“I call on you [the university] to apologize publicly to the two students and their families and to take comprehensive measures to prevent discrimination and homophobic harassment on campus,” read the petition organized by LGBT group, All Out.

The outcry comes after one of the women, named Ouyang, said the university initially refused to grant the couple their diplomas following their public marriage proposal on June 21, the day of their graduation.

Although this is a popular tradition among straight Chinese university students, the university did not look fondly upon the gay couple following suit. “After photos of our proposal went viral, party officials at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies threatened to withhold my diploma, saying we should ‘keep our homosexuality to ourselves and not pester others.'”

Ouyang said she was told the couple would not receive their diplomas as punishment for having “violated certain regulations” as a result of their public engagement. Photographs of the engagement posted online were removed.

Meanwhile, Wang said the university outed her to her parents and had police break into her apartment to collect personal notes between the two as “evidence”.

Wang and Ouyang finally received their diplomas on June 28, but have yet to receive an apology from the university.

Homosexual students face other barriers at Chinese universities. Tongai, an LGBT rights organization based in Changsha, said LGBT societies are routinely restricted by Chinese universities. “Without the recognition of universities, the campus groups are illegal, and their activities can be easily restricted,” said Iang Xiaohan, the group’s leader.

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A second-year postgraduate student has been charged in the gruesome murder of his ex-girlfriend at a Shanghai university famous for its gender imbalance.

Pudong New Area prosecutors announced Monday they have charged student Xu Bin for the April 30 murder of his ex-girlfriend Zhou Ting. Both were students at the Shanghai Maritime University. Xu was enrolled in its merchant ship institution.

Prosecutors said Xu explained Zhou had met a new person in her life back in January, and wanted to end her relationship with Xu. Prosecutors say Xu wouldn’t accept Zhou’s decision, and as a result he became more hostile towards her.

Xu had threatened to beat up Zhou’s new boyfriend, but Zhou ridiculed him by saying he wasn’t “strong enough”, Shanghai Daily reported. In response, Xu began to flood Zhou’s chat account with numerous harassing messages.

Xu planned his retaliation long in advance of the April 30 murder. On March 30, he purchased a knife, a bottle of hydrofluoric acid, and six bottles of alcohol from an online retailer. As Xu had reportedly told police: “They were both purchased to prove that I have the ability to threaten them both.”

On April 29, Xu attempted one last time to reconcile over the phone with Zhou, but she refused.

Xu’s last updates to his QQ account were made on the same day. “What’s coming is coming, and can’t be avoided,” and “Grand conclusion, a grand tragedy“.

The next morning when he saw Zhou and her new boyfriend together on campus, Xu became very angry. After retrieving his knife and acid, he asked for a “negotiation” with the couple. Zhou and her new boyfriend refused, and attempted to contact police.

At this time, he caught Zhou on the fourth floor of the Shanghai Maritime University library. Xu took out the acid, and poured it over Zhou’s head, face, chest, and arms. Xu then used his knife to stab Zhou multiple times in the chest.

Zhou died in hospital due to hemorrhagic shock hours later.

Xu was eventually arrested by police on a rooftop before he was to commit suicide.

In other news, the Shanghai Maritime University has recently gained public attention for having an overwhelming skewed gender imbalance at the same department of the university where Xu was enrolled.

Two weeks ago, viral news centered upon a birthday given by 280 male students of the university’s merchant ship institution to its only female student. The male students are seen standing in a long line by the side of the road to offer birthday greetings 19 year-old Wu Xun, the merchant ship institution’s first and only female student.

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Since 2003, the Ministry of Education has enrolled minority students from underprivileged areas in West China as a way to redistribute educational resources to poorer regions. Students who take the gaokao in larger urban centers are generally believed to have an advantage over applicants from other parts of the country, due to better educational resources.

Protests against the gaokao affirmative action have also been taking place in Jiangsu, Hubei, and Beijing, where one school has gone online to announce they were deeply “disappointed” with the “irrational behaviors” of parents who “misunderstood the admission policy”.

The High School affiliated with the Minzu University of China announced its minority students would continue to share the ethnic minority quota for the gaokao until 2018.

Han majority parents are angered by the preferential treatment, alleging that their children are missing out. Xiong Kunxin, an ethnic studies professor at Minzu University, said Han majority protesters don’t understand the disadvantages minority students face, citing a lack of teachers and English classes that aren’t provided until high school.

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Hangzhou Paradise celebrated the upcoming Dragon Boat Festival with an activity for graduating university couples. Advertised as a way for couples to publicly declare their commitment to each other, the park dressed them up in bamboo leaf bikinis and then had them roll around on a green bed sheet.

While this may make no sense to non-Chinese, there is a logic behind the activity, barely. Dragon Boat Festival’s trademark food is zongzi, sticky glutenous rice treats wrapped in bamboo leaves. In other words, the couples are declaring their love by “making zongzi”.

If this new way of celebrating Dragon Boat Festival takes off, it will be interesting to see how the theme park celebrates Mid-Autumn Festival and its “mooncake”.

