Youve seen the sun visors akin to weldersface shields, worn by Chinese on sunny-day bike rides to keep UV rays off of the skin, and youve certainly encountered the pom-pom laden wooly caps that combat those biting Beijing winters. But if you head down to the northwestern part of Yunnan Province, youll encounter a whole new kind of lid—one that, according to legend, was designed by a handful of fearful Yi men to keep their ladies brains from growing too big. The towering, five-pointed black hats are just one of various headdresses worn by members of one of the Yi ethnicitys many subgroups. Yi people in Yongren County wear colorful, embroidered hats shaped like a cockscomb flower (鸡冠花 j~gu`nhu`) to honor a mythical heroine who learned to mimic a cocks crow in order to scare away the devil and win back her true love. In a bleaker fashion, many elderly men traditionally twist up their hair in a dark turban that is later worn on their heads for their funeral services. Other Yi funerals are marked by an edible“headdress” used in a tiaocai, or “dancing dish” performance, wherein dancers balance up to 20 dishes on their heads without spilling so much as a drop before delivering the food to the attendees. Aside from towering feasts, it seems that the signature ebony hats beat even their 10-gallon peers when it comes to size: some sources say that theyre made with four kilograms of wool, and aremore than 10 times the size of an average human brain—clearly those Yi men werent thinking! - JESSICA RAPP (阮洁茜)

Creator Mark Oi! on the postcards text: "Most of the postcards have writing on them; some are the names of songs I like, some are names I picked out for the photographs and some dont have any meaning—theyre just for fun. Sick of sending hackneyed postcards of hailing Maos and majestic Forbidden Cities? Well theres nothing that says Beijing like a bulldog taking a whiz in the sand, flanked by the word “BULLSH*T.”This, friends, is but one example of the new postal brainchild of photographer/professional skinhead Mark Oi!, who for 13 years has been playing bass for legendary local punk band Misandao. Mark says he started taking pictures in 1997, when Beijings punk scene was just starting to explode. “In 1998, Id go to Scream Club [a now-defunct punk club] every week to see shows, and I just started taking pictures of my punk brothers around me.” By 2009, Mark had collected enough photos that he was ready to put together a book. There was just one problem—the money. So rather than blowing his paltry capital on a large-scale project, Mark decided to do something a bit more practical with his decade of photos: postcards.“You can spend RMB5 on a postcard to send your friends, so there are at least two people who will see your photograph, and probably more. Also, this is something that poor punks can buy.” Beijingers can pick up the postcards for five kuai a pop or RMB200 for a tin box set of 60 at Old What Bar, Underground Kidz, DDR Vintage and more locations listed on our website. - LIZ TUNG (董怡)

TOILETS STAR-RATED MAKEOVER

To the literal relief of tourists visiting Chinas capital, Beijing is busy giving the citys notorious public toilets a makeover. Weird Asia News reports plans are afoot to introduce 350 more three, four and even fivestar rated toilets to the 70 already installed at tourist hot spots. The initiative comes after it was revealed that a third of all complaints to the Beijing Tourism Administration (BTA) were toilet-related, with visitors mostly objecting to the smell, resi- due and communal style of the 公厕 (g4ngc-). Now toilets are subjected to mandatory checks by inspectors using a 28-page quality assessment report, with two failed inspections resulting in a downgrade and fine. Mirrors, background music and landscaping are all considered, and they must also have a 4:6 ratio of mens to womens areas (based on a study showing woman spend an average two to three minutes a day longer on the toilet). The rating systems are being adopted elsewhere too—a proposed five-star toilet in Chengdu even features a TV, fish tank and Wi-Fi, and will resemble an ancient courtyard.

SEX DOLL SLOWS SPEEDSTERS

An innovative 67-year-old lady has used salacious tactics to solve the problem of speeding cars in her local town. Lin Chen from Zhejiang Province was infuriated by vehicles dangerously hurtling through a set of traffic lights near her house and the lack of action from police. So she bought a blowup sex doll, dressed it in raunchy red lingerie and tied it to a tree at the side of the road—the logic being that the testosterone-fuelled speedsters would brake to take a closer look. “I thought that drivers would slow down if I could give them something worth looking at,”explained Lin on Orange News. She was proved right when police revealed accident figures had dropped since the dummy was installed.

SHEEP MILK? CANT BLEAT IT!

