With her minimalistic China vs Chinatown split-panel graphic series, New York-based art director Mengwen Xiang views Chinatown as a stereotype of China, and contrasts the two against each other. It’s brilliant, subtle, wicked and makes for a quick educational crash course about the world’s most populated country.

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The video for Entertainment, the first single from Phoenix’s album Bankrupt!, is a dozen Asian soap operas mashed together to create the most epic visual experience possible. I love all the colours and confusing drama. Even though the song lyrics are in English, Phoenix masterfully creates the feeling of confusion typically experienced while watching a foreign film.

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Seems like the Chinese have just invented a new way to punish their dogs: make them strap on some pantyhose, and stilettos too, for added sexiness. Is it just us, or do most of the dogs in the pictures sport a resigned look on their face? It’s amusing for all of one second, but quickly goes downhill into a disturbing zone. If you must dress your dog, at least make it a cool one, like an AT-AT Imperial Walker or something.

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The Haoduo Panda Hotel is the world’s first panda-themed hotel, where everything from the decor to the staff are pandas (well, people in panda costumes). Nestled at the foot of Emei Mountain in China’s Sichuan province, the panda hotel will officially open in May, with rates starting at about $45 per night.

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Imagine what Twitter might have looked like some 30 years ago. Imagine what our grandparents think of when they hear about Twitter. Gaston Lisak puts those thoughts in this context: ‘my grandma, like all the grandma’s in the neighborhood, used to own a bird as a pet. However, nowadays the bird cage is open and the bird has been replaced by that of Twitter’. This is his contribution for the Mobile Museum, Beijing Edition, on the theme of TODAY.

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During the turn of the 19th century, China was home to a lovely clash of East-meets-West culture. And lucky for us, Louis-Philippe Messelier, a French wool trader turned photojournalist, was there to capture the energy of the period in this series of black and white photos. Anything from unusual street performers, pristine countryside, film studios, and the images of the reigning aristocracy all of it finds its way into this portrait of a rapidly modernized China. It’s truly an elegant juxtaposition.

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Photographer Ed Jones offers us a peep at the serious regimen that over 40 bodyguard trainees in China wake up to daily before dawn, like braving sub-zero temperatures and martial arts bootcamps under former Portuguese special forces bodyguard Marco Borges. They will eventually go on to provide security for Chinese investors in places such as Africa and the Middle East.

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Architect Ma Yansong has designed a whole new city in China that towers into the sky like a beautiful mountain range, symbolizing nature as an abstraction of reality. With a built-in waterfall and connecting bridges, the towers, dubbed Shan-Shui City (‘the city of mountains and water’), are a place for people to work, socialize and live.

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For his The Real Toy Story photography series, German artist Michael Wolf — who we’ve previously appreciated — visited toy factories in China to document the mass production of heaps of toys ranging from SpongeBob SquarePants to Mickey Mouse, as well as the factory workers behind the assembly, finer paintwork, and the such. Surprisingly, there are very few grumpy faces we spotted in there.

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Sheraton Huzhou Hot Spring Resort, which opens in Jan 2013, has an unusual design that’s seen it being compared — rather unkindly — to a toilet seat. Which puts it in similar company with another building in Suzhou, which has been dubbed a pair of underpants. People can be mean.

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We all have a vision of what we think the future will look like. So what does the ever present growth of China mean for Westerners? That is the question China-based French photographer Benoit Cezard is trying to answer through his interesting and controversial series, China 2050. The series show Westerners performing a range of “blue collar” jobs that may currently be performed by poorer Chinese migrants – cleaners, construction workers and waiters are all included. Is this the future for the Western world?

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Si Chan is a clothing designer from Macau, China, and I am in love with his menʼs collection for Fall/Winter 2012-2013. This mouth watering clothing line is called Hug Me. It is inspired by loneliness and the desire for warm human interaction. My favorite piece is a sweater/jacket adorned with long gloves in every color except black. Si Chan is a genius and I really want to give him a hug.

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Snake venom wine was first consumed in China during the Western Zhou Dynasty by practitioners and patients of traditional Chinese medicine. They believed that it promoted vitality and health. The snakes were preserved for their ‘essence’ and left to steep in a glass jar of rice wine, sometimes enhanced with smaller snakes and medicinal herbs. Traditionally, because of the high alcohol content, it was drunk in shot glasses. However, heavier drinkers ate certain parts of the snake such as the gall bladder, eyeballs and stomach. If you dare try some yourself, you can order a bottle at Asian Snake Wine. The expression “hair of the dog that bit you” just doesn’t seem… enough. 

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Once in a while, we chance across something totally random on the Internet and go, ‘What?”. This is one of these things. All you need to know about this themed site by Shanghai-based blogger Mary Anne Oxendale, you’ll know from the brief description on the homepage (‘China has 1.3 billion people and 5.4 million mops. This is their story’). 

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If you’re afraid of heights, this is definitely not for you. This glass walkway at China’s Tianmen National Park gives walkers a view like no other. The walkway is 2.5 inches thick, 3 feet wide, and about 200 feet long. Walkers are required to wear shoe covers to keep the glass clean, so that the dizzying view below is not obscured.

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Soak up, but first cover up. These balaclava-like nylon masks were invented to protect female Chinese beachgoers in Shandong from toasting their faces in harmful sun rays. We keep half-expecting them to wrestle each other because of the masks.

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Chinese photographer Zhao Huasen has manipulated photographs to make it look like commuters in China are riding around on invisible bikes. The series, titled Floating, is a challenge to what it means to really ‘see’ in the photographs.

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Plastic nipples getting painted. Heaps of disembodied plastic body parts. This Zhejiang factory churns out cheap sex dolls for US$16 a bod and apparently sells more than 50,000 sex dolls to Japan and Korea annually. Which makes us wonder: what is the world population of sex dolls like?

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Only in China. No, wait, only in Shanghai would you find a Marriage Market at People’s Park, which operates every weekend and attracts, literally, hundreds of people all in the united quest of finding the perfect match for their child, their sibling, or occasionally, themselves. So how does it work? Simple. Parents post basic bios of their unwed children on the fences. Interested parties peruse the bios and make their selections. And the rest is in the hands of fate.

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Apparently there is a village in China where everyone has perfect vision. When people of that village spend time way for work, they start developing sight problems and get glasses. However, when they return home, their vision returns to normal after a few months. Supposedly, it’s because in the modern world, we spend so much time staring at things near us (computer screens, books, etc), whereas our eyes naturally want to spend a lot of time staring at intricate, branching structures like trees and also off into the far distance.

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