Even the most blasé among us are surprised from time to time, reading the news in China. And the widespread penetration of social media in China sure helps to spread the word. After all, where else in the world can you go on a 1 Yuan tour or meet people who sympathize with road rage bullies? Only in China. Here are the questionable occurrences that are currently trending.

1) Netizens: Road Rage Victim Deserves the Beating?

Road rage in itself is hardly headline-worthy these days. But a video of a male driver brutally assaulting a female driver predictably grabbed its fair share of eyeballs. In Chengdu, a young male driver hauled a female driver out of her car, threw her on the ground and delivering the coup de grace, kicked her across the road. He then turned upon members of the public who quickly surrounded his car, preventing his getaway. The man, identified as Mr Zhang, was finally apprehended, but not before managing to cut a taxi driver with a screwdriver.

However, in a curious turn of opinion, online rage turned from the young man in question to the female driver when footage from Zhang’s dashboard camera surfaced online. The female driver’s red Hyundai was seen swerving at high speed in front of Zhang’s vehicle. In addition to lambasting Lu, never mind that she was hospitalized for multiple injuries including a concussion, Netizens bemoaned the state of traffic law enforcement in China. Eventually, it became clear that a straightforward case of road rage was just the tip of the iceberg in an ocean of rapidly expanding car ownership. More than 87,000 fatalities have been reported on China’s roads in the first 10 months of 2014 alone.

2) How Much Verbal Abuse Would You Endure For a 1 Yuan tour?

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Especially if it is a 1 Yuan Yunnan tour. Members of the tour group found their sweet deal turning sour when their guide threatened to cancel the Xishuangbanna leg of their Yunnan tour, leaving them high and dry without transport home. The reason? They hadn’t bought enough souvenirs, hence depriving her of commission income. Needless to say, the Yunnan Provincial Commission on Tourism Development was forced to investigate after the video of the tour guide’s angry tirade attracted 35 million views and countless angry reactions from viewers with similar experiences. The tour guide in question was slapped with a fine and ended up losing her license while her operator was suspended, fined RMB 20,000 and forced to compensate each member of the tour group RMB 500.

While the guide regretted her outburst as “impulsive”, she said her income was solely based on such commissions. Despite a law introduced in 2013 trying to end this, low-cost tour companies receiving financial kickbacks from retailers in China are the norm. This in turns allows tour operators to offer tours below cost. And in a cut-throat industry where deal-prone consumers have been conditioned to expect low prices, this seems to be a practice unlikely to end soon.

3) Strawberry Sales Hit by CCTV Herbicide Scare… Which Turns Out to be Unfounded?

Strawberry sales plummeted when China Central Television (CCTV) reported that eight strawberry samples from supermarkets contained excessive amounts of acetochlor, a herbicide that can be carcinogenic if ingested in large amounts. The affected berries were mainly from Beijing’s suburban areas but strawberry sales in other provinces like Shanghai were similarly affected. The tests were conducted by the Beijing University of Agriculture, found the highest amount of acetochlor was 0.367 mg/kg, six times more than the EU limit of 0.05 mg/kg. China currently has no known standards on acetochlor in strawberries. Acetochlor is a weed killer mainly applied in China on field crops, such as corn, beans and potatoes. Which leads to the mystery of why it was found in strawberries, since no herbicides are required for its cultivation and their use would kill the berry plants.

Anyway, multiple authorities in China quickly stepped in to refute CCTV’s claims. The Beijing Municipal Bureau of Agriculture’s response four days after the initial report countered that 175 samples they investigated were found safe for consumption. The cyberspace administration of Beijing dismissed this state media report as “rumours” that they would continue to supervise. China is the world’s largest cultivator of strawberries and more than 200,000kg of strawberries are sold a day in Beijing at the height of the season.

4) New Rule: Nose-Picking Forbidden in Chinese Tourist Spots… But How Can it Be Enforced?

According to Beijing Times, domestic media picked up a BBC report titled, “China Tourism New Rules Take Effect: Tour Guides Can Report Uncivilised Tourists”, changing the title to “China Tourism New Rules: Public Ban on Nose Picking”. These guidelines were said to be handed out by the National Tourism Administration. An online discussion ensued, with Netizens debating how something like a ban on nose picking can be enforced. Eventually, it was found that news pertaining to the ban on nose picking did not exist.

On a side note, Googling “nose picking” and “Chinese tourists” does turn up quite a few news reports that the China National Tourism Administration issued a set of guidelines to Chinese Tourists headed overseas, in time for the National Day Golden Week holiday rush. The 64-page illustrated handbook apparently did advice Chinese headed overseas to avoid nose picking in public, among other strange advice, like avoiding pooping in public. Strangely, these reports on news sites like the Wall Street Journal surfaced back in 2013. However, the search does not turn up any BBC coverage of this piece of news.

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Keywords: Chinese Netizen news Trending in China