saying the Ministry of Culture is working with police to stop these stripper performances.  Already one organizer of a funeral stripping troupe has been detained for 15 days and fined about $11,300 for one such performance

There are a a lot of Chinese imports here in America, but I really, really hope this is something that does not catch on. (It already has caught on in Taiwan)

I definitely don't want some pneumatic Barbie with big fake boobs in my face when I'm reflecting on the wonderful life of some friend or relative that has passed on. I mean, would you?

For once, the Chinese government and I stand in rare solidarity: No more strippers at funerals, please. Ugh.

Scary! Boy Falls From Third Floor Window, Bounces Off Car See What Happens Next

Here's a scary video out of China:

Surveillance video shows a three year old boy falling from what turns out to be a third floor window. He bounces off a car then lands on the sidewalk.

An update on what happens next below the video:



As you can see in the video, the boy gets up and staggers away after the fall.

A downstairs neighbor heard the crash of the boy falling, found him outside and took him back up to the third floor, where his grandparents were taking care of him.

Later, the kid's parents came home, heard what happened and rushed him off to the hospital, just in case. Doctors determined the boy had some scratches and bruises, and is going to be fine.

Which is both happy and amazing.

I Don't Think Sticky Tape Will Hold Up Concrete Beams

I'm not sure duct tape will solve this problem.  

It's Saturday, and it's time to do those home projects you've been planning to get around to.  

So caulk those windows, rake those leaves, put the garden to bed for winter,  repaint the wall, or build a nice piece of furniture in your wood shop.

But here's a pro tip: Make sure the work you're doing is actually going to work. And don't overestimate yourself.

Like some guy in China did.  I haven't been totally able to verify this story, but if it's true, Aye, yi, yi.

There are these big vertical concrete support beams in front of his building that are crumbling badly, as you can see in the photo on this page.

Building inspectors in Jinan City, China reasonably enough, told Kang Hsiao to fix them because they are a severe hazard to passersby.

So he did.

He could have replaced the concrete beams. Or called in a structural engineer for advice. But that doesn't show initiative. In a spirit of DIY enthusiasm, Hsiao fixed the beams himself.

How? He just wrapped them in sticky tape. That'll keep them intact, right?

Hsiao is quoted as saying, "I've used the tape before for many things and it's always proved to be durable, strong and effective. So when they told me I need to repair the beams it was an obvious choice and a lot cheaper than new beams."

Personally, I've always said that duct tape and WD-40 can solve 90 percent of all problems, but maybe that's an exaggeration.  I don't think duct tape will solve Hsiao's issues with the concrete beams, but you have to admire his optimism

His city and neighbors, though, don't share Hsiao's sunny view of things. The city is about to fine him big time and the neighbors are unimpressed.

Local media quoted one person who said, "I like Kang and I like his attitude, he takes a hands-on approach to problems and has always been keen to do things himself rather than get others to help him. But this is just insane." 

Let's just hope Hsiao doesn't write a DIY home repair book.

Watermelon Fight!!

The screen sot is blurry, but it tries to show
two watermelon vendors getting wayyy too angry

Sometimes, rivalrys between two similar businesses can get tense.

Sometimes, too tense.

In China, a watermelon vendor was angered by another vendor who pulled up to his neighborhood daily on a three wheel motorcycle to also sell watermelons.

Resentment between the two watermelon salesmen grew and grew (probably in large part because the guy with the motorcycle was unlicensed.

The whole thing blew up into this ugly scene of flying watermelons and fists. I don't know whether to be horrified or amused:

Worst Planning Ever: Huge Electric Transmission Tower In Middle Of Highway

Have you ever rolled your eyes at local planners, who allow, say, a Walmart or an noisy amusement park next to a sleepy residential neighborhood?  

Cars make their way around an electric pylon in the
middle of a Chinese highway.  

That's nothing compared to a place in Henan Province, China where poor planning has been taken to a whole new level. A road developer planned a route right across the path of a major electric transmission line.

As a result, a huge pylon is right in the middle of the road.

It's totally unclear why they didn't just move the road a little bit when the road developer realized the pylon would be there. (The electric line and pylon have been there since 2007, the road is brand new.)

The only cryptic news I could find about this is the electric company and the road developer are in negotiations to resolve the issue. Um, wouldn't it have been better to figure this out while the road was still in design stages? Just a thought.

Traffic now swerves around the pylon, and there's really no protection around it. People could smash right into it if they're not paying attention to their driving.

Dramatic Chinese Bridge Collapse Offers Lesson: When They Say Stay Off, Stay Off

A couple hundred people plunged into the water at a tourist site in China this week when the pedestrian bridge they were on collapsed beneath them.

Down she goes. Bridge collapses in China
when too many people got on it.   

The people responsible for the bridge said the span had the capacity for only 40 people at a time and tried to control the crowd.

Uh, uh. They all wanted to get across at once. Now if not sooner.  Big mistake. With more than 200 people on the bridge, it didn't work. So the crowd that was in such a hurry didn't make it across at all.

Luckily there were only a couple dozen minor injuries, so it could have been a lot worse.

Here's the wild video: