China Scene: North

Father finds missing boy in Internet cafe

A 16-year-old boy, utterly engrossed in online games, played them for 11 consecutive days at an Internet cafe in Tianjin municipality - without telling his parents of his whereabouts.

During that period, he only ate eight meals and slept in a narrow aisle inside the cafe, along with a handful of other teenage gamers who sometimes spent nights at the cafe.

After finding him there on Tuesday, with the help of police, his father, a migrant worker from Jiangxi province, got very angry with the cafe's boss, and urged police to investigate his business.

(www.xinhuanet.com)

Woman suffers when neighbors keep secret

As she walked through the hallway of an apartment building in Daqing, a city of Heilongjiang province, a woman surnamed Wang felt a sudden pain in her left arm.

She looked down to find the needle of a syringe stuck in her forearm. Wang telephoned police immediately.

Police inquired with every household in the building, but no neighbor would confess to having discarded of needles in such a careless fashion.

The woman went to the Fifth Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University in the hope of verifying what medicine or drug the syringe had contained.

But doctors could give her no definite answer, nor rule out the possibility of HIV infection. They offered her only disinfection treatment.

(Heilongjiang Morning Post)

Toy gun proves as scary as real weapon

A 66-year-old man surnamed Bian in Hegang, Heilongjiang province, was placed in temporary detention for threatening a woman with a life-sized toy pistol.

On the evening of June 5, the drunk man approached the woman on the street and threatened to kill her.

Later, when police apprehended the man, they discovered the gun he wielded could not even fire a bullet. Yet, as a weapon of intimidation, the toy was utterly effective.

The police detained Bian and charged him with jeopardizing public security.

(www.xinhuanet.com)

Chivalry awry earns no friends

Seeing a woman walking home alone at night on a street in Dalian, Liaoning province, a man surnamed Jiang insisted on accompanying her home - imagining himself a helpful escort.

But the woman was not pleased with the company of the man, who was slightly drunk.

When she arrived at her doorstep, the woman surnamed Zhao told her husband that she had been followed home by a strange man.

Hearing that, the husband dashed out of their home and beat up the unsuspecting escort. That, also, was not the act of chivalry the woman had expected.

The local court has ordered the couple to pay 15,500 yuan ($2,200) to Zhao in compensation.

(Dalian Evening News)

Cat picks fight with magpies, and loses

A cat kept by a 6-year-old boy in Shijingshan district, Beijing, prowled up a tree to raid a bird's nest last week.

Before the cat had a chance to dine on the little birds, it found itself under attack from a flock of protective adult magpies.

The unlucky feline was stranded on the tree limb, unable to climb down.

After enduring the attacking birds for three days, the cat was rescued on Thursday by a chef working nearby who is good at climbing trees.

By then, its back had been so thoroughly pecked by the birds that it had festered.

(Beijing Times)

(China Daily 06/17/2008 page6)