Has Guinness Found A New World’s Smallest Man?

Some honors are dubious indeed. For Huang Kaiquan, a forty-year-old man, living with his mother in a village in southwestern China, the title of world’s smallest man seems well within reach.

Huang is a former actor/magician who stands just less than two feet, six inches, which is only 1.4 cm (about half an inch) higher than the former world’s shortest man, He Pingping, who was 29 inches tall. Pingping died of chest problems last March at the age of 21 while filming a television program in Italy for the Guinness Book of Records.

In Sanjiang village, they call Huang, “Short Brother,” and it is estimated that his height and weight is equivalent to that of an average three year-old child.

“He didn’t grow at all until about one month after birth. We thought it was just late development and didn’t pay enough attention. When Huang was three, he still wore the clothes of a one-year-old. It was then we noticed his unusualness,” said his mother, Cheng Fuxiu.

Born in 1970, Huang is the second child and only son in the family, all the other members of which are of normal stature. One consolation for this accident of birth that has caused him much anguish and torment throughout his life is that even at the age of forty, his mother can still pick him up in her arms and cuddle him.

“People have always mistaken me for a toddler because of my height and now that I am going bald, I look even more like a baby,” joked Huang to the press.

Huang’s parents refused to abandon him and brought him to hospitals where no one was able to help him. When Huang was six and the father of the family died, it was extremely difficult for Cheng to make enough money by herself to feed her family, but she did it.

“ He has always been a good boy… he sweeps the floors and helps whenever he can,” said Cheng.

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Japan’s Custom Motor Scooters: Colorful Noise or Art Form?

Japan is a nation just as obsessed with subcultures as any other, bursting with creative inquiry and the need for personal and artistic expression. Hence, the Big Scooter phenomenon, transforming the concept of customization and pushing the glittery envelope beyond expected borders and further than ever before.

The bosozuku bike gangs (literally “violent running tribes”) have a reputation for reckless speeding and creating noisy havoc along Tokyo’s highways, although in recent years they transferred their colorful noise to Okinawa. The original gangs were known as Lightning Tribes (kaminari-zoku) and are associated more with the 1950s when the Japanese auto industry was a burgeoning empire.

Today these Japanese Big Scooter groups are pussycats; involved only in their scooters and how they can make them look better and increase their speed and endurance by using lightweight parts.

They are an obsessed lot and into social networking. They even have their own Mixi group (the Japanese Facebook)which they utilize to arrange meetings where they can swap stories about ideas for new customizations.

The most popular scooters are by far the 250cc models. Low out-of-pocket costs and edgy designs as well as the fact that most weigh less than 400 pounds, give them a lightweight advantage over other motorbike classes.

Ease and control are two primary concerns for the novice motorcyclist and 250ccs offer this “forgiveness” with their smooth shifting, gearboxes and upright seating positions. It should also be mentioned that bikes over 250cc must undergo a biannual inspection in Japan.

To give you an idea of cost, a typical big scooter might run about US $3,000 to US $5,000, but a customized baby can run anywhere from US $14,000 to US $25,000.

If you should be traveling in Tokyo and come across any lone riders, do not be afraid to approach them for they relish questions about their bikes; it is the stuff they live for.

Their bikes are their “babies” and they love to talk about them and show them off.

All one can appropriately say is: VROOM!

What do YOU think about this?

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Chinese Man Lives in Phone Booth: Who’s Calling Please?

For the last two years, a homeless man who refuses to give his name or even converse with anyone has been living in a phone booth in Dalian city, Liaoning province, China.

No one knows the identity of this poor soul who sleeps during the daylight hours by curling up into a ball on top of cushions and ventures out at night begging for food.

Despite his stark, cramped and unappetizing surroundings, this man has managed to make a home for himself. He has found a spot to neatly stack a pile of food boxes and bottles of mineral water; his spare clothes hang from the roof of the booth.

