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Among Us is taking the world by storm, but it’s just ‘Space Werewolf’ to gamers in China
- Among Us helps US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez create one of the most-watched Twitch streams in history
- Developed by InnerSloth, the PC and mobile game follows a format that is better known among Chinese gamers as Werewolf
Among Us is one of America’s latest obsessions. But in China, there is nothing especially novel about the breakout indie video game, except for its name.
As influencers and politicians discover the hot new multiplayer game for the first time, Chinese players are reacting with a collective yawn. When hundreds of thousands of viewers on Tuesday tuned into the first Twitch stream of US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez playing Among Us, the novelty appeared lost on gamers in China.
“So Among Us is actually just Werewolf,” one Weibo user wrote.
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Police in China investigating case of 13-year-old child bride who was already pregnant and was twice sold for marriage by her father
- The girl, now 15, had baby seven months after first marriage but it was later revealed the husband is not the father, whose identity is unconfirmed
- After leaving her first husband following a quarrel, the girl was sold for marriage a second time by her father, who received cash payments each time
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Police in southeastern China are investigating a case involving a young girl who was married at the age of 13 and had a baby the following year.
The girl, surnamed Zhang, is a resident of Ganyu District in Lianyungang, Jiangsu province, and was born in April 2006, according to her identity card. In October 2019, Zhang married a 23-year-old man in the same city. In May last year, she gave birth to a baby boy, news portal Thepaper reported.
The baby’s birth certificate shows his mother was 14 years old while his father was 23 years old, the report said. The document showed that the girl was over 40 weeks pregnant when her son was born.
At the end of 2020, the girl quarrelled with her husband and left his family before returning to her father’s home.
Her husband, identified only by his surname Huang, found that Zhang married again in February. He also discovered that he is not the biological father of the boy after a DNA test.
Her father and her first husband were questioned by police at the end of April. The police station in the area where Huang’s home is located said it is looking into the case.
The girl’s father told Thepaper last week that he is “not sure of” his daughter’s age.
“I don’t know that exactly. Her residency registration document is not in my house right now,” the man, whose name was not released, was quoted as saying.
He accepted 66,000 yuan (US$10,200) as a dowry from Huang’s family before agreeing to the marriage.
Before the girl’s second marriage, her father accepted 88,000 yuan (US$13,600), the report said.
The first husband’s uncle, named Huang Gui, and Zhu Hong, the girl’s aunt, each received 3,000 yuan (US$460) for their matchmaking roles in the first marriage.
Huang Gui said Zhu told him that the girl was 16 years old in 2019.
Zhu said it is not clear to her whether the girl was truly 16 or not.
“I just wanted to find a good guy for her,” she was quoted as saying. “As her aunt, I hope she lives happily. Her own home is so poor that it has nothing to eat.”
According to China’s laws, men can get married from the age of 22, while for women the age is 20.
The age of consent in mainland China is 14 years old. China’s Criminal Law stipulates that people having sex with juveniles younger than 14 will be charged with rape.
The identity of the baby’s father is unknown.
An official from the women’s federation in Lianyungang said they will help the girl as much as they can.
“We are still verifying the facts. We have to check with the girl herself, her relatives and people in her village,” the official, whose name was not given in the report, told Thepaper.
The official said it would be difficult to find a solution as the case is so complicated.
“It’s our first time to deal with a case in which a minor had a baby. Another problem is that the baby’s guardian is not his biological father,” the official said.
“We are not sure if this man is entitled to adopt the baby. We need to check laws and regulations.”
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