The whole procedure only took about 15 minutes. Nowhere near as painful as it looks, and it definitely loosened my neck up, though I’m told I’ll have to wait until tomorrow to feel the full effect.

Spent at least half an hour in the taxi from the train station to Jianghan Lu, by far the longest that trip has ever taken. Total cost: 21 RMB.

Cheap taxi fare was the third sign I was back in Wuhan. The first was getting into the taxi, revealing to the driver that I was American, and listening to him go on and on about war, North Korea, Jews, American Indians, and the NBA. (Yes, his favorite team is the Rockets.) The second was watching two separate shouting/shoving matches between pedestrians and police during. The driver explained that in hot climates, people have hot tempers. Even in December, when its comfortably cool.

I checked into the hotel, cleaned up, and headed straight to my favorite hot and dry noodle shop, which is in an alley behind the People’s Paradise shopping center on Zhongshan Dadao. Excellent as always, as were the mianwo.

After that we walked back toward the Wanda shopping center. At one point a pigeon crapped from a ledge several floors above, missing me by inches and a fraction of a second. I thought how lucky I had been, but I would have happily endured a pigeon attack instead of what I saw next. Inside the Wanda area we noticed a few people standing around and staring at one of the shops. It was obvious something interesting had just happened. We walked closer and saw this:

It appeared that a man had raised himself up to the the glass plates, perhaps to wash them, and then fallen through. You can see a glimpse of him holding his head. The glass is well supported from below and don’t look like they’d just fall on their own accord. What appears to be a hydraulic lift is just to his left.

Here you can see part of the shattered glass that hasn’t yet fallen. (Also, the woman in front, with her skin-tight jeans, leather everything else, and thousand yard stare as she walks through the disaster area, was sign number four that I was back in Wuhan.)

This shows the that the injured man, and whoever is attending to him, are directly below the remaining section of glass. The man wasn’t exactly young, either — he looked to be in his fifties. And even though he was bleeding a bit (note the small red spot just in front of the coil of rope to his left), his most serious injuries likely came from the fall itself (during which he lost a shoe) rather than from the broken glass. He seemed dazed but somewhat conscious.

We gawked a bit with the others and were starting to walk away when we shouting. We ran back just in time to see a huge chunk of shattered glass fall down, right where he had been less than a minute earlier. The hunk of glass was probably three feet long and fell pointed side down, like a giant icicle.

This set off a panic, as the Wanda attendants realized how dangerous the situation was, and how close they had come to a real disaster. Several groups of reinforcements ran up and cordon off the danger zone and get control of the situation. Meanwhile short woman with the white hair was retelling others how she had kept telling the mall attendants to move the injured man out from under the glass.

All this before 10:30 in the morning!

A letter passing through offices in China lately warns against the dangers of the smoke from the eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland:

转发: 从今天到28号，请大家不要淋雨。
Fwd: Avoid exposure to rain from today until the 28th.

从今天到28号，请大家不要淋雨。750年一次的酸雨，被淋到后患皮肤癌的几率很高。因为欧洲的一个火山的大爆发，向高空喷发了大量硫化物，在大气层7000~10000米的高空形成了浓厚的火山灰层，强酸性。请大家注意，把这个信息转发给你身边的人。
Avoid exposure to rain from today until the 28th of the month. Every 750 years there is a major occurance of acid rain, and the probability of getting skin cancer high if one is exposed to it.  The volcanic eruption in Europe has spewed a large amount of sulfides into the atmosphere, and a thick, strongly acidic layer of volcanic ash has collected at an altitude of 7000-10000 meters. Please take care to pass this information to those around you.

The note appears to be based on a similar rumor spread in parts of Africa in February and March. This is from The Punch, Nigerian newspaper, and is dated March 24, 2010:

A United Nations space chief, Mr. Takao Doi, has allayed fears of acid rain accompanying the current harmattan haze accross the country. . .

A text message circulating through mobile networks had warned that there could be acid rain in the country between March 20 and 28.

The text message said, “Be careful from the 20-28th of this month. There is the possibility of an acid rain. The dark circle appeared on 17th of last month and this is an indication of acid rain. Apparently this happens once in 750 years. It rains normally but it may cause skin cancer if you expose yourself to it. This information is from the National Space Agency in the United States.”

The “dark circle” supposedly appeared around the moon, but this part of the rumor was left out of the Chinese version. Other versions used “NASA” instead of “the National Space Agency in the United States.”

I felt clever for figuring that out in like April.  Now I’m just exhausted from the hysteria in China over swine flu in America and telling people that swine flu has not been a serious news story there for months.  I’ve have a colleague who was on a flight from the US to Shanghai that was QUARANTINED in Shanghai for one week in June, because – apparently – someone on his plane came down with swine flu like symptoms.  I myself just returned to Shanghai from the US yesterday ~ the entry procedures were totally reasonable.  But my ayi won’t come this week because her main employer forbids her from doing so — they fear that she could catch swine flu from me and pass it on to them.  I can live without my ayi for a week (Nator, hold your snarky comments) but why oh why must Chinese people be led so out of touch of reality by state media.

From Ma Zhaoxu, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman: “The measures concerned are not targeted at Mexican citizens and there is no discrimination”

From Truth From Facts:  Happy Cinco de Mayo!  Are the tequilla specials still on tonight?

The Shanghaiist reports about a KFC outlet in Hong Kong serving food out of the trash.  Apparently the staff, eager to to get home early, would stop kitchen operations, throw away all leftover food, and start cleaning up before the restaurant closes. Unfortunately,  if an unlucky customer would enter the establishment at that time then he would be served food right out of the can. For a short video and some pictures check out the above link.

This gives a whole new meaning to the words Junk Food.

Aside from the Miss Switzerland pageant, it was clearly the top story of the weekend!

I was curious about the ”763 batches of Chinese milk found chemical free” link, however, so I searched the site for the keyword “milk”. Turns out there has been a lot of news about milk in the past couple of weeks. It’s all terribly complicated, and I’m still sorting out the facts. But these articles, all taken from China Daily and Xinhua, have been particularly helpful:

• “Shenzhou VII sets standard for China-made products“
• “Prompt response“
• “Wen stresses business ethics“
• “Mother offers fresh alternative“
• “Major Chinese dairy producers promise to improve“
• “Untainted milk not hit by scandal“

According to Guangzhou Daily, the world’s largest tumor, weighting 45kg, was removed from a patient in Guangzhou. The tumor, in addition to being the largest ever recorded, was actually heavier than the patient itself…

Ananova offers some more information on this story.

A recent article on Shanghai Daily, titled City Surgeons Come in Handy, reports on a Jiangsu native with the largest hand in the world (with a 26cm left thumb…).

To view the original article, which contains a very shocking picture, and not recommended for the faint hearted (seriously, you don’t want to see this), click here.

A school in Wuhan, Hubei Province, has sparked controversy after it requested more than 30 students to undergo cosmetic surgery before graduation.

The surgery was for double-fold eyelids, breast enlargement and the removal of moles.

It was to make the students, most of them girls, more attractive and therefore stand a better chance of gaining employment.

Many of the students want to be airline cabin attendants after graduation.

Residents complained the school was focusing too much on the appearance of students instead of improving the quality of its teachers. But the school said it was important to improve the appearance of students when considering the tough employment market.

This school was only playing the game like everyone else. I’d bet many of the students would have had the surgery done anyway, for the same reasons.