Those who see him claim he is well groomed, has good personal hygiene and washes himself in public facilities.

“He wears old and patched clothes, but he looks very clean. Quite often he checks his appearance in a mirror to tidy his moustache. He talks to himself in the mirror, but he never speaks to anyone else. Sometimes we offer him some food but he won’t accept, and he won’t speak a word,” says the janitor of the neighboring building who sees the man every day.

The man is in a world all by himself and does not appear to even notice the throng of curious passersby in heavily traversed Zhongshan Square. After two years, he has simply learned to ignore them as they pass to and fro commuting to work and living their busy lives.

“We want to find his family and send him home. But he never talks to anybody. It’s hard for us to know how to help him, said a community worker.

This is a very sad commentary on the plight of the human condition; a fall from a place of secure grace where we are all balanced rather precariously in these times of economic hardship.

As a civilization, we need to look harder at things in a way that really matters; that is, we need to see them.

Maybe we need to make a phone call.

Excuse me, sir….

What do YOU think about this?

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Do Cows Respond To Music?

For the 860 dairy cows that live on a farm in a village in central China’s Henan Province, music makes their day and helps them to produce more milk!

Their breeder, Guo Zhixin, claims that playing music to his cows for an hour every day produces more than one kilo of milk from every cow, every day of the year resulting in 700 yuan (about $102 dollars) more worth of milk every year.

While it seems incredible, Guo is convinced it works and has the milk to prove it. He got the idea to try music on his cows after reading about another farmer’s success in a foreign cow magazine. (Is there really such a thing?)

We have always known that animals hear differently than humans. Dogs, cats and horses not only hear two to three times more than humans do, they also can hear sounds faster and from much further way than their human counterparts.

Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that for an animal, their interaction to the world is a based on smell, the need for food and reactions to the sounds and noises that surround them.

From the point of view of owners, this makes an animal’s sensitivity to sound an important aspect of pet ownership education. The acute sense of sound is perfect in the wild where animals can move freely away and toward sound.

In homes and barns created by humans where movement is restricted, animals may often develop separation anxiety, fear of thunderstorms and aggressive behaviors.

Still, it seems that for cows to fit into this picture is a bit far out, but then again so was the idea of rubbing two sticks together to make fire at one time in our thinking.

One can only wonder where this insight may lead as far as cows and other fine creatures of the universe are concerned.

Is there a chance that in the world to come where wonders never cease that cows might one day be composing music (or at selecting what they would like to hear)?

Perhaps a prodigy will soon burst upon the musical/farm world?

Welcome, Moothoven.

Go figure.

What do YOU think about this?

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Japan’s Pink Penis Parade, aka the Kanamara Matsuri [NSFW]

At first glance, you might think it’s just a penis parade, what the huge pink penis being tugged across the street. But it is in fact the Kanamara Matsuri, an ancient Shinto festival designed to honor fertility, prevent STDs, and raise money for HIV research.

The Kanamara Matsuri, which translates to “Big Iron Penis Lord,” is celebrated during the first week of April in Kawasaki, Japan. The event concludes on the first Sunday of April, which this year ironically coincided with the Christian holiday of Easter. So while many Westerners celebrated by eating chocolate eggs and chasing bunny rabbits on April 3rd, the Japanese paraded through town with a big, giant penis.

The festival, which has been held since the 1600s, centers around the legend of a demon that, according to Wikipedia, “hid inside the vagina of a young girl and castrated two young men on their wedding nights.” In retaliation, the young damsel sought the assistance of a blacksmith, who in turn built an ironpenis to combat the demon.

This led the Shinto people—Shinto is a form of spirituality practiced by over 90% of Japan’s citizens—to build a giant penis shrine that prostitutes would visit to seek protection from STDs. In due time, the shrine became portable and thus a festival was borne.

