We’re not sure why there’s a naked foreigner — a student, says People’s Daily — in the middle of a road in Haikou, Hainan province, but here he is, all sunglasses and sandals (Crocs?), minding his business.

“Staff from a local police station brought the man back and he was found with a blade in his mouth,” writes People’s Daily, which elucidates absolutely nothing.

The good folk of Reddit have begun a photoshopping contest with the lad. Join if you’d like.

What is it with foreigners in Hainan, anyway?

What is it with Hainan?

I’m going to leave this here and back away, because I don’t even –

The body of woman, who was beheaded by a man on Friday morning, June 28, 2013 outside a supermarket in Sanya, south China’s Hainan Province, is seen lying on the ground. The attacker has been held by police, while the victim has not been identified. [Photo: Sohu.com]

China Radio International has a couple more pictures, and one of them is very graphic. Proceed carefully.

Meanwhile, Hainan continues its efforts to replace Henan as China’s most fucked-up province, with this story following ones like this and this.

(H/T Stuart Wiggin)

Look at these douchenozzles.

A dolphin was found stranded in a swimming zone of Dadong Sea in Sanya, Hainan province on June 16, and while waiting for animal rescues to arrive, a few swimmers decided to lug the poor creature out of the water for photos.

Do we need to identify the things that are wrong here? Should we point out that dolphins aren’t used to being manhandled like this, that it could lead to asphyxiation and death? Not to mention this one here was already suffering from a head injury.

The counterargument is that dolphins beach themselves all the time, and chances of death are probably greater if not for human intervention. In fact, just last month, on May 21, a dolphin beached itself in Sanya and died despite the best efforts of bipeds.

You would have to be somewhat of an asshole to argue this, of course. But hey, whatever. These guys here have one heck of a souvenir photo — and now they are the ones to be gawked at by uncaring strangers, since there’s now a photo of them. How appropriate.

UPDATE, 1:25 pm: The dolphin is dead. Via People’s Daily:

The air-breathing mammal died around midnight at a local marine park due to excessive bleeding from the tail, reported Hainan’s news portal Hinews.cn. Experts said the dolphin might have collided with a fishing boat before it was stranded.

Instead of trying to help the distressed animal, a crowd gathered to line up for pictures. Several men lifted the dolphin, as long as a man is tall, above the water and one of them flexed his muscles for the camera. Online pictures do not show anyone trying to stop the abuse.

(H/T Free More News)

Usually, though, these people don’t need our malediction to summon woe upon themselves. Take this recent story via Global Times:

Three students were killed in a motorcycles accident after they were chased by police motorcycles for more than 10 minutes in Sanya, Hainan Province on Monday morning.

A middle-aged shop owner near where the accident occurred told the website chinanews.com that around 10 am on Monday, three young people riding a motorcycle at about 70 kilometers per hour passed her shop and were followed by a police motorcycle.

The woman said the police motorcycle was flashing its emergency light and sounding its siren as it passed.

Soon after the motorcycles passed her shop, a truck loaded with stones turned right into the path of the motorcycle sending the young people into a wooded area. Two died on the spot and one died in hospital.

Youth remains tragic. Thankfully, no one else was hurt.

Also see: Road-Racing Ferraris In Shaanxi Get Completely, Utterly Totaled and Remember This Scorched Ferrari In Beijing?

Three students killed after racing motorcycle in high-speed police chase (Global Times)

On April 19, 2012, a 41-year-old woman in Haikou, Hainan province was picking up her child when a 42-year-old shop owner confronted her because her bike was blocking his store. What happened next, one would never wish on his worst enemy:

The two parties soon fell into a quarrel, and then a physical confrontation. The furious woman called her husband and brother to come help her, which resulted in a more violent fist fight.

Wait for it…

During the fight, the middle aged woman manged to grab the man’s testicles, and squeezed them until he finally collapsed on the ground. The man was immediately rushed to hospital, but unfortunately died there despite of efforts.

Rocket News 24 is now reporting that the woman’s trial began on April 8, and the verdict may come down to one line:

As she held the man in a nut lock, witnesses reported her to have shouted, “I’ll squeeze it to death, you’ll never have children again!”

Apparently she didn’t know how right she was, because soon after the man went into shock from the pain. Paramedics rushed to the scene and treated the victim but he was soon pronounced dead.

With the trial ongoing, the result may hinge on the woman’s alleged statement of “squeeze it to death.” Depending on how it’s interpreted, she may be convicted of murder.

