The Chinese Weibo-sphere has been alight with news of a woman whose stomach exploded and caught fire after some intense China-quality partying.
According to reports from Xinhua and others, a 58-year-old Jiangsu province woman ate and drank to such excess that her stomach “exploded,” causing her to be rushed to surgery where doctors had to operate in order to remove it.
During the surgery gas emissions from her abdomen actually ignited in the operating theatre. The woman’s final prognosis is not stated, although burns apparently do not figure amongst her injuries.
Doctors explain this otherwise incredible tale reasonably enough – the lady having drunk lots of beer, when surgeons opened her up to operate the vapours were ignited by an electical scalpel they were using.
Alarmingly, such cases may be less vanishingly rare than might be hoped – the same reports point out that “one or two” similar cases occur annually in the provincial capital Nanjing.
Online there has been the usual incredulity at the quality of Chinese cuisine:
“Chinese…”
“What the…”
“What kind of world is China?”
“And they say this happens several times a year in Nanjing alone…”
“What are they eating down there!?”
“Is that even possible?”
“Alcohol is flammable, and if compressed things will burst.”
“Some unbelievable things explode in China!”
“My stomach hurts just hearing about this.”
“I doubt this was just normal food… probably had some bad stuff in it. You don’t know what kind of stuff is getting into their oil or beer. It’s called China quality for a reason.”
“All that beer she drank probably wasn’t just ordinary beer either.”
“What on earth did they put in it, gasoline?”
“The human body is the same everywhere so how does all this stuff happen only in China?”
“Hint: made in China.”
“I thought I was used to all the China explosion stories but this is just too much!”
“Just wait until the whole country explodes…”
TATATATATATATATTATATA
TATATATATATATATATA
Word of advice to Chinese doctors: If you are operating on someone for excessive intestinal gas, don’t use an electrical scalpel. Duh!
I bet there’s a handful of cases exactly like this happening around the world, considering that the gluttonous thing she did to get herself on the operating table doesn’t sound like a rare thing to do by quite a few humans, unfortunately. But most countries probably don’t make news of it when it happens… it’s something you might more likely see in an “World’s studpidest people” or “most amazing deaths” kind of TV show, like 1000 ways to die.
Even the women in China explode. To add insult to injury, with more injury, they ignite.