Nowadays, the Kanamara Matsuri festival features a plethora of penis-related items like penis-shaped candies, penis-shaped candles, penis-shaped food, and even a gigantic penis-shaped wooden battering ram that also serves as a great sitting spot for hot nurses.

PenisLollyPop

PenisFood

WoodenPenis

Plus the festival has recently gained strong international appeal, as many tourists tend to gravitate toward it. “In general, traditional Japanese festivals are not very accessible to foreigners, but this one is different,” said head priestess Kimiko Nakamura, during an interview with Reuters in April 2008.

Many tourists even find the Kanamara Matsuri festival rather impressive, in that it’s quite a liberal feat to haul a penis through the ‘Main Street’ of an Asian country, let alone any country. “You wouldn’t find a festival like this in the UK,” said Angela Wheaton. “Maybe in secret somewhere, but nothing like this.”

Feel free to watch a portion of the 2010 festival below. Make sure to keep an eye out for the gigantic moving penis.

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Cell Phone Call Costs North Korean His Life

There are many dangers of urban life but, up until now, getting executed for cell phone use was not one of them. This tragic event took place in North Korea where authorities captured, tortured and then executed a man for violating the country’s cell phone ban.

Jung, the man in question, was found guilty of calling a friend in South Korea.

He was initially captured by the police at his home and taken away. Soon afterwards, he was interrogated by police where he confessed about his phone activities. This included complaining to his friend about the terrible conditions in North Korea.

Soon afterwards, he was killed via firing squad for disobeying the law.

North Korea has stringent laws regarding cell phone usage. The authorities only allow folks to make national calls and even these ones are restricted to the Pyongyang area. Thus, there was a ban on making any international calls.


The state especially frowned upon any calls being made to its southern counterpart.

In the past, North Korea bigwigs have been known to roam the Chinese border in hopes of picking up cell phone usage.

In these cases, they were secret police officers who used cell phone signal detectors that in turn, which helped them pinpoint anyone chatting away on a cell phone.

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Chinese Girl Freaks People Out in the Elevator

It doesn’t matter what the situation, young Asian girls with long black hair and white nightgowns are creepy. As this video demonstrates, you don’t even need to be in the middle of a Japanese horror film to encounter one.


Whether or not it’s staged is a moot point, as I can only imagine that it would be terrifying despite already knowing she’s right behind the door. The video picks off seemingly innocent enough. A young woman, one who happens to bear a remarkable resemblance to Sadako from the hit Japanese thriller Ringu, smiles and waves at the camera, then assumes a relatively innocuous position against the window in a hallway.

One by one the unsuspecting victims enter, presumably just going about their day like any other. As they enter the hallway, they are met with their worst nightmares: a little Chinese girl. Each individual reacts in much the same way – a quick jump, maybe even a loss of footing, then utter confusion as the young girl just stares at them as they walk by.

It’s not until the end when one unfortunate passerby gets a little too freaked out and decides to hit the poor girl and kick her over.

I don’t care where you’re from or who might be frightening you, that’s just rude.

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Chinese Man Eats Young Boy’s Brains to Cure His Epilepsy

There is a lot of crazy out there in the world. There’s moderate crazy, such as the religious rituals in India that for some reason require the launching of babies off of a building, and super crazy, such as pretty much anything that involves Japanese virgins and video games. Then you come across something so incredibly crazy it makes baby launching look like a game of ultimate frisbee.

29-year old Wang Chaoxu, who hails from the southwest Chinese village of Qixian, seems to have a nasty habit of killing children and eating their brains, believing them to be the cure for his epilepsy. 11-year old Li Xuetang disappeared one night, prompting his mother to become worried, and going so far as imploring the head of the village to make a radio broadcast on the off chance her song might see it.

Sadly, the young boy was found on January 23rd several hours later with his head opened and part of his brain removed. In a scene reminiscent of a horror film, a local villager by the named of Zhang Huansheng saw a man kneeling over the boy and holding him by the neck.

