DAVID ADAMS provides a round-up of some stories on the odder side of life…
• No meal is complete without the condiments and a painting of the Last Supper hanging on the walls of a church near Lafeyette in the US state of Louisiana seems to confirm that sentiment – the picture includes a depiction of a small bottle of what appears to be Tabasco hot sauce. The discovery was made recently on a painting hanging in the St Joseph Catholic Church in Parks. Church pastor Nicholas DuPré told USA Today that he’d been told about the red and green-branded bottle by the previous pastor when he arrived at the church in 2019. But it wasn’t until he received a letter from a representative of McIlhenny Co, the company that produces the sauce, asking whether the urban myth was true that he actually looked and confirmed it was. Two days later a special large commemorative bottle arrived. “I highly advise looking for hidden bottles of Tabasco sauce in whatever art is hanging in your Church,” DuPré said in a post on Facebook. The inclusion of the hot sauce in the painting, it turns out, was planned. The church’s former pastor, Fr Bryce Sibley, told news channel KATC that when he commissioned artist Christie Hebert Hollier to create the painting in the mid-2000s, he had the artist include the bottle next to St Peter. “[I] I thought people knew it was there but, 15 years later, it kind of explodes and people are sort of like, ‘How did it get there?’”
A man walks past a KFC restaurant after the city banned dine-in services amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Beijing, China, on 30th May. PICTURE: Reuters/Carlos Garcia Rawlins.
• A headache-prone Pokemon character given away in KFC children’s meals has become China’s most wanted toy, selling for up to $US200, as people seek ways to express their frustrations over COVID-19 lockdowns. KFC began handing out Psyduck in China on 21st May, ahead of a promotion for Children’s Day on 1st June, and the toy has become a focal point for social media users angered by weeks of lockdown. One video, showing the character, known as Koduck in Japan, holding a sign saying “I don’t want to take COVID testing” in one wing, and “I want to go out for fun” in the other, has been played for more than 13,000 times on video platform Bilibili. On another social media platform Xiaohongshu, a clipping of the figure holding up stickers reading “health code” and “travel history code” was liked by nearly 10,000 viewers. Developed by Nintendo 25 years ago, KFC stocks of meals containing Psyduck, whose psychic powers get stronger as his headaches get worse, ran out within two days of the launch. Soon afterwards, the models appeared on second-hand sites, with some priced as high as 1,300 yuan ($US195.52), local media said. Asked for comment, KFC, whose parent is Yum China, referred to a statement it published last week that it did not support reselling at inflated prices.
An aerial view of the Bach Long glass bridge at Moc Chau district in Son La province, Vietnam, on 28th May. Picture taken with a drone. PICTURE: Reuters/Minh Nguyen.
• A mountain resort in Vietnam has opened a bridge with a bottom made of glass over a gorge 150 metres below to attract thrill-seeking tourists, the third such bridge in the South-East Asian country. The Bach Long suspension bridge, which translates as “White Dragon”, is in Son La province, north-west of the capital, Hanoi, and bordering Laos. The reinforced glass used for the bridge has three layers, each 40mm thick, and can hold up to 450 people at a time, according to a statement from the facility’s owner. The bridge is 290 metres long between two peaks on either side of a gorge, plus a 342-metre pathway on the cliffside. Guinness World Records lists a 562-metre glass-bottomed bridge in Qingyuan, in China’s Guangdong province, as the world’s longest. “The engineering required to build that into the side of a cliff but maintain all the features of nature, the greenery, the rocks, it’s been an amazing project,” said Glen Pollard, a representative of Guinness World Record, who attended the opening ceremony. The World Record Association, also a record-certifying body, has listed the two-part Vietnamese bridge as the world’s longest at 632 metres. A visitor at the opening ceremony said he quickly overcame initial nerves when walking on the bridge. “At first it makes you panic, but then if you walked over around 10 glass panels, that feeling is gone,” said Tran Xuan Tinh, 72.
– MINH NGUYEN and THINH NGUYEN
