Chongqing’s foreign trade and economic relations commission has revealed that the Disney group is looking to develop a new theme park in China’s central and western region and is putting forward the city for consideration.

“We attach great significance to Disney’s project in western China. Currently, we are actively preparing for a project to participate in the bidding. We believe that Disney’s new project will undergo comparisons and assessments during the competition for the site selection. It is possible that our municipality will receive the project,” wrote the commission.

However, the commission said nothing is official yet.

By contrast, neighboring Sichuan has denied any rumors that it is seeking to host China’s second Disneyland.

The post With Shanghai’s Open, Chongqing Now Wants Its Own Disneyland appeared first on The Nanfang.

The father, a 46 year-old man named Feng, noticed that his hot chocolate had a strange taste, which he later described as Sprite. A second sip caused his tongue to go numb and his throat to burn.

Things went from bad to worse after Feng approached restaurant staff. After showing them the contents of his cup, the McDonald’s employees had the following conversation right in front of him:

Employee A: Is that hydrogen peroxide?
Employee B: No, that looks like disinfectant.

Feng and his son were immediately taken to hospital for emergency treatment. A doctor found them to have suffered damage to the liver, gall bladder, spleen and stomach. Although Feng was eventually released with non-life-threatening injuries, his son remains in hospital for observation.

The McDonald’s restaurant manager confirmed to the Chongqing Evening Report that an employee had mistakenly put disinfectant into a hot chocolate beverage thinking that it was hot water.

The local Food and Drug Inspection Agency is investigating.

The post Oops: Thinking It’s Hot Water, McDonald’s Pours Disinfectant Into Hot Chocolate appeared first on The Nanfang.

So when Chongqing received its first snowfall in 20 years, one way residents celebrated was by by building miniature snowmen on car roofs. But the Chongqing police were not amused. At all.

On January 23, Chongqing traffic police pulled over 136 cars for being decorated with snowmen. The police maintain that the snowmen constituted a safety hazard, warning that snow doesn’t stick well to metal. The snowmen can fall off at any time, posing a risk to cars nearby.

To drive their point home, Chongqing traffic police say having a snowman on top of a car is an illegal act punishable by a fine of RMB 50 and a deduction of one point on their driving record. However, reports suggest that most drivers were let off with a warning as well as receiving “criticism” from police to not engage in such behavior again.

Some people didn’t see what the problem was. As one driver told the Chongqing Evening Post, “Everybody is doing it. And, my kid likes it – a lot.”

As much risk as the snowmen pose to traffic safety, it isn’t as though snow poses much of a threat to Chongqing, which has rarely seen a snowfall. But there’s not much chance Chongqing police will relax traffic regulations to coincide with seasonal cheer, thereby preventing the tradition of rooftop snowmen from ever snowballing.

The post Chongqing Police Aren’t Amused with Tiny Snowmen on Cars appeared first on The Nanfang.

[This post contains graphic content which may be upsetting to some readers]

An escalator in China has claimed another life at a subway station in Chongqing yesterday.

A four year-old boy died after he was reportedly left unattended with his three year-old sister at the Red Flag Brook subway station, a busy transfer point for the city’s Line 3 and 6 subway routes. At around 11am, the boy was playing with his back to an escalator when he suddenly fell down, and was pulled into the handrail mechanism.

Eyewitnesses say the mother rushed back and frantically tried to pull the boy out herself, but was unsuccessful. After a minute of trying, the boy stopped moving.

Attempts to revive the boy at the hospital were unsuccessful.

Later that afternoon, the Chongqing Municipal Rail Transport Corporation reminded parents to keep a close eye on their kids:

The rail corporation is very saddened at this kind of incident. We again remind all commuters to maintain care of their children and elderly in order to prevent such accidents from ever happening again.

This past July, a mother died a horrific death on video when she fell through an unsecured floor panel while visiting a shopping mall in Hubei. The incident became so entrenched in the public’s mind that shopping malls throughout China affixed decals to escalator floor panels in order to assure patrons they won’t fall through.

In July 2011, a 13 year-old teenager died and 40 people were injured when an escalator headed to the upper floor of the Beijing Zoo Station of the Beijing Metro suddenly slammed into reverse, causing a pile-up of bodies at the bottom.

Unattended children injured in accidents involving escalators have happened before in China, too. This past June, mall surveillance video recorded an unaccompanied child falling from the second floor of a Guangxi shopping mall after playing with an escalator handrail.

The post Boy Swallowed Up in Another Deadly Escalator Accident in China appeared first on The Nanfang.

If being rich is as glorious as it’s proclaimed to be, then the next best thing must be not having to share your wealth with anyone. At least that’s the approach taken by a Chongqing man who decided to divorce his wife before going to claim a winning lottery ticket for himself worth RMB 5,775,340 ($907,306).