When Zhang approached the man, he passed the boy off as his son, saying “My child has passed out and I’m trying to wake him up. Baby, wake up, wake up.”

In addition to the young boy, a 3-year old girl was found in a public toilet with a knife wound to her head, and police are currently investigating whether the two deaths are connected.

Sidenote: He ate the brains with earthworms and ants. What a weirdo.

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Japanese Cat Costumes: The New Cat’s Meow

One can only wonder how cats feel when their owners (if that could ever be anyway) dress them up in kimonos, Napoleon hats, tiaras and black lace! Those costumes created and sold by Tokyo’s Takako Iwasa are quite hysterical, but really folks, what is going on here anyway?

Hello Kitty has pervaded our senses ad nauseum, but take a look at this idea, which takes the word cute way beyond the single proverbial notch that chef Emeril always tells us about.

In Japan the word for cute (kawaii) is screamed rather than spoken by Iwasa-san as she is known to her website visitors in Japan. Launched in 2,000, her site features outrageous costumes for cats. She built up a customer base through word of meow online and by 2001, she was selling costumes at the Parisian Printemps department store in the tony Ginza commercial center in Tokyo.

“Costumes for dogs have been popular for 20 years. But we didn’t have costumes for cats because we believed cats groom themselves and don’t like to wear clothes. But, then I met my cat, Prin, and suddenly thought, ‘I want to dress her up!’ ”

This desire to clothe her pure white Scottish Fold cat (named for their folded ears, which make them look a little like owls) was sated originally by some outfits she found in a teddy bear shop, but Prin soon outgrew the outfits, and seemed destined to return to a naked and very boring life.

The costumes offered in her catalogue are undeniably eye catching and adorable. Whether Prin is wearing the curly brown locks of Robespierre, Puss N’ Boots attire, a lemon peel on her head or a Tartan tam o’ shanter, these outfits are unique and very amusing. (We can’t know how Prin and her feline ilk really feel about all this without a meow translator.)

“Without costumes, Prin is just an ordinary cat. But if she wears costumes, she becomes an alien from another planet,” says Iwasa-san.

According to Iwasa-san, even though profit is not her motive, her online store currently boasts about 100,000 hits in a day and the average outfit costs 3,800 yen ($40).
“I don’t make big money with the business. It is just enough to eat and enjoy my life with Prin. With the business, my dream to be a cat tailor has been realized.”

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For South Korean Couple, Virtual Baby Takes Precedence

Stories of video games taking precedence over one’s health are not entirely uncommon. As tragic as it is, however, you can’t deny the irony involved with a couple inadvertently starving their child to death because they spent upwards of twelve hours a day raising a virtual daughter online.

After losing their jobs, a South Korean couple, consisting of a 41-year old father and his 25-year old wife, spent all of their time playing the popular game Prius Online in an internet cafe. In the game, they devoted their time to raising their virtual daughter Anima and to “escape from reality.”

Cited as having “lost their will to live a normal life” following the loss of their jobs, their baby was often only fed once a day, which ultimately led to her death due to malnutrition. Compounding this was the fact that their daughter was born prematurely.

The couple was ultimately arrested in Suweon, which is just south of Seoul. By this point, their baby, who was three-months old, had already been dead for five months.

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News » Japan » Giant Monster From the Deep: Japanese Spider Crab Giant Monster From the Deep: Japanese Spider Crab

With legs long enough to straddle a Buick, this sea monster plucked from the depths of the Pacific Ocean, measures a staggering ten feet from claw to claw. It currently resides in Britain at the National Sea Life Centre in Birmingham, and retains the honor of being the biggest crab ever seen.

Of the genus arthopod (Macrocheira kaempferi in Latin) this creature is still growing and could live up to 100 years, its legs eventually reaching fifteen feet! It is not known how old the crab is, and its body is the size of a basketball.

Dubbed “Crabzilla” for obvious reasons; had Jules Verne seen this creature perhaps he might have chosen it over the killer squid in Twenty Thousand Leagues under The Sea.

