Viral Week is our weekly round-up of the weekend’s trending memes, humor, rumor, and gossip. For the landmark 200th episode, we’ve changed up the format, but not our aim to bring you the best of everything else Chinese netizens are chatting about

This week, Maotai chief lands in hot (fire)water, and so do fraudsters behind Henan’s “water-car.” There’s a serial school bully, a preschooler dogged by his name, and mysterious white foam in Xi’an. So without further ado…

War of words

After exchanging barbs on Twitter, Fox Business host Trish Regan and CGTN’s Liu Xin have agreed to hold a live debate about the Sino-US trade war on Thursday night.

Water car hosed

Officials in Nanyang, Henan province, have invested over 8 billion RMB into “the world’s first water-powered car,” a project violating the rules of physics and chemistry. The company behind the hoax has been put on a watchlist by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

Snow in May?

Mysterious smelly white foam seeped out of sewers and covered a major road in Xi’an on Tuesday. The substance is suspected to be a chemical detergent, and authorities are still investigating its cause.

Liquor corruption

Yang Renguo, chairman of China’s iconic Kweichow Moutai liquor company, has been arrested for accepting an “extremely huge amount of bribes,” according to the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.

Name-calling

A 5-year-old from Hebei province came crying to the police station to request a name change: Kids have been making fun of his uncommon surname, 苟 (Gǒu), which is a homophone for “dog.”

Serial scalawag

A Shenzhen fourth-grader has reportedly beaten 45 out of the 47 students in his class since the first grade, leading other parents to petition for the boy’s expulsion.

Braking bad

Netizens are hailing a heroic man who drove up to a moving truck in Wenzhou, Zhejiang, and jumped inside to pull on a hand-brake that had malfunctioned.

Boarish behavior

A wild boar charged into a factory canteen in Jiaxing, Zhejiang province, causing workers to flee their meal in the pandemonium.

Cover photo from VCG