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You probably know Sichuan opera’s famous face-changing act, but did you know Chinese opera has a spooky side too? Many classic stories are built on tragedy and revenge, so zombies, spirits, and mythical creatures turn up on stage.

Take the Paper Man (纸人, zhǐ rén), a ”spirit being“ character inspired by the traditional Chinese funeral practice of burning paper items (纸扎 zhǐ zhā ) as offerings to loved ones in the afterlife, in which a performer with a white-painted face moves in an uncanny, puppet-like motion. Then there’s the Zombie Fall (僵尸摔, jiāng shī shuāi), where an actor collapses backward to mimic sudden death, and the Ghost Steps (鬼步, guǐ bù), where performers take tiny steps beneath long garments so they appear to glide across the stage just like a ghost.

As the saying goes, “One minute on stage is ten years of practice off stage” (台上一分钟，台下十年功). These tricks are great visuals, but they’re also a showcase of years of dedication and body control.

Scared already? Swipe to see them in action!

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You’ve seen it in anime: that one stubborn strand of hair sticking straight up from a character’s head. In Japan it’s called “ahoge.” In China, young people — namely Gen Alpha — are calling it 呆毛 (dāi máo), or “dopey hair,” and they’re styling it on purpose.

With strict dress codes in many Chinese schools, subtle haircut tweaks are often one of the few ways students can express themselves. For many Gen Z girls, their school years were defined by the catfish whiskers haircut (鲶鱼须, nián yú xū), with hair tied up and two strands left loose on either side. Now, dopey hair is taking over, and creators on Xiaohongshu and Douyin are already sharing tutorials. Although there’s an art to it: too flat and it disappears, too stiff and it loses its whimsy.

Would you rock a dāi máo? Comment below, and click the link in bio to read the full story.

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Behind an ordinary village wall in Shandong Province stands a concrete monument to the cosmos that looks like a set from a Cold War sci-fi film.

Hardly anyone seems to know it’s there. There’s little information about it online, and the netizens who’ve visited say they stumbled upon the courtyard by accident, deep inside the village. It was built by a self-proclaimed poet named Zhang Xin, who calls it the “Universal Omnipotent Astronomy Institute.” The courtyard is filled with colorful pillars topped with globes, flags, hand-drawn astronomy diagrams, and poems painted in red and blue. It feels like a scene from “The Three-Body Problem,” only real, and a little more eccentric.

Zhang Xin has built an entire universe of his own, and perhaps it just might hold secrets of the cosmos.

Finally, here is one of his poems translated, “Planet Seeker Spaceship”:
A planet seeker spaceship soars,
Guided by a drifting star.
Sunlit waters gleam on the shore,
Over mountains, near and far.

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So what‘s with all these abandoned buddhas in this sleepy, almost eerie village in China? Welcome to Chongshan Village.

Suzhou is known for its sleepy canals and classical Chinese architecture. But tucked away near the city is a little-known place: Chongshan Village (冲山村), one of the largest domestic and international exporters of deity sculptures. Generations of residents have made Buddhist and Taoist sculptures for temples across China. Today, Chongshan’s Buddha-sculpting craft is recognized as intangible cultural heritage in Jiangsu Province.

Walk through Chongshan, and you’ll find deities in every stage of becoming: carved, cast, painted, in every material imaginable. It’s a place of liminality, where gods take physical form in human hands.

And as you’d expect, the village is also home to plenty of abandoned Buddha factories. In these empty halls, a draw for urban explorers, deities lie half-finished or half-destroyed. A little eerie at times, but in another life, they would have been worshipped in temples and on altars.

Would you go exploring in this town?

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