Liu Xiang (a pseudonym) found out he had won the prize on February 17 this year, and despite it being the family-orientated Spring Festival, Liu pressed his wife Yuan Li for a divorce without telling her about his winnings. After being urged repeatedly, the couple signed the divorce papers on February 25. Two days later, Zhang cashed in his winning lottery ticket, earning himself RMB 4.6 million ($722,000) after taxes.

Yuan sued Liu for half the earnings from the lottery tickets, and on September 7 a Liangping court ruled that she deserved RMB 1.15 million of Liu’s winnings.

Liu’s decision to abandon his wife after the elation of winning the lottery has a lot to do with his past dreams of striking it rich. However, as Liu refused to speak to the press, we only get his wife Yuan’s side of the story, a tale of woe from start to finish.

Yuan returned to her husband’s hometown of Liangping after getting married in 1999. There, Yuan was shocked to discover that her husband’s family was penniless, and that her wedding bed was a sofa. Although Yuan worked in a textile factory and then a teahouse, Liu refused to work. “He would often say,
‘I’d rather be a boss that made little money than a highly-skilled worker,’” said Yuan.

Yuan said during her marriage with Liu, he was consumed with dreams of becoming rich. “For ten years he never stopped dreaming about becoming instantly rich overnight. And whether he had the money or not, he’d still go buy lottery tickets,” she said.

In keeping with her husband’s dreams of becoming instantly rich, Yuan opened a lottery ticket store in 2010, located in front of the successful mahjong parlor she opened in 2004. Unfortunately, the lottery ticket store often served as a way for Liu to try to fulfill his dreams. “When I wasn’t in the store, he’d use our advance funds to buy lottery tickets,” said Yuan. “The store often didn’t have any tickets to sell.” The store shut down two years later in 2012.

Besides becoming rich, Liu was yearning for something else. In 2013, Yuan discovered Liu was having an affair with his first love, a former classmate. Things came to a boil when Yuan confronted the mistress during Spring Festival in 2014 when she tried contacting Liu using his mother’s phone.

The marriage was falling apart as the couple separated after Yuan took her daughter back to her mother’s home for summer vacation. Even as Yuan was preparing to open her own manicure store last August, Liu refused to make up with Yuan.

But the first sign of divorce only came on Spring Festival this year, after Liu had the winning lottery ticket. Although Yuan wanted to wait until after their daughter had finished high school, or even after the Spring Festival holiday, Liu was adamant that a divorce was necessary.

After Yuan found out the truth and discovered that Liu had re-opened the shuttered lottery store in 2014 with his high school sweetheart, Liu still refused to come clean. “He wouldn’t admit he won the lottery prize, and cursed me heavily . He said that if I had what it takes, I should come back and see for myself.” The next day, Yuan found herself a lawyer.

Liu’s defense during the court proceedings was to insist that his mother had bought the ticket instead of himself. After also having told by her father that there was no lottery prize, Liu’s and Yuan’s daughter testified that she did not know her grandmother to be in the habit of buying lottery tickets, thereby suffering a backlash from her father’s family.

Even though the Liangping court has ruled that she is entitled to part of its winnings, Yuan blames the lottery ticket for having broken up her marriage and family. But even though this may have been one of the only things she got from her husband, Yuan knows its not the only thing: “My daughter understands what’s going on. Sometimes she would console me by saying, ‘Don’t be sad, mother, at  least you still have me.'”

The post After Winning $900,000 in Lottery, Chongqing Man’s First Move is to Divorce His Wife appeared first on The Nanfang.

And yet, two criminals in Chongqing ignored this basic advice with their stolen loot of RMB 5,100. Enjoying their spoils with a stay at a hotel, Deng and Tang of Rongchang County could not contain themselves and decided to share their joy with everyone. And they did — by posting pictures of themselves with the stolen cash on online social platforms.

And to symbolize their devotion to “thug life”, Deng and Tang didn’t just spread their winnings over the bed like some neophyte purse-snatcher. No, the photograph captures one of the thieves posing with their money spelling out the Chinese characters for “poor people”, and then in the next photograph using the leftover cash in his hand, adds to the second Chinese character to spell a backwards variation of “not poor”.

We can only imagine what Deng and Tang mean by this strange set-up of words, but the Liangshan police are able to ask them personally since the thievery and calligraphy enthusiasts have since been arrested. Armchair pundits may have seen this coming, but the main clue that led police to suspect Deng and Tang were their online photographs.

The last two photographs (of the gallery) show Deng and Tang individually, pointing at the scene of the crime and proving their guilt. And it’s a good thing too. The Chinese characters for “innocence” would require far more Chinese yuan bills to spell out.

The post Bumbling Thieves Post Pictures of Themselves With Stolen Money, Lead Police Right to Their Hotel Room appeared first on The Nanfang.

A crowd outside the Yongkui supermarket was treated to an unfamiliar sight on July 13 when store employees were seen trying to restrain two women they accused of stealing.

