"Enduring marriage" — staying married in middle age while living as roommates under one roof — is being sold in Chinese essays as wisdom and self-care. One writer pushes back, calling it a graceful name for giving up.
A popular essay reframes the old folk notion of 'heavy yin' from ghostly possession into a description of chronically low, draining people — and offers five signs for spotting them. It is a window into how Chinese self-help blends folklore with emotional advice.
A Chinese essayist describes how Alzheimer's disease takes a parent long before death, leaving families to mourn someone who still sits at the table. The piece, published on a mass-market reading platform, gives a name to a loss Chinese families rarely discuss openly.
A Zhihu explainer traces the disappearance of the intramuscular penicillin injection that once greeted nearly every sick child in Chinese county clinics, arguing that better drug formulations and modern medical infrastructure, not nostalgia, retired it.
A roundup of user answers on Zhihu, China's Quora-like platform, turns everyday mishaps and odd coincidences into a shared comic ritual. The format thrives on brevity, self-mockery and the unexpected connections readers make between unrelated things.
A viral set of etiquette rules for cash gifts at weddings and banquets is spreading online in China, reflecting growing fatigue with the financial and social burden of reciprocal giving. The guidelines cap ordinary colleagues at 200 yuan and encourage careful accounting of family gifts.
Documentary filmmaker Lu Qingyi went back to his home county to care for his dying father and stayed to care for his mother. His new book turns that year of caregiving into a meditation on family, memory and ordinary lives.
China's insurance giant Ping An has launched a cultural IP, 'Ping An in Intangible Heritage,' partnering with a heritage-themed television program and opening the first of a planned series of events on October 30.
A Chinese essayist argues that heroes should be defined by excellence in a field, naming scientists like Qian Xuesen and Ma Weiming, rather than by fame or rescue drama. The piece reflects a broader Chinese appetite for essays that rethink admiration and everyday values.
West Lake vinegar fish is one of Hangzhou's signature dishes, yet Chinese diners now treat it as a punchline. A Zhihu essay argues the recipe was built for conditions that no longer exist, so the fame outlived the fish.
A Zhihu discussion argues that today's Chinese buses, despite better specs and smoother roads, often feel harsher than the models of the 1980s and 1990s. The reason lies in technology that stopped changing decades ago and in how buses are now bought and specified.
A Chinese psychology essay explains why the same person will splurge on a designer toy and pinch pennies on lunch: money is filed in separate mental accounts. The idea, coined by economist Richard Thaler, helps explain China's split-screen spending habits.
Novelist Jiang Fangzhou published a birthday essay from a hospital ward, saying a year of illness and difficulty taught her more than usual. The piece, her first in 107 days, draws on Confucius to argue that hard-won insight matters most.
A widely shared Chinese forum answer argues that China kept its pictographic script for two thousand years because its civilization never faced the survival pressures that pushed Western peoples toward alphabets. The claim is bold, debatable, and a window into how Chinese readers think about their own writing.
Corn is one of the world's three great staple crops, yet Chinese kitchens rarely serve it as a main grain. A Zhihu answer explains how a plant from the grass family became the backbone of modern food, fuel and livestock.
A widely shared Chinese explainer argues that moving to the sea would not have rescued the ancient poor, because a diet of lean fish alone can trigger what explorers called rabbit starvation. The answer turns on fat, not food supply, and it opens a window into how Chinese readers consume everyday science.
A popular Chinese-language explainer reveals that everyday words like gege (older brother) are actually ancient loanwords, and asks why Chinese stayed in characters while most scripts became alphabets.
A Chinese science forum revisits the olm, a blind cave salamander recorded staying within a tiny patch of water for 2,569 days. The animal's extreme stillness raises questions about how much energy a body really needs when food and water never run out.
Yingxian's Sakyamuni Pagoda, built in 1056 and standing 67.31 metres tall, is leaning at its second storey and needs a restoration no one fully knows how to do. A structural engineer's widely read answer explains why the fix is a medical problem, not a carpentry one.
A Chinese psychologist's blunt advice to wives — stop policing who your husband sleeps with, as long as he keeps paying for the household — has gone viral. It taps a wider boom in Chinese essays about marriage, self-worth and emotional exhaustion.
