South China Morning Post - Society

While the Chinese idiom, “Having ink in their stomach”, serves as a metaphor to commend the knowledgeable, the act of ingesting ink was a common practice among ancient literati. The earliest documentation of ink drinking dates back to the Northern and Southern dynasties (420–589), where it was used as a sanctioned punishment for scholars with illegible handwriting. According to ...

Intense public discussions surrounding the downsides of technology have been sparked by a Chinese man accusing a phone company’s lock screen feature of obstructing his father from calling an ambulance, which he claims contributed to his mother’s death. On September 10, a 19-year-old man named Zhang shared on social media that his mother suffered a heart attack around 4am on Augu...

A romantic marriage proposal at a concert in northern China attracted significant backlash after the couple blocked the view of other spectators, leading to numerous complaints. On September 12, Chinese folk singer Zhao Lei performed at Beijing’s National Stadium, known as the Bird’s Nest. As tens of thousands of fans sang along, a man in the front section of the audience stood ...

One stormy night last month, a driver surnamed He saw two tall men get out of a car in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen and pull a young woman off the street and into the vehicle. During the struggle, her umbrella fell to the ground. She did not appear willing. Suspicious, He followed the vehicle and later reported the incident to local police, supplying them with footage h...

Chinese online travel platform Trip.com has turned heads by launching its most expensive offering to date: a space flight package costing at least 5.1 million yuan (US$759,900). The six-day trip includes several days of preflight training followed by a 90-minute suborbital flight operated by US-based provider Virgin Galactic, which takes off from Las Cruces, New Mexico. The firs...