In this edition:

• Teachers get shamed for their students’ bad grades
• Why the Nepal–Tibet floods sparked arguments about blame, BBC reporting, and Chinese censorship
• Huawei doesn’t appreciate viral toilet humor
• Dads are carrying mattresses into Peking University
• Chinese graduates are getting “screwed” by a million-dollar company

🗞️ QUICK SCROLLS

🧑‍🏫 A teacher “shame photo” taken at a local education meeting in Liangshan, Sichuan, has sparked nationwide outrage. A group of primary school teachers was forced to pose in front of a giant “SHAME” sign because their classes’ average final exam scores were below 30. “This isn’t merely ‘shame’—it’s outright public humiliation,” one commenter wrote. Liangshan’s education bureau confirmed the photo was real and said it was “puzzled” by the practice; the Leibo County government has apologized and launched an investigation.

Teachers lined up in front of a big screen that says: “Group photo of primary-school teachers whose classes averaged below 30 points in the 2025–2026 end-of-year examinations”

🥬 “Chemical cabbages” (药水白菜) or “formaldehyde cabbages” (甲醛白菜) have been a major topic on Chinese social media after a Chinese investigative vlogger captured workers in Kangbao, Hebei, dipping cabbages into formaldehyde solution before loading them onto trucks. This procedure, which allegedly adds 2–3 extra days of shelf life, is illegal: formaldehyde is a Group 1 carcinogen.

🍫 It’s been a bad week for Mars-owned chocolate brand Dove. A marketing campaign suggesting that a girl received a box of chocolates from a man she was flirting with while her boyfriend was away (“趁男友不在”) drew anger online. Then the brand’s apology also became a massive failure: when it was flagged as 100% AI-generated, Chinese netizens had little sympathy left for the brand.

💸 A “century-old” shark fin soup served by a Shanghai restaurant for no less than 4,800 yuan (US$715) per bowl (!) has gone viral for its exorbitant price and claims that it has been “simmering for more than 100 years,” since the late Qing dynasty. There was plenty of skepticism about the soup, but also disbelief that anyone would spend an ordinary person’s entire monthly living budget on a single bowl of soup.

👩‍💻 An eighth-grader from Shanghai earned 18,000 yuan (US$2,678) in three days using AI. Despite her limited programming experience, the 13-year-old placed third in a marketing hackathon, where teams had 48 hours to develop and market an entire AI product. She launched a study-companion app called “Being There” (在场) that 92 people bought. Although Chinese media praised her, commenters were critical, suggesting she received help from her mother, an influencer on Douyin.

💍 In an aging society where marriage rates have AGAIN dropped, more and more places are making it easier than ever to tie the knot. Registration services are popping up in…

A mother-and-son duo’s animated 3D film earned just 342 yuan ($US50) on opening day. Then its crude visuals turned it into a viral success, propelling it into the top ten of the year’s domestic animated releases. A meaningless ‘miracle’ or sign of shifting cultural sentiments? An explainer.

Something extraordinary has happened in Chinese cinemas this month. A tiny animated film about a yellow cow on a dreamlike adventure opened in a few hundred Chinese theaters on August 5, 2026, with zero promotion and no trailer. On its first day, the movie’s box office revenue totaled just 342 yuan (US$50).

Nobody could have expected that this microbudget indie movie, initially playing to empty seats, would become a nationwide viral hit—not because people thought it was good, but because they found it so aesthetically ugly.

The 86-minute 3D animation is titled Niu Lai (牛来, literally “Here Comes the Cow/The Cow Comes”). It was produced by just two people from Dalian: 34-year-old Xin Yumeng (信雨萌) and his mother, Sun Lifang (孙丽芳). The pair spent five years making it.

The plot follows a young calf named Niu Lai, who is too afraid to stand. In his dreams, he befriends a skylark and a young leopard on a sometimes-scary adventure, during which he grows up, loses his mother in a wolf attack, and eventually wakes up with new life lessons.

Despite being complete newcomers to the film industry, Xin and his mother handled everything themselves, from directing and writing to animation, voice acting, and music—theirs were the only two names in the end credits.

They registered the script in 2021 and, after passing the content review, received a public-screening permit in 2024. The narrative contained no apparent sensitivities, and all the paperwork was in order. A film distributor they knew reportedly helped them secure screenings at a few hundred cinemas (even though, after seeing the film’s quality, he had advised them against a theatrical release).

Around August 13-14, the movie went viral when a few netizens who saw it shared their disbelief at the primitive visuals, which contrasted sharply with the…