This giant crab is a lethal and fearful predator in ocean depths of up to 2,500 feet, but out of the water looks weak and limp because its limbs are so heavy that the body can’t support it.

In the ebb and flow of the balance of nature, this big fellow has its enemies as well, but they all have two feet and open mouths. Salted and steamed, the Japanese Spider Crab is considered a delicacy in Japan, although they are banned in the spring when they lay their eggs.

“It is rumored these crabs can grow to four meters (about 14 feet) across. Our open-topped ray tank has the icy cold waters Crabzilla needs, and will be his home until the end of March. He absolutely dwarfs the other crabs in there, but he’s not aggressive and they should have nothing to worry about,” says Graham Burrows, curator of the National Sea Life Centre.

The front limbs of the Japanese Spider Crab are feeding arms, with each one measuring over five feet long and ending in sizeable claws.

It would seem that the Elizabethan bearded bard we all know and love said it more aptly than anyone ever could: “There more things in heaven and earth, my dear Horatio, than are dreamt of…”

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Twelve Hundred Pairs of Shoes Stolen from Funeral Homes

A South Korean second-hand shoe-shop owner stole more than 1,200 pairs of designer shoes by pretending to be a mourner in many funeral homes and hospitals.

So much more than just a man with an uncontrollable fetish for shoes, this haul of footwear was the haul to end all others. The police have put the “lost soles” on display in the hopes of reuniting them with their original owners.

The 59-year-old thief is a man named Mr. Park, and his victims were all mourners who had removed their shoes in funeral homes out of respect, which is the South Korean national tradition.

Park would attend funerals, remove his own footwear and after the ceremony, put on a more expensive pair and walk off to another funeral across the capital city of Seoul.

He had been under surveillance and Mr. Park himself unwittingly led the police to his secret stash; a warehouse filled to the brim with expensive shoes that he planned to use to replenish his stock.

His modus operandi was bold and clever. Police observed him carefully as he arrived at one funeral home after another in Seoul’s southern Suseo district, removed his cheap footwear, made a brief appearance as a “mourner” inside the home and then donned another expensive pair of shoes and left his own behind.

Police caught him in the act of pilfering three pairs of shoes, which were worth a few thousand dollars collectively.

Whether or not Mrs. Imelda Marcos, famed former first lady of the Philippines who was said to own more than a thousand pair of shoes would have smiled at Mr. Park’s antics is not known, but this man has burgled his last set of shoes if the police in Seoul have anything to say about it!

What do YOU think about this?

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Tired at Work? Try the Workaholic Pillow!

George Costanza once tried to take a nap at work by curling up into a ball underneath his office desk. Unfortunately, his plan backfired with a bang. Too bad he didn’t have a workaholic pillow readily available to assist him in his quest for slumber.

The workaholic pillow is a pillow disguised as a gigantic book laced with professional-looking Chinese symbols. It’s apparently meant to resemble a law-book, although it looks more like the Book of Confucius.

It was recently released through Rinkya Stores of Japan, but is accessible to any international buyer with Internet access to GeekStuff4U, which likely means that the Chinese won’t be using it anytime soon.

At any rate, the basis behind this ingenious contraption is to fool your employer into thinking that you are hunched over and slaving over work—when you are in fact fast asleep. For, you see, upon opening the book, you come face to face with a doublewide foam pillow designed to perfectly fit your head, no matter how small or large it may be.

Of course if your boss is dim-witted enough to actually believe you’re reading when you’re clearly asleep, then you have nothing to worry about in the first place!

However, the key to using the workaholic pillow is to not actually fall asleep, but just rest instead. This will allow you to promptly flip the pillow back into a book whenever your supervisor approaches.