After taking them into custody, police later revealed these women to be from Ukraine and to be working in Chongqing as models. But Chinese media don’t stop there, giving us some extra details about their appearance:

• one women is ‘blonde’, the other a ‘brunette’
• ‘sexy’
• ‘excellent figures’
• wearing jeans shorts and a halter top

One witness was even quoted saying: “They have such good figures! It’s just a pity that they stole two pieces of clothes.”

The report also gives us a lowdown on the awkward back-and-forth between the women and store staff, who were very suspicious from the time the suspects first entered the store. It all culminates with a shoving match in which one of the Ukrainian women is heard to say, “Don’t understand Chinese”.

Store staff said the total cost of stolen outfits was RMB 128 ($21). However you feel about that, the real tragedy for the news media is that these women didn’t decide to wear the stolen clothes out of the store, thus depriving the media of one last chance to describe their looks.

As a consolation, here’s what the stolen clothing looks like, without a woman wearing it:

The post Chinese Media Drool Over Two “Sexy” Ukrainian Models Arrested for Shoplifting in Chongqing appeared first on The Nanfang.

The landslide caused a massive wave that capsized 21 boats moored at a nearby harbor, while another 21 boats drifted away after being knocked free of their restraints. The China National Search and Rescue Center reported that 13 boats, all small-scale watercraft and mostly fishing vessels, sank in the incident.

A preliminary search showed there were no people on board the anchored ships at the time of the landslide. The resulting wave carried away one person who remains unaccounted for. The Yangtze River Navigational Affairs Administration reported that four other people were injured, one of whom remains in critical condition.

The post Photos: Massive Landslide Sinks Boats Off Yangtze River appeared first on The Nanfang.

Protruding from the cliff face at total of 26.68 meters, the terrifying construct is five meters longer than a similar tourist attraction at the Grand Canyon in the United States.

The spectator platform is ringed by a glass barrier, which gives visitors unobstructed views. Furthermore, part of the platform has a glass floor so that spectators can challenge their vertigo and take a look at the valley floor 718 meters below them.

The post Terrifying Chongqing Lookout Even Bigger Than the Grand Canyon’s appeared first on The Nanfang.

Two activists, acting as mistresses, hold signs to warn sacked corrupt officials to watch out for mistresses’ revenge in Shenzhen.

It’s impossible to count the number of mistresses in China. Just check the stories of disgruntled mistresses coming forward and upending their powerful married boyfriends’ political or business careers over the last two years as China’s anti-corruption campaign rumbles on. And those that have gone public are mostly a small group of attractive women in their 20s.

Just to put things in perspective, a study by the Crisis Management Research Center at Renmin University found that 95 percent of corrupt government officials sacked in 2012 kept mistresses, known as xiaosan or ernai, and 30,315 corrupt officials were placed under investigation that year. So you do the math.

Given some officials had more than one mistress – in some cases, more than 140 –  and considering the fact wealthy businessmen also tend to collect mistresses, which aren’t included in the total, the overall number of mistresses must be massive. This booming industry has spawned an entirely new business in Chongqing: “Mistress Breaker”. That’s right, trained professionals can now be hired to get in touch with the Other Woman and get her to back off.

Yufeng, a director of a relationship agency that provides “Mistress Breakers”, said his agency was responsible for persuading more than 100 mistresses to give up their relationships with married men since it started operating in Chongqing in 2012. “People call our team ‘Xiaosan buster’ or ‘Xiaosan breaker’,” Yufeng said. Yufeng, himself, is a mistress breaker responsible for pushing back more than 1,000 mistresses when he lived in Shanghai.

His clients are mostly wealthy, middle-aged women who hire him and his team to break their husbands’ relationships with normally younger and single women. One of Yufeng’s latest cases involves the chairman of a company. His wife has asked Yufeng to help get rid of his much younger girlfriend.

The breaking-up process is normally quite complicated, according to Yufeng. First, like a marriage consultant, a mistress breaker has to identify why the man sought an extramarital affair in the first place. Then, he or she needs to befriend the husband, the wife and the mistress to work out a way to break the relationship. Most of the time money is the ultimate solution, he said.

But then there are the rogue cases, where mistresses won’t go without a fight. In one case, the wife and husband eventually teamed up against the mistress because she had become a threat to their personal safety, Yufeng said.

“Making a xiaosan walk away requires us to work quietly in secrecy. It’s not as easy as it seems. When a client comes to us, it normally takes three to six months to get it done. Some even longer. Several clients’ cases are quite complicated and it could take a year,” he added.

At the end of a day when the job is done, Yufeng and his team are given a handsome payment. He refused to say what that is though, only admitting “it is quite high” and involves the cost of labor, times, his consultancy fee and other expenses.

“Our charge is relatively high, and is calculated based on time and the difficulty of each case,” he said.

As China’s divorce rate rises and the country’s anti-corruption campaign gains momentum, we imagine Yufeng and his agency’s phone will keep buzzing for a long long time to come.

The post Proliferation of Mistresses in China Leads to Innovative New Business: the “Mistress Breaker” appeared first on The Nanfang.