Viral Week is our weekly round-up of the weekend’s trending memes, humor, rumor, gossip, and everything else Chinese netizens are talking about.
Lost boy found after 24 years
Guo Gangtang, a father from Shandong province who has driven 400,000 kilometers across China by motorbike in search of his lost child, has reunited with his son 24 years after human traffickers abducted the then 2-year-old boy. Guo's story was adapted into the 2015 film Lost and Love starring Andy Lau.
Multiple animal escapes prompt new laws
After a series of high-profile zoo escapes, including three leopards from a safari park in Hangzhou this April, Hangzhou Forestry and Water Resources Bureau unveiled new legislation that includes microchipping zoo animals for GPS tracking.
Father accused of pushing two young children to their death
A 2-year-old girl and her 1-year-old brother who fell to their death from their 15th floor apartment last year were actually pushed by their father, Zhang Bo, allegedly because his new girlfriend wouldn't accept them. The man's ex-wife (the children's mother) had custody of the girl and the boy was due to come into her guardianship once he turned 6 years old.
Elderly internet addiction on the rise
Worries of internet addiction among the elderly are on the rise as CCTV reports 100,000 elderly in China spend over 10 hours a day online, often watching videos, playing games, and online shopping. Some say this trend is amplified by loneliness among the elderly as their children have migrated for work.
Kris Wu in hot water
Canadian-Chinese K-pop and movie starKris Wu is accused by college student Du Meizhu, who claims to be his girlfriend, of having sex with a string of other girls (some underage), in the guise of auditioning them for music videos. Du claims Wu had an informal network of social contacts to source girls for him, including awarding girls he had already slept with merchandise or 10,000 RMB if they introduced more girls to him. Cosmetics brand Kans along with (at the time of writing) five other brands have pulled out of endorsement partnerships with him, while state broadcaster CCTV took down a post from May on its official Weibo account promoting Wu's new song. Wu has denied all allegations on Weibo, saying he only met Du once at a party, and his team has filed a defamation lawsuit against her.
Chinese web celebrity dies from cosmetic surgery
Xiaoran, a web celebrity from Zhejiang province with 130,000 followers on Weibo, has died of infections caused by liposuction. The news had gained 600 million views on Weibo by Thursday evening. The case was taken up by netizens calling for more stringent regulations around cosmetic surgery.
Man steals 500 manhole covers to reward camgirl
A construction worker in Nanjing made 40,000 RMB by stealing and selling over 500 manhole covers from the city and used the money to reward female live streamers. The thief began stealing the covers in March and sold them to a waste-recycling site. The suspect and the waste recycler have both been detained.
Top student basks in glory of high grades
A viral video shows a little boy from Xi'an, Shaanxi province, showing off his exam paper marked “100” points to passersby while sitting on the back seat of an electric scooter.
A rare bear
A white brown bear was caught on camera wandering through the Altai Mountains in Xinjiang. One expert told The Paper that this was the first time such a bear (possibly caused by a genetic mutation) had been seen in China.
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