Viral Week Ep. 204

Viral Week is our weekly round-up of the weekend’s trending memes, humor, rumor, gossip, and everything else Chinese netizens are chatting about.

This week, apartment complexes get renamed, babies are pressured to go to college, there’s a breakthrough in a 16-year-old murder case, and a panda fan gets her reward:

Naming no-nos

Six provinces—Guangdong, Zhejiang, Henan, Gansu, Shaanxi and Hainan—have joined the nationwide campaign against “non-standard,” “bizarre,” and “exaggerated” place names. Violators include the Shenzhen-based Vienna Hotel Group, whose name “indicates the worship of foreign things.”

Winning at birth

A Chongqing hospital named its maternity wards after famous universities, including Harvard, Tsinghua, and Zhejiang, stimulating discussion of copyright infringement and the pressure on Chinese children to succeed—now starting at birth.

Cold case re-opened

DNA tests have confirmed that bones discovered under a middle school sports field in Huaihua, Hunan, belonged to Deng Shiping, a faculty member who disappeared 16 years ago after objecting over construction standards. Authorities are investigating how the local police and the school principal—the uncle of the contractor and murder suspect—might have colluded to cover up the crime.

Airport rage

Singer Zeng Yike has apologized for posting the badge and ID number of a Beijing airport immigration officer, who demanded her to take off her hat during a security check.

Passion for pandas

The Chengdu Giant Panda Breeding Research Base is looking for a woman who visited the panda exhibit while attached to an IV drip, intending to reward her “true and deep” love for pandas with free tickets for life.

Mobile emergency

A Sichuan woman discovered the hard way that her Meizu phone, from one of China’s biggest mobile brands, is “not registered” to dial the emergency number 120 for ambulances after her husband collapsed from cerebral hemorrhage. The manufacturer has blamed a “system problem.”

Tasty invasion

Chinese netizens are jokingly offering to eat the European green shore crab on behalf of residents of Victoria, Australia, after the the local fisheries authority asked for the public’s help in controlling this invasive species.

Cover Image from Wikimedia Commons