14. Novelty buildings

Bizarre designs of structures continue to dominate in China

This is the “Objectecture” in Tianze Hotel in Hebei. It is the 10-storey high effigies of Fu, Lu, and Shou—the Chinese gods of good fortune, prosperity, longevity. China is known to build enormous, carved Buddha into mountainsides and a hotel entrepreneur wanted to keep this tradition by establishing this trio of habitable gods in the middle of Hebei, east of Beijing. Shou, the one with the white beard, welcomes and houses the hotel’s best suite. China is known for unconventional architecture such as a space caterpillar egg; a cluster of space eggs; a phallic skyscraper; a gigantic bottle representing a liquor company; and a building-size homage to the phone handset.

15. Exotic food choices

A Wal-Mart in China sells crocodiles, sharks, and other exotic animal parts.

These are clearly crocodiles in the frozen meat section of a Wal-Mart in China. Typically, we feel at home when we visit a Wal-Mart store to buy common goods, but this Wal-Mart in China offers the not-so-common finds you may not actually want to binge on. According to Buzzfeed, China accounts for 10% of Wal-Mart’s international sales due to their diverse and exotic, if not eccentric, food choices such as Snickers with batteries, live frogs, black chicken, turtles, whale sharks and assorted reptiles. It seems that in China, everything that crawls and creeps is edible to the Chinese. While they may sound disgusting, they’re totally common in China.