China’s defeat against Japan at the Asian Games trended on the same day as the commemoration of the Mukden Incident—not as a separate event, but as a painful reminder of the humiliation of war.
 

Football can be a useful way to gauge the state of nations.¹ So can basketball, apparently.

One of the most discussed topics on Chinese social media on September 18 was the China vs. Japan men’s basketball semifinal at the Asian Games, a topic that was collectively viewed not merely through a sports angle, but through the lens of history and WWII – especially on an important commemoration day that was all about China’s war against Japanese aggression.

September 18 marks the anniversary of the Mukden Incident in 1931. Right next to the basketball game, that topic became one of the top keywords on Weibo and other Chinese platforms on Friday.²

The Mukden Incident —a staged explosion that damaged a section of Japanese railway in Shenyang [Mukden] on September 18, 1931—was used as a pretext for Japan’s invasion of Manchuria and has come to be widely regarded by Chinese historians and officials as the true starting point of the Second Sino-Japanese War.

On this significant day, the China vs. Japan game in Nagoya ended in a major 77-97 loss for the Chinese team, which critics attributed to a lack of speed and tactical weaknesses that left them defenseless against the Japanese team’s swift attacks. Making it worse, the Chinese had the advantage of taller players, and the Japanese weren’t even playing with their best team.

“Like a top-grade horse losing to a bottom-grade horse,” one sports columnist wrote (“是我们的上等马输给了对方的下等马”).

Prior to the game, many commenters already questioned why a China-Japan face-off should take place on such a sensitive date, while others suggested that the Chinese team “could not afford to lose on this day.”

Posted by Weibo user 君见理5, this AI poster transforms…

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…