The woman is charged with committing a capital offense that is “especially cruel.” The potential sentence is not less than 10 years, up to life imprisonment or death.

(H/T Reece Ayers)

These are the worst type of stories. The. Worst. What we have is a foreigner and Chinese person arguing at Sanya Airport in Hainan province. (What is it with Sanya? We saw another foreigner and Chinese person tussle earlier.) The foreigner, wearing a fannypack, accuses the Chinese of cursing and “beating” him. The Chinese — or whoever is the one filming — later posts this nationalistic tripe on Youku (a video that’s been viewed 225,000 times in the last 12 hours):

Laowai is “beaten” at Sanya Airport: look at the laowai’s logic, he absolutely loses it after being lightly touched, doesn’t reflect on his own mistake, critically examine himself — wake a little, laowai, China is strong now!

The story, if you believe the laowai speaking mangled Mandarin, is that he was “beaten” and laughed at (“laughed at,” in this case, rendered as “ha ha ha ha ha”). He admits to smoking — “I was wrong” — but then claims that the other guy cursed him first, which was enough to set off this firestorm.

He says Ni you ha ha ha wo – “you laughed at me” — three times. The first time, I thought it was the worst line of Chinese I’ve ever heard.

By the third time, I was laughing. Andy Kauffman would be proud of this guy.

Some Chinese dude, falling so, so hard for the laowai’s real-life trolling, begins snapping, “China’s already strong now! China’s alreay strong now!” Meanwhile, the laowai chirps that he doesn’t want to listen.

A police officer politely informs the man that they can look at surveillance footage. “Very good,” the foreigner says. “You can watch him beat me.”

“Don’t get agitated,” the officer says, reasonably.

“Everyone ha ha ha me…”

It goes on like this for another half-minute before the video mercifully stops. The. Worst.

(H/T Reddit)

What happens when you’re a pickpocket and you get caught? Other than the loss of face, you’re liable to get the snot kicked out of you.

In Sanya, Hainan province recently, that’s not what happened. A thief reportedly tried to filch a bag, only to be surrounded and seized by a group of foreigners. But after a brief tussle, a Chinese man comes out of the pack with what looks like a satchel, then hightails it while everyone stands around, kind of confused.

No one has really explained what happened. One Weibo user, however, made a passionate, overwrought defense of Sanya in his post, calling it the “cleanest, most worthwhile, pride-inspiring piece of land,” whose reputation deserves better than such Internet smearing. Myself, I think Sanya’s overcrowded. You?

Our analysis of this tenement precinct found in Lingshui county, Hainan province begins with the seminal modernist architect Louis Sullivan’s famous phrase “form follows function.” Buildings should be designed with their purpose in mind, and so it is philosophically laid out here, in this neighborhood, that the purpose of all human life is to sprout like a blade of grass out of red dirt, sway in the wind, and die. All joy is subsumed by the reality of existing. Not one wasted word is spent. You are because you are. Accept it, for residents of Dadun Village are all engaged in the process of death or already dead.

Not even the laziest Sim City players would do this to their terrain, dragging the low-density residential zone tool over such a wide swathe, because who could even bear to know that virtual citizens live in these shelters of depression, hatcheries of mania and likely murder? (Look at the red splotches in the lower-right corner of the picture.) Alas, people live here, according to Daily Mail:

Around 3,500 villagers have started to move into 1,029 new apartments, each of which measures 253 square metres, over the last few weeks after construction of Dadun Village started in October 2010.

Pitiable people. What has the world done to you perfect snowflakes?

Welcome to your new home, workers: Chinese villagers moved into prison-like new town (Daily Mail, h/t Steve George)

Earlier this month in Hainan province, this group beating. What happened?

“Chengguan beating people, I tell ya,” cries Ms. Gao, a shop owner. “A gang of chengguan came and beat us.”

Not knowing any other things about this… eh, we believe it.

Chengguan — i.e. urban management officers — eventually left the scene, around the time the civilians called the real cops. The man who was gang-beaten was sent to the hospital.

Chinese pundit Sima Nan, known for, among other things, spewing anti-America rhetoric despite having no qualms about visiting America and getting his head stuck in a Dulles Airport escalator, was giving a lecture at Hainan University yesterday when he ran into a proverbial buzz saw  A student took the microphone, stood up, and began coolly rebuking the man on stage, who grew increasingly agitated as it became clear that many of the cheering students in the auditorium weren’t on his side. At the 2:30 mark, the student hurls his shoe onto the stage — a good 20-yard throw, it seems — drawing more applause.

