23 h. ago China motorcyclist fulfils woman’s wish by honouring dead son at Tibet’s sacred stone

A young man in China who rode an electric motorcycle from his hometown in eastern China to Tibet has helped a woman realise her wish of bringing her deceased son’s photo to a stone renowned for being the closest place to heaven. Dou Jiaqi, who recently turned 18, completed his electric motorcycle journey from Xinyi, a small city in Jiangsu province, to Lhasa on November 24, as reported by the Xuzhou Daily. The 4,800-km journey took him 11 days, according to the report. About a week before Dou...

Sport

41 h. ago UK film on Hong Kong immigrants; 2026 top travel trends: 7 Lifestyle highlights

We have selected seven Lifestyle stories from the past seven days that resonated with our readers. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. British film about Hong Kong immigrants showed grim reality of their new lives Founded in 1982 as an offshoot of Channel 4, Film4 was committed to reinvigorating British cinema by platforming new voices and exploring complex, contemporary subjects. The 1988 immigration drama Soursweet is a prime example. 2. One final...

Events

41 h. ago Franz Ferdinand’s Hong Kong gig, magic mushroom therapy: 7 Lifestyle highlights

We have selected seven Lifestyle stories from the past seven days that resonated with our readers. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. British film about Hong Kong immigrants showed grim reality of their new lives Founded in 1982 as an offshoot of Channel 4, Film4 was committed to reinvigorating British cinema by platforming new voices and exploring complex, contemporary subjects. The 1988 immigration drama Soursweet is a prime example. 2. One final...

Politics

50 h. ago Beyond factories: how China’s trendy brands turn local into global influence

With their domestic profits narrowing and production capacity expanding, China’s firms are continuing to widen their overseas footprints in search of new, more lucrative markets. In this series, we examine China Inc.’s next phase of “going global” and the complex, challenging international environment its companies have chosen to enter. On a busy roadside in Riyadh, K-pop music – popular among the city’s youth – pulses from the speakers of Javis Wang’s bubble tea shop. His stores have...

Politics

50 h. ago Beyond factories: how China’s trendy brands turn local influence global

With their domestic profits narrowing and production capacity expanding, China’s firms are continuing to widen their overseas footprints in search of new, more lucrative markets. In this series, we examine China Inc.’s next phase of “going global” and the complex, challenging international environment its companies have chosen to enter. On a busy roadside in Riyadh, K-pop music – popular among the city’s youth – pulses from the speakers of Javis Wang’s bubble tea shop. His stores have...

Politics

50 h. ago How Chinese lifestyle brands are finding fans abroad with toys, tea and trends

With their domestic profits narrowing and production capacity expanding, China’s firms are continuing to widen their overseas footprints in search of new, more lucrative markets. In this series, we examine China Inc.’s next phase of “going global” and the complex, challenging international environment its companies have chosen to enter. On a busy roadside in Riyadh, K-pop music – popular among the city’s youth – pulses from the speakers of Javis Wang’s bubble tea shop. His stores have...

Politics

65 h. ago China's 2025 buzzwords highlight AI, lifestyle, and social trends

China's 2025 buzzwords highlight AI, lifestyle, and social trends  ecns.cn

Politics

2 d. ago [News] Japan Rumored to Curb Photoresist Exports as China Targets 40% Self

[News] Japan Rumored to Curb Photoresist Exports as China Targets 40% Self-Sufficiency by 2026  TrendForce

Events

2 d. ago Chinese man hides 2 gold bars in chilli sauce jar, sends to ‘friend’ for investment

A Chinese man has caused amusement online after he hid two gold bars inside a jar of chilli sauce and mailed them to another province as part of a scam to fund his stock trading account. The incident recently unfolded in the Jinnan District of Tianjin in northern China when police took down a fraud scheme involving an elderly man. Li Ruifang, a police officer from the Shuanglin Police Station, received an anti-fraud alert indicating that an elderly man, surnamed Zhao, might be in contact with...

Politics

3 d. ago Chinese man comes home to become mover after decade in Australia, business failure

A middle-aged man who studied in Australia for 10 years before working as a house mover in northwestern China has been surprised to find many people contacting him online to learn English. The rush to learn came after people saw him speak fluent English on social media. The interest has prompted Jia Yuhui to create an English training business, according to a report by Jiupai News. Born in the 1980s to a once wealthy family in China, Jia was able to study in Australia for a decade. He returned...

Events

3 d. ago Germany’s China playbook: if you can’t beat them, partner up

German companies are accelerating efforts to partner with Chinese rivals, conceding in fresh survey results that the local competitors appear poised to seize the lead in global innovation. While business sentiment among surveyed German firms in China has seen a slight uptick, optimism has been tempered by fierce price competition and a nationalist “Buy China” push, according to findings from the German Chamber of Commerce’s 2025/26 Business Confidence Survey. About 56 per cent of surveyed firms...

