South China Morning Post - Society

An actor in China nicknamed the “ageless man” because of a childhood condition which halted his growth has silenced detractors with his nuanced performances. According to Beiqing.com, Hou Xiang, 40, from Beijing, was born prematurely after his mother suffered from malnutrition during pregnancy. His growth and voice development stopped around the age of nine, leaving him less tha...

A 15-year-old Chinese girl who has been suffering from a severe blood disorder most of her life is slowly recovering after receiving a transplant from her newborn brother. Xiaoyan from southern China’s Guangdong province is now only 140cm tall, and weighs just 25kg. She was diagnosed with thalassemia, an inherited blood disorder, at three months old. Her father, a construction w...

A special education institute in eastern China that targets “problematic” teenagers has sparked controversy for allowing its students to carry toy dolls throughout the school day as part of gratitude lessons. Yuanzhong Special Education School, located in Xuzhou, Jiangsu province, accepts adolescent students who exhibit rebellious behaviour, lack motivation for studying, are add...

K-pop superstar G-Dragon’s decision to gift his long-serving staff members flats worth a combined total of hundreds of millions of won (around several hundred thousand USD) has sparked a frenzy among netizens, with some asking, “Are you still hiring?” Dubbed the “King of K-pop,” the 38-year-old singer Kwon Ji-yong, better known as G-Dragon in the entertainment industry, is one o...

Chinese youth are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence (AI) for fortune-telling, discovering that AI models are cheaper, faster, and equally effective compared to traditional human soothsayers. On a popular Chinese social media platform, the hashtag #deepseeksuanming, or DeepSeek fortune-telling, has amassed over 55 million views. DeepSeek is a family of Chinese AI mo...