A Zhihu essay argues Guangzhou is the rare Chinese city whose centre has barely moved in 2,200 years, citing layered roads under the Nanyue King Museum. The claim comes with strict caveats about what counts as 'ancient'.
A widely read discussion on Zhihu explores where the losers of China's imperial civil service exams ended up, and which of them left a mark on history. The answer turns out to be a layered system with a safety net at every rung.
In a new interview, director Gu You discusses his film 'First Taste of Loneliness,' arguing that being alone is not always a burden but can be a doorway to clarity. The film opens with a slow pan along the misty Fuchun River.
Yu Donglai, the founder of the Pang Dong Lai supermarket chain, has put 20 million yuan each into two research groups — one on love, one on children's education — aiming to find practical recipes for happier family life within three to five years.
A question on Zhihu asks why translations of ancient bronze inscriptions contain characters that no longer exist. The answer lies in an old scholarly technique called liding, which preserves the structure of scripts older than the modern Chinese writing system.
Frost's Descent, the last solar term of autumn, arrives on October 23, prompting Chinese social media to fill with warm greetings about health, luck and family. The seasonal ritual reveals how traditional calendars still shape everyday culture.
A Korean-made injectable derived from donated human skin is being marketed in China as a premium anti-aging treatment, with experts calling it a waste of scarce medical material. The controversy raises hard questions about how far cosmetic medicine should go.
A viral explainer on hanfu asks why Tang and Song robes show the collarbone while Ming styles seem to cover everything. The answer lies in ceremony versus daily life, and in Ming paintings of street peddlers and ladies cooling off in pavilions.
A 1911 photograph of a leaning, split pagoda in Sichuan has become a favourite among Chinese history buffs asking which relics are worth remembering. The answer says as much about how China preserves old buildings as about the tower itself.
A viral Chinese essay draws on Charlie Munger's remarks about human flaws to explain a familiar double standard: we justify our own choices while judging others harshly. The piece argues that accepting human nature, rather than fighting it, is the smarter path.
Scholars have pieced together fragments of Aristotle's Categories found at a ruined Christian monastery in Turpan, China, dating centuries before the Jesuits brought European editions to Beijing.
Chinese actress Yu Feihong, 55, has again drawn attention for her calm rejection of marriage pressure, telling fans she is neither anti-marriage nor proudly single but simply committed to being happy. Her remarks reignited a familiar online debate about whether marriage is mandatory.
A wave of Chinese self-help essays argues that cutting back — fewer clothes, fewer friends, less food — is the surest route to a good life. The genre trades luck and feng shui for daily discipline.
A wave of viral essays on Chinese media asks why ordinary lives feel like failure, and urges readers to stop comparing themselves with the polished lives on their phones. The genre blends folk wisdom and confession — and it is drawing huge audiences.
Every autumn, on the ninth day of the ninth lunar month, Chinese families climb hills, sip chrysanthemum tea and check in on their parents. The Double Ninth Festival is a quiet reminder of how a fast-aging society is rethinking what care for the elderly really means.
A viral history thread on Zhihu asks which minor modern ailments were once death sentences. The answer: everyday skin infections like cellulitis, known in old China as 'yong ju,' killed with terrifying speed before antibiotics and clean surgery.
A popular explainer on Chinese Q&A site Zhihu overturns the common belief that camera flashes damage artifacts with ultraviolet light. The real culprits, it argues, are visible-light exposure, heat and visitor experience.
The Double Ninth Festival, falling on the ninth day of the ninth lunar month, is a day for honoring elders, climbing heights, and admiring chrysanthemums. In Chinese culture, the repeated nines symbolize longevity and good fortune.
The 25th China Shanghai International Arts Festival opened with the debut of the Shanghai Grand Opera House, a six-year, 4,200-seat venue on the Huangpu River. City leaders and programmers say Shanghai is shifting from a stop for touring shows to a place that creates them.
In 1853, a commoner named Wang Ku'er slipped past the palace gates and peddled steamed buns inside the Forbidden City for months before anyone noticed. A rare archive from the Qing court's internal investigation bureau tells the story.