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Condom Producers Use Condom Art to Promote Condom Use

Can condoms be used for more than just preventing pregnancy, blocking STDs, or making a first-class water balloon? The folks at Guilin Latex Factories certainly believe so, which is exactly why they hosted the first-ever condom fashion show at the Fourth China Reproductive Health New Technologies and Products Expo in Beijing back during the summer of 2007.

It was a speculator event featuring a wide-range of outlandish ‘condom-gear,’ from dresses to hats and even lollipops. Here’s a brief gallery of the most highlighted items:
FOR MORE PICTURE CLICK BELOW

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Giant Snake Found in China Scares Man to Death

A photo purporting to show a dead 55-foot snake has been making the rounds online, accompanied by a story that almost too outrageous to believe.

The photo and story originally appeared in the People’s Daily, which serves as the official newspaper for the Communist Party in China. It stated that the snake was one of two that were awakened by local workers digging up huge mounds of earth in preparation for a new road that was to cut through the forest that lay just outside of Gupiing city in the Chinese province of Jiangxi.

While one snake, which was reported to be 55-feet long and weigh approximately 300kg, became a casualty of the bulldozers digging, another one, described as a gold boa, appeared supposedly bearing its fangs, causing the workers to flee in terror.

The driver of the bulldozer, however, is said to have been paralyzed with fear. When the workers returned, he was so sick he could barely move, and eventually died at the hospital, presumably of a heart attack.

Despite the story and the accompanying photo, the local government has deemed it all a hoax, due in part to the distinct lack of native boas in that area. It was also thought the coelacanth was extinct until one was discovered in 1938, so to completely dismiss the story as a hoax is to laugh in the face of just how darned scary and unpredictable nature can be.

We’ve all seen the movie Anaconda. Where’s Jon Voight when you need him?

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Indian Man’s Mirror Image Is No Illusion

When you stand in front of a mirror, it appears as if your right arm is in fact your left arm, and vice versa. It’s a peculiar experience, but you and I both know that it’s merely an optical illusion. There is, however, no illusion involved with Ashok Shivnani’s “situs inversus,” a condition wherein his major visceral organs are in the mirror opposite position of where they ought to be.

Ashok, a 64-year-old resident of Mumbai, was initially scheduled to have a 7cm-long tumor removed from his right kidney. It was after an X-ray was performed on him that his doctors realized something was not quite right. They discovered, in fact, that his aorta and inferior vena cava (IVC) were reversed. Plus Ashock has two livers, a stunted large intestine, and no small intestine—not to mention the tumor-infected kidney.

Even more shocking is the fact that Ashok had no clue about his unique condition, despite having survived two hernia operations, and having been inspected for chronic lung disease as well. He said, “Never in my life did I know that my body was different.”

According to doctors, Ashok is the only known individual on Earth to sport “such a haphazard abdominal structure.”

Thankfully, Ashok will not require treatment for his condition. “Generally, people suffering from situs invertus lead a fairly asymptomatic life,” said Dr. Desai. “This is also the case with Shivnani. He will not need any surgery to change the positions of the organs and veins.”

He will, however, still need to get that pesky tumor removed!

For more information and an inside look into Ashok’s life, check out the video clip below.

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World’s Largest Paintbrush Wows at Exhibition in China

In what will most likely go down as one of the biggest wastes of time in history, a Chinese artist has created the world’s largest paint brush.

Recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records, artist He Wenjun constructed the over-sized paint applicator using the tails of 300 horses. It weighs in at approximately 115 pounds and is about twelve feet long.

It took He Wenjun one year to construct this artistic monstrosity, and another year to master its unwieldy power. The brush made its grand debut on a public canvas during an exhibition in Nanchong, where He Wenjun demonstrated his ability to rock the calligraphy, as these pictures demonstrate.

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Ancient Chinese Secret: Have Sex But Stay a Virgin

In life you only get one first time… or do you?

Before answering that question, we must first ascertain why a someone might want more than one first time. The reasons are numerous, including religious, social and even economic; however, the most common reason is to avoid revealing one’s sexual history to a new lover.