Politics

3 d. ago Kuaishou debuts multimodal AI video model with ‘Nano Banana’ editing capability

Chinese short video platform Kuaishou on Monday launched a new artificial intelligence video generation model to challenge OpenAI’s Sora and start-up Runway in the global market for AI content creation. Kuaishou, which competes with TikTok’s Chinese sibling Douyin in China, said Kling O1 was the first unified multimodal video model in the industry, based on an architecture that integrated diverse video creation tasks – generation, precise and controllable editing and understanding – into a...

Culture

4 d. ago China snack brand hit for making staff change surname to ‘rat’, call customers ‘master’

A popular Chinese snack brand has ignited online controversy after netizens revealed that its employees have to change their surnames to “rat” and refer to customers as “master”. Recently, a mainland netizen posted online claiming that “after joining Three Squirrels, you lose your real name”. Photographs from an internal meeting showed nameplates such as Shu Laodie, meaning “Rat Dad”, and Shu Laomu, meaning “Rat Mum”. Three Squirrels, which was founded in 2012 in Anhui province, central China,...

Economics

4 d. ago ‘Weight gain subsidy’: China food tasters share videos, reveal new side to job

Chinese food tasters are going viral by sharing videos that reveal a job much tougher than its dreamy image, even if the task comes with a “weight-gain subsidy”. The unusual workers are hired by snack brands, food factories and supermarkets. They earn an average of about 10,000 yuan (US$1,400) a month for their taste-testing duties. Their formal title is “sensory evaluation engineer”. Their job is to detect the tiniest shifts in flavour, from milk-fat concentration to how long the aftertaste...

Society

4 d. ago Plump Chinese man ‘builds courage’, goes viral after ‘sports supermodel’ contest

A plump man in China who went up against muscle-bound competitors in a bodybuilding contest has trended on social media and caused much amusement. Videos of 28-year-old Chen Hao at the Chongqing Yongchuan District Youth Fitness and Bodybuilding Competition and College/University ‘Sports Supermodel’ Selection Competition in southwestern China on November 23 have gone viral online, the Nanguo Morning Post reported. While other participants professionally presented their physique on the stage, the...

Culture

5 d. ago Does tokenisation in China risk a repeat of the P2P lending crisis?

The rapid rise of tokenisation risks repeating China’s earlier boom-and-bust cycle in peer-to-peer lending unless clear industry standards are established to ensure discipline and innovation, according to a senior Chinese asset manager. Some multilevel marketing companies in mainland China have already started holding meetings discussing real-world asset (RWA) tokenisation projects over the past year, raising “genuine concerns” that the nascent industry might be heading towards a...

Events

5 d. ago China hotel guest dies after staff failed to deliver medicine, triggers liability debate

A hotel guest in central China died after the staff held on to life-saving medicine for five hours without delivering it, sparking heated online debate over the hotel’s responsibility. The 51-year-old man, surnamed Hu, was found dead in his room at a Yeste Hotel in Wuhan, Hubei province, on November 20. Hu’s death confused his friend, Han Shun, who delivered his medicine earlier that day. Han took Hu, a Wuhan local, to stay at the hotel the previous evening after he finished work in the district...

Events

5 d. ago Uptick in China’s bitcoin mining prompts debate on tapping energy surplus

A mild uptick in bitcoin mining in China has prompted calls for Beijing to loosen its restrictions and let the power-hungry industry tap into the country’s oversupply of energy, but experts said the likelihood of China ending its mining ban was low. China’s bitcoin mining market share by hash rate rose from 13.75 per cent in the first quarter of 2025 to 14.06 per cent in the current quarter, making it the third largest bitcoin mining country behind the US and Russia, according to Hashrate Index,...

Politics

6 d. ago China consumers use AI to alter product photos, claim refunds for ‘damaged’ goods

Fake photos generated by artificial intelligence (AI) are being misused to claim refunds from Chinese online shops, sparking moral and legal concerns. As China’s Double 11 shopping festival took place around November 11, several e-commerce shop owners revealed that they received AI-generated photos of damaged products from consumers attempting to seek refunds. Some people took photographs of fruit they received, then asked AI to make them look mouldy. An electric toothbrush seller said a buyer...

Events

7 d. ago Chinese homeless man fakes wealth, hires women for companionship, lives luxury life

A homeless Chinese man deceived others by posing as a wealthy individual and, over a span of 10 days, managed to “hire” five women for companionship, using their money to fund visits to high-end establishments, buy new clothes, and even acquire the latest smartphone. The scam came to light in August when police in Putuo District, Shanghai, received a report from a woman using the alias Liu Qian. She claimed that she had been swindled by a 36-year-old man surnamed Chen, who pretended to be a...

Society