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, there’s bad customer service, a song saves man from suicide, a hospital enforces a “sales quota,” and doctors rap their troubles:
Doctors’ rap
In honor of National Doctors’ Day, a Sichuan hospital and the provincial Health Publicity and Education Center created a viral music video, “I’m a Doctor, Not a God,” featuring a white-robed physician rapping about the challenges of his job with lyrics like “People think doctors are like the Monkey King/ No day or night, no rest nor biological clock,” and “Even in the toilet there are patients asking questions” (violence against doctors remains a problem in China).
Swimming prodigy
Nine-year-old Zhou Yihan swam 26.7 kilometers across the Qiongzhou Strait from Hainan to Guangdong province, battling strong currents and jellyfish for 13 hours under her father and her coach’s supervision.
Life-saving song
A man in Guangdong province, who planned to commit suicide by jumping from a building, was rescued by a neighbor who suggested they sing a love song “to create final memories”—the man was so moved that he changed his mind, and stepped back from the brink.
English Last
A leaked internal report from education company English First (EF) reveals that their foreign teachers are being arrested at higher-than-normal rates for drugs, fighting, and cybersecurity offenses. Days later, a Chinese education association under the Ministry of Education revoked EF’s membership.
Hospital hustlers
A branch of the Henan Provincial Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital required its doctors and nurses to bring a “sales quota” of five patients each for hospitalization, or face a 200 RMB fine (the employees apparently got around it by bringing their family members).
Bad delivery
A woman surnamed Li discovered that the 150,000 RMB’s worth of personal items she’d sent by courier from her hometown to her new workplace in Changsha, Hunan, had been delivered to a clothing recycling factory and destroyed by mistake. The company, Deppon Express, offered just 300 RMB in compensation.
Whose call?
While on a business trip to Wuhan, a woman surnamed Zhang had her mobile phone number de-listed from service by China Telecom supposedly in order to “protect [her] information” in an area known for telecom fraud. The telecom company claims it cannot re-authorize the number.
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