Compiled by BENJAMIN LEE and C. ARUNO
A CONTROVERSIAL tourism service, which hires muscular men to carry women up the sacred Mount Emei, has sparked heated debate in China.
Since October 2024, a tour guide has been recruiting men who are well-built, physically strong and equipped with survival skills and basic first-aid knowledge for the service, China Press reported.
Over the past year, his team has assisted more than 1,000 tourists, mostly women, in making the climb.
The clients are carried on the back or in the arms of the porters. Each trip costs 798 yuan (RM472).
The service has drawn criticism online, with some questioning its morality and speculating that women simply wanted to be carried by good-looking men.
Mount Emei, located in Sichuan province, is the highest of China’s Four Sacred Buddhist Mountains.
> The daily also reported that South Korean DJ Koo Jun-yup spent Chinese Valentine’s Day at the grave of his late wife, Taiwanese actress Barbie Hsu.
The 55-year-old was spotted arriving at Chin Pao San cemetery in New Taipei, Taiwan, on Aug 29.
He brought offerings of his wife’s favourite food – black coffee, bread and seaweed soup.
Chinese Valentine’s Day, also known as the Qixi Festival, celebrates the annual meeting of the cowherd Niulang and the fairy Zhinu in Chinese mythology.
According to legend, the lovers, who are separated by the Jade Emperor, are reunited once a year when magpies form a bridge across the Milky Way.
The festival falls on the seventh day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar.
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.
