HONG KONG | Consumer culture gone wild: Boar visits mall

A wild boar is seen on top of a display rack at a children’s clothing store

Talk about a consumer culture gone wild. A Hong Kong shopping mall received a visit from a ham-fisted customer on Sunday when a wild boar wandered in and got trapped inside a children’s clothing store. Video showed the boar, which had apparently climbed up a ladder in the shop’s back room, punching a hole through the showroom’s false ceiling with a hoof. News reports said the animal was a 25-kilogram, meter-long juvenile female. A crowd of shoppers, watching from behind a line of police, squealed in amazement as the boar clambered down onto the top of display case, jumped to the floor and skittered around the shop, knocking over mannequins and signs. The boar was eventually tranquilized by a veterinarian and taken to an animal rehab center, the South China Morning Post reported. Wild boars are common in Hong Kong, where they are often found roaming the forested hills of the city.

Fugitive arrested after posting holiday selfies

Chinese police have captured a fugitive who revealed his whareabouts by posting holiday selfies on social media. The 27-year-old man surnamed Qin went into hiding last year after reputedly being hired as a hitman and seriously injuring his target, a villager in central China’s Henan Province. But on May 3, the last day of the May Day holiday, Qin emerged on the popular messaging and photo-sharing service WeChat with selfies taken on Wudang Mountain in Hubei Province, which neighbors Henan to the south. The photos were forwarded by an unwitting friend of Qin’s and got the attention of the police. Wudang Mountain police said yesterday that they quickly located Qin by identifying the photos’ backdrops and made the arrest on May 5. According to the police, Qin told them that he had joined a group of friends on the mountain tour and, believing that “the most dangerous place is the safest”, even registered in a luxury hotel right beside the police station. He posted the selfies as the trip made him complacent about his fugitive status, he said.