Some performance art in Guangzhou last weekend has left a sour taste in many mouths, and has circulated widely in Sina Weibo.

Kang Yi, a performance artist who has earned some notoriety over the years, stood mostly (but not completely) naked last Saturday with well-done roast chickens hanging from his limbs. A young girl then bit the man’s flesh in several places.  What is the significance of this, you ask? Lola B at Beijing Cream proffers this:

What do roast chickens and love have in common? Absofuckinglutely nothing.

With this piece, Kang Yi theoretically hopes to inspire people to choose a more traditional Chinese path of love. I think this performance will turn me off physical contact with others altogether — and that takes a lot. Performance art is always best experienced in person, and perhaps I would have hated it a little less had I been present, but to add insult to injury, the video documentation that has been circulating for Kang Yi’s work is insultingly poorly edited.

The watching of it leaves me a little confused at best. There is no feeling between the boy and girl. The chickens are there to make the connection between human flesh and meat? — it’s either too obvious or too obscure, and aesthetically very displeasing.

The girl involved is a sophomore university student from Hunan Province. She ended up biting (some say ‘kissing’, although marks were left behind) Kang Yi more than 1,000 times.

Shanghaiist notes the art hasn’t been received all that well online:

The video of the performance has been much forwarded and commented on by netizens. One outraged commentator said: “Today’s society consider rubbish to be art, consider criminals to be normal, and illegal lawyers to be defenders of the law…. where are the police? why have the news reported on this? It just promotes it! Don’t profane art!” Another less outraged commentator said “It’s a waste of good chicken“.

Kang Yi said: “It is inevitable for the body to react when it has contact with females, especially on such a cold day.  It is like ice with fire, carnal desire with the attempt to resist temptation.  I need to choose one of them. I hope my work can wake youths up to look for faithful love.”

When thirty foreign consulates in Guangzhou held a charity bazaar for handicapped children on December 8, they raised 330,000 RMB. But it wasn’t all joy.

After representatives of the consulate sold delicacies from their home countries at low prices at the bazaar, they sent the money to Ping’an Bank. It turned out that 5,000 RMB of what they had received was counterfeit, according to Yangcheng Evening News.

The criminals who used the counterfeit money were criticized for exploiting foreigners’ ignorance about fake Chinese currency.

Then, amazingly, He Keng, a former deputy director of the National Bureau of Statistics, attacked the foreign consulates on Tencent Weibo.

“Foreign consulates intended to disgrace us Chinese by holding a charity bazaar and they are shameless. China doesn’t need the 330,000 yuan, not to mention it was Chinese people’s money,” wrote He, as translated by Global Times.

He has come under fire for his comments, and police are investigating the fraud.

Remember when we told you about all the damage that was done by falling trees when Typhoon Vicente hit this summer?

It turns out that some of the region’s trees don’t even need a heavy storm to fall over and do damage.

After a 100 year-old tree fell in Guangzhou’s Yuexiu District last week, a 50 year-old ficus glaberrima tree fell on December 3, damaging two cars and a telecommunications cable in the district, according to Southern Metropolis Daily.

The 50 year-old tree, which fell on Haizhu Middle Road at around 7:40 p.m., also took another tree with it. The cause is thought to be either that the roots were decayed after consecutive days of heavy rain, or white ants.

Two sedan cars parked under the tree were crushed, one was severely damaged.

The city is conducting an investigation into how such accidents can be avoided in future.

It’s what seems to be an epidemic, another student in China is suffering from severe injuries after being beaten by his teacher.

A 14 year-old student in Guangzhou’s Haizhu District is the latest victim, having been repeatedly beaten by his gym instructor for being too rowdy on the school bus, Southern Metropolis Daily has learned. The teen was left with serious neck injuries.

Xiao Jie, a middle school student, was on the school bus with friends last Wednesday (November 22) when the gym teacher asked him to keep his voice down.  After ignoring the requests, it’s said the teacher approached Xiao Jie and slapped him.

Upon arriving at school, the teacher ordered Xiao Jie to stand at the school gate. One of Xiao Jie’s classmates mocked him as he passed by, which started an altercation between the two.  The teacher witnessed this and walked over, pulled Xiao Jie’s hair and hit him seven or eight times, according to witnesses.

Xiao Jie asked to be taken to hospital because his head and neck were in pain. Tests showed that he had suffered a cervical vertebra dislocation.

The PE teacher has been fired according to the head teacher of the school.

Both physical and sexual abuse cases against students seem to be cropping up a lot these days.  Five-year-old Yaoyao suffered severe injuries after being repeatedly dropped on her head by her kindergarten teacher in Guangzhou, and 3-year old Keke was sexually assaulted by her teacher in Guangzhou this fall.

A recent op-ed in Shenzhen Daily called for something to be done about China’s woefully inadequate child abuse laws.

A pregnant woman in Guangzhou claims she was beaten by supermarket staff after stealing milk powder Nov. 20, Southern Metropolis Daily reports.

Mrs.Jiang came to Guangzhou from her native Hunan Province three days earlier. At around 7:00 pm.,she went shopping at the supermarket in Baiyun District’s new city. After checking out, she was detained by security guards who found a pot of milk powder worth 208 yuan in her bag that she hadn’t paid for.

