After 14 years, kidnapped child reunited with family

A couple finally reunited with their son 14 years after he was abducted from their Shenzhen home. Sun Haiyang, the child’s father, had traveled around the country searching for his son for over a decade. Now 18 years old, Sun Zhuo had been raised by a family in Shandong with two elder daughters. His “adopted” parents claimed they were told Sun was abandoned. After Sun reunited with his biological family in Shenzhen and Hubei, he then decided to go back to his “adopted family” to continue school, and expressed his wish to stay with them.

Urban management patrols use new methods...

Urban management police in downtown Xi’an followed around a group of “professional beggars,” carrying a megaphone that announced on repeat, “I am a swindler. I am richer than any of you. I commute to the Drum Tower by car every day to beg.” Allegedly, the police had tried to persuade these panhandlers to leave the neighborhood before, and came up with this method when nothing else worked.

...and come under scrutiny for harassing tactics

A video showing an old man crying in the street, looking on as a group of men in security uniforms unceremoniously seize sugar canes from his bike in Sanxing, Jiangsu province, has gone viral. Angry netizens criticized the rough treatment of the street vendor. The local government has since blamed the third-party security company they hired to maintain order in the area, and apologized to the old man and his family.

Women burns thousand-year-old tree because of dream

Police detained a woman in Linzhou, Henan province, after she set a protected ancient gingko tree alight for the second time in a month, allegedly because she had a dream that the tree was responsible for all her misfortune. The woman had worn a helmet and mask to hide her identity, then poured gasoline on the 1,100-year-old tree before setting it ablaze.

Man steals 150,000 RMB from ex-girlfriend using facial recognition

A man in Nanning, Guangxi, stole over 150,000 RMB from his ex-girlfriend by lifting her eyelids while she slept and using the facial recognition function on payment platform Alipay. The woman called the police when she woke up, and the man has since been sentenced to three years in prison for theft.

Teenage snowboarder becomes China’s first champion

Su Yiming became China’s first snowboarder to win a Big Air World Cup Event when he won the competition held in Colorado last week. Su, a Jilin native who is planning to compete in the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, won the event with a score of 155.25 from the judges. Meanwhile, Eileen Gu, who was born in San Francisco but switched to represent China (where her mother is from) in 2019, won the women’s skiing halfpipe event.

Weibo bans “vulgar” usernames

Social media platform Weibo banned vulgar and insulting words in usernames, including “sissy (娘炮)” and “idiot (二货).” Users had one week as of December 1 to change their account names or risk being suspended from the microblogging website.

Professor wins case against website that published works without permission

Zhao Dexin, an 89-year-old retired professor of economic history, has won his lawsuit and obtained over 7 million RMB in compensation from CNKI database for selling access to his work without permission. Zhao says the database has collected over 100 of his papers and offered them for download to paid subscribers, but he has never gotten any royalties.