A 52-year-old man who is nearly blind rode his bicycle 2,520km to cheer on his son who was about to take the zhongkao , a secondary school entrance exam. Ren Zhongquan, who says he struggles to see anything beyond three metres, rode from Xiamen, a city in southeastern China’s Fujian province, to his hometown Luzhou, in Sichuan province in the southwest. Ren was fulfilling a promise to his son that he made when he left for work in Xiamen over a year ago. He said he would be there to support his son during the zhongkao , which is a test taken by students in mainland China after they complete their compulsory education at around the age of 14. Ren said he told his son: “You study well and pay attention to the teacher in class. Dad will return from Xiamen to support you.” However, Ren’s son disagreed with his father’s idea to cycle back home , worrying that he would become exhausted and not be able to finish the journey. Ren chose to hit the road on April 14, despite his wife’s objection. He also ignored his son’s concerns saying: “If I do not keep my promise, then he will only remember that his father lied.” It was not an easy journey. Ren recalled that he had to ride for over 20km alongside a nearly 100-metre-high cliff during one of the most treacherous sections. Ren arrived home on May 21 – two days earlier than planned – and said his son had grown taller than him during his year-and-a-half away. Man saves grandson with barehanded punch A grandfather in northeast China punched through a car window with his bare fist to save his young grandson, who was trapped inside a locked car. In the video, which has since gone viral, the grandfather punches the window once and then again to break the glass before pulling the boy out through the broken back seat window. The May 22 incident happened in Jiamusi, a city in northern China’s Heilongjiang province, after the boy was trapped in the car because the adults had forgotten about him and were inside their house talking. The grandfather had heard the child calling for help and went into action, said the boy’s mother surnamed Cai in an interview with Wutong Video, a mainland Chinese news platform. “When my father heard him crying and calling for help, he smashed the car window with his bare hand and pulled him out,” she said. It takes a village to host a wedding It is becoming more common in China for young people who have moved to cities to return to their home villages to host their weddings. However, they have added a twist and foregone local traditions to design the “wedding of their dreams”, which sometimes involve the entire village. “At first, I did not want to do the ceremony because I do not enjoy the traditions of a village wedding ceremony,” said Vivi, a user on Xiaohongshu, a social media and e-commerce platform. “However, because I had no choice, I decided to lean into it and design a ceremony that I liked,” she said. Vivi, from Jinan, a city in eastern China’s Shandong province, said she decided to get almost everyone on board to organise and design the ceremony, making for a wedding the entire village would remember. “People in the village keep telling us that our wedding was especially meaningful,” Vivi said. “Because everyone was involved, this wedding belonged to our entire family.”