Mrs. Jiang confessed that she wanted to take the milk powder to her baby. After refusing to pay the supermarket 3,000 yuan in compensation, a female worker took 180 yuan that was on Mrs. Jiang’s person before male security guards took her to a warehouse to “take care of her”.

“I called my sister and brother-in-law, but they didn’t believe in the authenticity of the case and refused to respond. One of the supermarket staff beat me repeatedly with a stick, even though I told them I was pregnant,” said Jiang.

Mrs. Jiang confirmed with police that she stole the milk powder but the supermarket is yet to make a statement. Mrs.Jiang decided to have an abortion after doctors told her her injuries could affect the baby.

(drawing by Li Yong)

WeChat, also known as Weixin, has been growing like a bad weed in China these days.  The iOS and Android app is now being used by more than 200 million people, and is the pick-up tool of choice for many laowai in China because it facilitates chatting with nearby strangers.

Given how ubiquitous the tool has become, it’s not surprising that a scam has finally surfaced.  Users in Dongguan are being warned after a woman met up with a stranger she had chatted with on the service in April this year. The stranger then threatened her and demanded she hand over her bank card, Southern Metropolis Daily reports.

The woman, who works in a hotel, was invited by a Weixin contact to meet up and have a chat. In the end, she met an accomplice of a criminal surnamed Lu, who comes from Hubei Province and ran a restaurant with another man Jian before it went out of business.

Unable to support themselves, Lu and Jian set up a criminal gang. As part of the arrangement, Lu’s girlfriend and brother used Weixin to meet and then steal from strangers.

Police say there have been six similar cases in Dongguan this year involving rape, theft and blackmail.

Police explained that because Weixin is newer than rival services such as QQ, it is poorly policed. They warned residents to be vigilant when using the service, and not to meet strangers who refused to identify themselves or asked to borrow things.

(Can you see the door?)

Images of a college dorm in Zhuhai was praised by netizens as looking more homely than many family homes, Zhujiang Evening News reports.

The room in the Zhuhai campus of the Beijing Institute of Technology was designed by a student surnamed He who studies the not-very-artsy subject of International Trade. The designer spent 460 RMB on all the decorative materials online. These include a British-style clock and Japanese cartoons. “The four of us spent three months collecting pictures and wallpaper, then designing and decorating,” said the International Trade student.

One Sina Weibo user lamented that the students would unfortunately have to bequeath it to someone else when they graduate. A female student asked when she could go and see it up close, even though girls are not supposed to enter boys’ dormitories. A male college student said his peers had set the bar impossibly high.

For a brief intro to what Chinese college dorms usually look like, see this Sinosplice article.

The 9th International Chinese Aviation Expo has kicked off in neighbouring Zhuhai.  It’s the largest airshow of its kind in China, with 39 countries and 650 aircraft manufacturers representing, alongside hundreds of aircraft, according to the Southern Metropolis Daily.  It will be underway until the November 18th if you’re interested in popping over to see it; ticket information is here.

Zhuhai is known as somewhat of an aviation hotbed in China.  The airshow is frequently used for political ends, and will be so again this time.  The PLA is exhibiting the new WZ-10 attack helicopter at this year’s show, and has so far been mum about its capabilities.

News reports also noted Zhuhai is planning the construction of 12 new airports for private planes, and will simplify the exam and approval procedure for pilots.

If you’re interested in aviation in China, we can wholeheartedly recommend the book China Airborne by Atlantic writer James Fallows.

Shenzhen Luohu Railway Station

One of the country’s busiest railway stations saw two workers get beaten up by a woman who was there to pick up her parents November 4, the Nanfang Daily reports.

The violence happened around 8:40 p.m. when the woman convinced workers to let her into the station hall to meet her parents. Upon exiting, a different pair of workers said she must show them a ticket to be allowed to leave. After an argument, the woman hit two female workers and both had bruises on their faces when they talked to reporters.

Luohu Railway Station police told reporters the woman was required to buy a platform ticket, and the ensuing argument led to her striking out at the workers, one of which was young, the other close to retirement.

In the end, the woman agreed to pay 1,800 RMB in compensation to the two workers. According to the Luo Hu railway station, the station stopped selling platform tickets for reception on April 17 this year.

A platform ticket enables non-passengers to go to the platform to greet or see off passengers. The change in rules is what appears to have caused the confusion.

The problem started at 8:15am and continued until 9:30 am.  All subway trains travelling from Chiwan stopped for one to two minutes, inconveniencing thousands of passengers. According to the operator, the signal was interfered with by unidentified mobile networks, and all trains are programmed to slow down or halt in such circumstances.

That evening, anonymous insiders told media that the unidentified networks were being used by passengers on their mobile phones. An engineer said the network had the same frequency range as the one used by the metro company.

In September 2011, hundreds were injured in a subway accident in Shanghai. Two months earlier, a high speed rail crash in Wenzhou City in Zhejiang Province caused much public anger, and in recent days was brought up in an impassioned debate about the quality of infrastructure in China between Martin Jacques of the BBC and Charles Custer of Chinageeks.

Fortunately, this incident turns out to have been a minor one.