So let’s suppose a woman decides that she wants to become a virgin again. What can she do?

Believe it or not, she can actually replace her broken hymen via hymenorrhaphy, a form of cosmetic surgery wherein the hymen tissue is pulled back together, thereby allowing it to be ‘re-popped.’ The problem with hymenorrhaphy, however, is that it’s outrageously expensive.

And so an alternative solution to hymenorrhaphy, many street peddlers in China now offer artificial hymens or maidenheads that inflate inside a woman’s vagina, after which it can be ‘popped’ open with a penis.

Within the last few years, in fact, the business of artificial hymens has blown up across China, bringing with it a bevy of artificial hymen kits such as Night Red, Virtuous Girl Red, and Joan of ARC Red.

And what’s most surprising is that most of these artificial hymens can be purchased for less than 50 US dollars, which is a steal compared to the price of hymenorrhaphy.

The sale of artificial hymens has actually popular nowadays that the streets of China are littered with ads proclaiming to restore a woman’s virginity:

“Your virginity back in 5 minutes!”
“The product of high-technology! Your unspeakable secret will be erased!”
”Get your virginity back for 260 RMB!”
“No surgery, no shots, no medicine, no side-effects. Only 260 RMB!”

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2 Year-Old Chained to Pole in Beijing for Safety

These photos, taken by photographer Han Meng, give us a startling look at what those who live well under the poverty line must do to ensure the safety of their children.

Chen Chuanliu is an unlicensed rickshaw driver in the city of Beijing who felt the most secure way to keep his two-year old son Lao Lu from being abducted is to chain him to a lamp post with a thick chain and padlock. A month prior his four-year old sister was abducted, a grim reminder of the prevalence of child abduction in China.


“My wife cannot take care of him and I have to work to support my family. So I chain him to a pole when I have a fare. I don’t even have a picture of my daughter to use for a missing-person poster. I cannot lose my son as well.”

Since Chuanliu is a migrant worker he is unable to receive help from the state and is thus unable to place his son in a child care facility while he works. The mother of the boy is unable to take care of him due to the fact that she is disabled and spends her days collecting trash on the side of the road.


Despite the man’s unique and seemingly dangerous approach toward child care, his love for his son is evident in his refusal to accept large sums of money in exchange for giving his boy up for adoption.

It is not known if charges have been filed by authorities, who were alerted by concerned passersby. They did, however, order the man to unchain the boy immediately.

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Childless Indian Man Sacrifices Tongue to Lord Shiva

Nobody wants to die, but it’s a natural part of life. And it’s also the reason we reproduce—so that our humanity lives on through our children, grandchildren, and great-great-great-great grandchildren.

But not everybody is destined to live forever. Impotence, infertility, and even just plain marital apathy have reared their ugly heads many a time and prevented the natural process of procreation.

Just ask Mukesh Kumar, an Uttar Pradesh resident from the village of Banthari, which lies approximately 200km from Lucknow.

He has been married for four years, yet remains childless. Nobody knows why he is unable to conceive (although most speculators suspect infertility), but what we do know for certain is that this inability to procreate so angered him that he cut off his tongue as a sacrifice to Hindu God Lord Shiva.


According to inspector R.P. Mishra, the incident began at Mukesh’s home, where a spousal disagreement blew over into something far worse.

Inspector Mishra further explains: “An ardent devotee of Lord Shiva, an angry Kumar left his house following a tiff with his wife for not being able to conceive. He went to the temple, where he offered his tongue to the deity.”

He was immediately shipped to a nearby hospital, where his tongue was reattached. Doctors claim he’s safe now, although he’s likely to suffer from future speech problems (Duh!).

Apparently, Mukesh hoped that his ’sacrificial tongue’ would inspire Lord Shiva to offer him a child.

You know, there are treatments for infertility. But hey… whatever floats his boat!

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