Most soon-to-be parents just buy a cot and give the spare room a lick of paint, but this wasnt enough for one proactive dad in Changsha, Hunan Province. Scared by recent scandals over poisoned baby milk products, Wei Xingyu, a 36-year-old wine salesman, sourced safe milk for his baby daughter by converting his roof into a dairy farm, according to Orange News."We decided that only fresh milk, produced right here at home, would do,” Wei said. Earlier this year, baby milk was found to contain unusually high levels of mercury and, in 2008, milk contaminated with melamine killed six babies and made 300,000 ill. As a result, Wei now has two ewes and one ram lodging four stories high in a farmyard penthouse.

CATCHING THE CICADA BUG

Need a diet after over-indulging this summer holiday? Then why not try Chinas low-fat traditional snack: cicadas. The noisy locust-like insects, with their large eyes and transparent wings, can be found deep-fried, boiled or blanched all across China. If you can get past the squidgy texture, asparagus flavor and unappetizing sight of a bug on a stick, the nutritious little critters can be a great source of vitamins, minerals and protein—the same amount pound for pound as red meat, in fact. Cicadas are not just for the belly, though. Traditional Chinese medicine found a use for their ground-up empty shells, which also had a religious subtext similar to the sacred scarab in ancient Egypt. Shedding their shells represented reincarnation and immortality for the ancient Chinese and, d u r ing the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-220 A.D.), cicadas were carved out of jade and placed in the mouths of the dead. Even the deceased wa nted a bite—bug appetit! - JIM NORTON

A SUMMER

If you visited a Qingdao beach in Shandong Province this summer, youd be forgiven for thinking youd stumbled across a lucha libre retirement home for Mexican wrestlers. Youd be wrong though, as these are in fact Chinas middle-aged hipsters wearing this summers must-have beach accessory: the nylon face mask. The snazzy

MURDER IN BINBEI

Its polite to humor colleagues by downing baijiu at dinner parties, but this protagonist favors keeping a clear head—and rightly so. Meet Hong Jun, a criminal lawyer fresh out of Chicago with his doctorate and two years of work experience at a law firm, ready to take on Beijing and “build ‘the rule of law.” His secretary is skeptical of his bold goal, well aware of just how bumpy the Chinese legal system of the 1990s can be for a fresh-faced counsel, and encourages Hong to take on commercial cases instead of criminal ones. But before long, Hong finds himself kneedeep in a 10-year-old murder mystery in the snowy drifts of the Binbei State Farm, working on behalf of a client seeking to avenge his younger brothers unfair trial and prove his innocence. What starts out as a series of interviews with witnesses quickly evolves into something altogether more dangerous, pitting Hongs

levelheaded logic against local superstitions and legends. He Jiahongs“Hanging Devils”keeps readers on tenterhooks until the very last page, delivering a classic whodunit with a modern Chinese twist.- JESSICA RAPP (阮洁茜)

TANS MASKED ENEMY

(albeit intimidating) headgear was dreamed up seven years ago by a local and is a hit with Chinese ladies keen on keeping a pale complexion. Sun cream, it seems, is no longer good enough to satisfy the age-old Asian preoccupation with looking as white as possible in order to appear wealthy and beautiful. That belief stems from ancient China, where the adage “one white covers up three uglinesses” was passed through generations. Though it might strike some as a bizarre fad reserved only for the most daring of holiday-makers, looking like a bank robber on vacation has become so popular that according to China Daily, the peculiar summer balaclava is already being mass produced.- JIM NORTON

DOMINO DOMINATION

Though China lost out to the USA in the Olympics medal tally, they can at least sleep easy knowing they have retained dominance in mattress dominoes. Earlier this summer, volunteers in China broke the USAs world record for mattress dominoes in an empty shopping mall in Shanghai, reports Weird Asia News. The sequence lasted just over 10 minutes as a total of 1,001 volunteers, each armed with a mattress, fell backwards onto each other. It trounced the previous record set by a US hotel chain—which could only manage 850 mattresses—in New Orleans just five months earlier.

MINI SKIRT DISCOUNT

Girls happy to hitch their skirts up high enough have been enjoying a half-price discount to a theme park in southern China this summer. The Guilin Merryland Resort offered 50 percent off the RMB110 entry price for female visitors wearing miniskirts shorter than 38 centimeters. The discount was part of the Resorts annual “Love Miniskirts” campaign and saw visitor numbers skyrocket.“The stipulation [aimed] to encourage female visitors to showcase their beauty in summer,” said the Resorts Deputy Manager Li Wenxing. However, the promotion provoked fierce criticism from angry commentators decrying its inherent sexism. “We have been hearing negative comments about the campaign since we launched it, but their numbers are decreasing every year,” an unfazed Li said on ShanghaiDaily.com.