As of this moment, Sima Nan has not posted about the incident on his blog. His name is now trending at No. 2 on Sina Weibo though, as Tea Leaf Nation’s Liz Carter shows us:

"Sima Nan" trending at #2 on Weibo after the shoe-throwing incident pic.twitter.com/nMpFzJ6i

— Liz Carter (@withoutdoing) October 8, 2012

By no means are the comments all supportive of the shoe-thrower. They include:

@北夷冥顽: You infringe on my freedom. Can I throw a shoe? This child is already this big, doesn’t know what is freedom, doesn’t know what is infringing on freedom…. What are his teachers, parents doing to earn a living? China’s education system built this kind of hoodlum student’s foundations?

@趋势无敌888: Too bad about the shoe, but judging by the applause, it was worthwhile.

@lul416: Those who are following this Weibo should also follow that student! I have a feeling that brother’s gonna have a bad time.

@ELiENRiEN: Sima Nan’s always been a Five Mao stupid cunt, but there’s a problem with throwing a shoe. Even if you don’t agree with someone, you shouldn’t throw a shoe at him. Wouldn’t it be better to leave and leave him with an empty stage?

@李海明Dzznn: Nice throw.

Update, 6:48 pm: Here’s a good article in WSJ that gives some context:

Arguing that Mr. Sima’s Maoist views were a threat to freedom, the student quoted Socrates as a saying the only thing he knew was nothing at all. “The little something I know is that I need freedom,” he continued. “Democracy is one way to protect freedom.”

Mr. Sima interrupted the student to ask whether he had a question, to which the student replied: “My question is, ‘can I throw my shoe?’” To the cheers of a packed auditorium, the student proceeded to do just that, lofting a sneaker toward the podium.

…Mr. Sima joins a short-list of prominent Chinese who have been on the unfortunate end of shoe-hurlings in recent years. Premier Wen Jiabao was target during a 2009 speech at the University of Cambridge. Ren Zhiqiang, one of China’s best-known property moguls and Mr. Sima’s ideological opposite, was the target of two shoes during a 2010 speech.

Following the incident, Mr. Sima took to Sina Corp’s Weibo microblogging platform, where he has more than a half-million followers. He cited the execution of Socrates in ancient Greece, democracy’s birthplace, after a trial on charges of impiety.

“Democracy can also give rise to tyranny,” read one of Mr. Sima’s posts.

Update, 7:17 pm: Here’s the translation we’ve been waiting for, via Oiwan Lam of Global Voices. The student’s remarks:

First I would like to welcome Mr. Sima Nan for coming to Hainan University. I am also a student here. I want to make a few points. First of all, I have read about Socrates, who once said, I know nothing except that I am ignorant. Secondly, I need freedom and democracy is a means to protect freedom. Thirdly, I have to say, your talk against democracy has invaded my freedom. We are not equally able to exercise our freedom of speech. The four points that you have mentioned, I cannot go against them because of political correctness. Even if your talk is not good, you can go back to your hotel. If I argue against it, certainly I will be locked up in a tiny dark room. Please don’t interrupt me. You should have the manners not to interrupt me. Here comes my question, can I throw my shoe at you? As my freedom is harmed in this country, I am here to protect my freedom.

(H/T John Kennedy)

Nude beaches are pretty uncommon in China, if only for the fact that beaches here are always packed with people, most of whom, surely, have no desire to see any choads. But a tourist in Sanya, Hainan province (the “Hawaii of the East”), Tian Ma, recently found himself looking in at a nudist resort — a cleverly disguised one — and thought what anyone would think: picture time! He stealthily took the images above and after the jump and posted them on his blog, Tian Ma Topics.

First, this sign explains about all you need to know about the beach:

Military Management Area; Naked Swimmers Prohibited

How, then, do people know this is a place to dress way down? Tian Ma writes that the beach is advertised as a treatment for “skin diseases” — like clothes. (A treatment for clothes, I mean.) The day he went, 50 to 60 people were there, naked, around noon. There were at least three foreigners, probably Russian. All were unabashed. Looks like a veritable nudist resort, to say nothing of hideaway.

Here, three more pictures (the sloppy censoring job is not mine). More pictures are on Tian Ma’s site, if that’s what you’re after. (H/T Alicia)