Viral Week is our weekly round-up of the weekend’s trending memes, humor, rumor, gossip, and everything else Chinese netizens are chatting about.

This week, Dior nods to Chinese patriotism, museum recalls ancient relics, students show page-turning prowess, and chickens cross the road.

Dior won’t die

In an effort to rectify negative PR after using a map of China that excluded Taiwan, Dior played the patriotic song “I Love My Country” (《我爱我的祖国》) at the end of its Shanghai gala, drawing a netizen’s comment: “Dior’s will to survive is quite strong.”

Mysteries at the museum

Chongqing University closed its newly-opened museum for investigation after a visitor pointed out in a WeChat article that many relics on display might be counterfeit.

Breezy reading

An institution promising to teach students to read 100,000 words within minutes hosted a speed-reading competition in Beijing. A skeptical parent commented, “Ask children how they feel flipping rapidly through the books, and they say: ‘The breeze is cool.'”

Mercurial mothers of Xuzhou

One Xuzhou mother called the police on her 12-year-old son’s unwillingness to do homework; another Xuzhou mother forced her third-grader out of the car to walk six kilometers home for his low grades.

Chicks cross the road

Crates containing hundreds of baby chicks fell from a freight truck in Ningxia, turning the asphalt into a commotion of feathers and blood as onlookers dashed to collect them before they became roadkill.

Poisonous porridge

The mother of a kindergartener poisoned by a school lunch accused local officials of urging to end her comatose child’s medical treatment so that his autopsy could be used in the investigation. Officials suspect a teacher at the Henan elementary school laced the children’s porridge with sodium nitrate, from which 22 other students have recovered since March.

Mobile myopia

An optometrist diagnosed a 15-year-old boy in Dongguan with nearsightedness of 2400 degrees, allegedly after years of mobile video game addiction and refusing to wear glasses for fear of ridicule at school.

Snakes on a hill

Jingxing county’s forestry department in Henan province responded to panicked calls that around 300 snakes were released just one kilometer from a village; first responders caught a number and hope that winter will wipe out the rest.

Ignobled Nobel

Swedish sinologist Ma Yueran, known for translating Chinese classics like Journey to the West as well as modern writers like Lu Xun, passed away at age 95, leaving the Nobel Prize for Literature without a single judge who can read Chinese.

Cover image from VCG