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The six-week course consists of three or four 90 minute classes per week. Activities include jogging, running, and maintaining an abdominal bridge (planking). According to the course instructor, Zhou Quanfu, only applicants with a body mass index (BMI) over 30 are eligible to enrol in the class. Zhou claims that due to the BMI requirement, only 60 percent of applicants are accepted. However, students with an average BMI are still allowed to audit the course.

In addition to regular exercise, students are required to count calories in a daily food journal and submit a weight-loss related paper at the end of the course. Topics submitted by past students include “how fat forms and decomposes in the human body “; “how fat influences students’ psychology”; and “how overweight college students control food intake”.

If offering academic incentives as a way to encourage obese students to lose weight sounds like a drastic measure, it’s because Nanjing schools have witnessed the fatal effects of obesity. Last October, a third-year student at a Nanjing university collapsed and died while attempting to complete a 1,000 meter race as part of a physical education examination. The 20 year-old student was 5’6 (168 centimeters) tall and 202 pounds (92 kilograms).

According to a report published in the medical journal The Lancet, there are an estimated 43.2 million obese men and 46.4 million obese women currently living in China, the most in the world.

The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences estimates that 12 percent of Chinese youth are overweight.

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The three were identified as first-year Russian design students, Roman Chaikovskii and Kirll Karpuk, and a French teacher, known only as “Bastien”, said school official Xi Lijun.

All three were standing on Bastien’s balcony when they saw the woman bobbing in the nearby river. The three went to investigate and, seeing the woman in distress, Chaikovskii plunged into the river to help. With Karpuk and Bastien’s aid, the trio managed to pull her out.

The woman was taken to a room in the school used by cleaners and was given basic medical attention. Afterwards, her parents and the police were called.

The woman did not suffer from any life-threatening injuries.

QQ News reported the woman was suffering from too much academic pressure and had recently argued with her parents, while Shanghai Daily said she was a drop-out from a local vocational school and had returned to visit her former classmates.

“She said she was roaming around after seeing former classmates in the vocational school and jumped into the river to commit suicide because she was depressed,” said Xu, the university’s security director. “But she regretted her decision when she was in the water and held onto a net until our students and teacher managed to pull her back to land.”

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The Ministry of Education has said there are over half a million Chinese students studying abroad, making up the vast majority of international students in the United States, UK, Australia, Canada and several other countries.

Li Weiping, Deputy Secretary-General of the International Education Association of Shanghai, says even more Chinese students will study abroad this year, and expects this trend to continue for years to come.

Aiding to this surge of international exchange students are countries that are relaxing their visa policies to accommodate even more students. For example, Australia is streamlining its visa policies in hopes of attracting a million international students by 2025.

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Lin Hui, the CEO of an unnamed artificial intelligence company, said the AI will take three exams: math, Chinese, and a comprehensive test of liberal arts including subjects like history, politics and geography. The AI is also expected to complete the exam using only its artificial intelligence program without access to the Internet. Once complete, it will print out its answers.

The AI is expected to have more difficulty with reading comprehension and essay writing due to subjective questions. However, Lin said modern AI programs are sophisticated enough to write essays that no one can tell didn’t come from a human being.

This AI is reportedly seeking to attain scores high enough to allow it to enroll at Peking and Tsinghua University by 2020. A counterpart in Japan is seeking to do the same thing at Tokyo University.

The gaokao is a national exam taken by all Chinese students hoping to enroll at a Chinese university. It ranks all results by order, allowing only the best students to enroll at China’s top universities.

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Since the beginning of the year, Victoria police have charged 13 people with robbery and another 56 with theft on the university campus and surrounding suburb. All of the crimes targeted Chinese exchange students.

“These incidents have generally taken place in the late hours of the evening, most commonly involving personal items (i.e. phones) being snatched from victims in public,” said the Victoria police in a statement. “While no physical injuries have been inflicted, the events have understandably been quite confronting for the victims.”

Chinese Deputy Consul General, Lin Jing, addressed Chinese exchange students at an event last month, informing them of local laws and how the consul can help them.

The university is reassuring the students that they are safe while studying at the school. “A number of actions have been taken by the university, including increasing security patrols and providing a dedicated security escort service for students,” said university spokesman David Scott. “The university will continue to work closely with Victoria police to ensure the safety of its students and staff.”

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This semester, Tianjin University is offering a course called “Basic Theory and Experience of Love” that explains in detail romantic relationships between the two sexes as well as teaching techniques on how to handle them.

In the first class, 200 students listened to associate law professor Liu Xiaochun give a 90-minute lecture where he explained legal issues related to dating, including such topics as mistresses, domestic violence, divorce and abortion.

“Hopefully, the lecture will give students a higher sense of responsibility toward dating,” said Liu.

As Xinhua reports, the immensely popular course covers a wide range of topics from dating tips and etiquette to counseling. The classes are taught by teachers from the university and other experts.

According to Wang Rui, the current president of the student dating club “MatchMaking Meetup”, learning about love counts towards a student’s academic degree.

“Students can gain two credits by attending no less than five lectures and submitting a 2,000-character report at the end of the semester,” said Wang.

But as previous student dating president Cong Ying had said when news of the love course was announced last fall, the full motive of the course is to get male and female students romantically involved with each other.

“If they can put theory into practice and get a girlfriend or boyfriend, we may give them full credit,” Cong said.

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