Rats scare for customers at hotpot restaurant

Compiled by ARFA YUNUS AND C.ARUNO

TWO customers had an extraordinary dining experience at a hotpot restaurant in China when several rats fell from the ceiling above them, China Press reported.In a closed-circuit television clip which went viral on the Internet, the rats dropped and landed on one of the diners, who immediately jumped up from his seat in shock.

The male customer, whose scalp was scratched by the rat, sought treatment at a hospital immediately.

Internet users expressed shock over the incident that took place at a mall in Yiwu city of Zhejiang province on Dec 8.

“I now have post-traumatic stress order just at the thought of going out for meals,” one of them wrote.

> Major Chinese dailies reported that the word “gui” (expensive) has been voted as the Chinese Word of the Year 2023 in Malaysia.

The other characters in the selection include an (peaceful), wen (stability), mi (rice), que (shortage), zha (fraud), luan (chaos) and nan (difficult).

Gui received 32.64% of the 5,423 votes.

Huazong president Tan Sri Goh Tian Chuan said the word “gui” has affected most of the people in all levels of the society.

“The people have to meticulously plan their daily expenses now,” he said.

The Chinese Word of the Year in 2022, 2021 and 2020 were zhang (inflation), pan (hope) and yi (pandemic) respectively.

> Sin Chew Daily reported that Taiwanese singer Rainie Yang has apologised over a remark she made at her recent concert in Zhengzhou city of China’s Henan province.

The 39-year-old star was reported as saying that the people from Henan loved to lie.

“I want to apologise for the offensive and ill-mannered joke I made. I am sorry,” she wrote on Weibo.

It was reported that while Yang was performing, the LCD projector caught a couple kissing, which had led to the crowd cheering.

Yang, who did not see it, said she wished to know who were kissing and asked the couple to wave their glow sticks, but all the other concert-goers did it too.

She then went on to say, “People from Henan can’t be like this. You already have a reputation, you know. Like to lie to people.”

Henan people were offended by the statement and complained to the provincial culture and tourism department.

The above articles are compiled from the vernacular newspapers (Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and Tamil dailies). As such, stories are grouped according to the respective language/medium. Where a paragraph begins with a >, it denotes a separate news item.