People try to keep warm their hands by a heater as they wait for their seats outside a restaurant at an outdoor shopping mall in Beijing, Saturday, December 23, 2023. A cold wave began earlier in the week bringing extensive snowfall and freezing temperatures across China. (Photo by Andy Wong/AP Photo)

Ratko Mladic makes his first appearance at the International Criminal Tribunal on June 3, 2011 in The Hague, Netherlands. Ex-Bosnian Serb army leader Ratko Mladic will make his first appearance at The Hague war crimes tribunal after being declared fit to stand trial. Mladic was arrested a week ago after going into hiding for the past 16 years and is charged with atrocities committed during the Bosnian war. (Photo Serge Ligtenberg/Getty Images )

Low economic conditions in China’s urban areas have sparked an increase of beggars faking disabilities in an attempt to gain more money. Cities like Shanghai and Hong Kong are littered with naive tourists who are more than willing to hand over a few yen to anyone appearing to be handicapped in anyway.

An instructor (C) adjusts the posture of students of flight attendant major during a training session at Anhui Foreign Languages University, in Hefei, Anhui province, China, May 25, 2015. (Photo by Reuters/China Daily)

Employees wear "No-Face" masks during working hours at a service company in Handan, Hebei Province of China. As a service company, staff must smile to customers every day. On “No-Face Day”, staff wore masks to hide their facial expressions and allow them to relax. No-Face is a character in the 2001 animated movie “Spirited Away”, a silent masked creature who has no facial expressions.

It’s a tradition that dates back hundreds of years, where two stallions fight over a female to ring the Chinese new year. And when it’s the Year of the Horse, the fights are considered to be even more significant. They’re held in small villages across southern China and have been condemned by animal rights groups, including Hong-Kong based Animals Asia. But those who participate in the events defend the fights and insist they take care of the animals.

Growing cities, overuse of fertilizers and factory wastewater have degraded China's water supplies to the extent that half the nation's rivers and lakes are severely polluted. China aims to spend $850 billion to improve filthy water supplies over the next decade, but even such huge outlays may do little to reverse damage caused by decades of pollution and overuse in Beijing's push for rapid economic growth. Photo: Fishermen row a boat in the algae-filled Chaohu Lake in Hefei, Anhui province, June 19, 2009. (Photo by Jianan Yu/Reuters)

Chinese hostesses, who serve the delegates of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and National People's Congress, have souvenir photos taken in front of the Great Hall of the People during sessions of the CPPCC and NPC held in Beijing, China Tuesday, March 4, 2014. (Photo by Andy Wong/AP Photo)