Funny: Bar owner, who erected giant statue of Buddhas having sex is ordered to take it down

A bar owner in China who erected a statue of two Buddhas locked in a passionate embrace has been ordered to take it down after local officials deemed it too sexy for public display.

The four-metre high effigy is the centrepiece of Yanyu pub - meaning 'to have a fling' in Chinese - in Lijiang city and features a female Buddha sitting on the lap of a male Buddha in the lotus position.

Lijiang, in southwestern Yunnan Province, is one of the most popular tourist cities in China and is famed as the region's romantic heartland where thousands flock each year in the hope of finding love.But the sculpture has come under fire from local officials and internet trolls who claim it blasphemes the religion's deities and insults Chinese heritage.

Taiwanese HTC at the risk of being taken over

Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC may become an acquisition target after making an operating profit of just NT$43m (£0.9m) in the quarter to March on revenues down 37% year on year to NT$42.8bn (£950m) as manufacturing problems hit its hopes of a comeback.

A shortage of cameras for its new flagship HTC One phone meant that by the end of the quarter it launched in only three countries, rather than the 80 it had aimed for – and also means that during the current quarter it will be struggling for attention with Samsung's new Galaxy S4, due to go on sale in the next few weeks.

Some analysts think the company could become an acquisition target as its cashflow suffers and the market polarises towards expensive phones from Apple and Samsung, and cheaper Chinese ones.The quarterly figures fell short of HTC's own modest forecasts made in February, when it said it expected revenues of between NT$50bn and NT$60bn. Those would have been substantially down on the year-ago figures.

Chinese student staged her own funeral because she wanted to ‘enjoy it’

Some people are said to be so poor at punctuality that they’d be late for their own funeral – but not Chinese student Zeng Jia, who staged her own service because she wanted to be alive so she could ‘enjoy it’.

The 22-year-old forked out a princely sum for the coffin alone, decorating it with row after row of flowers.She also paid for a photographer and a team of make-up artists to make her appear more ‘dead’ as she lay in the casket with her favourite doll on her chest.

After an hour lying in state as mourners eulogised about her, surrounded by origami doves hung from the ceiling, Zeng, from Wuhan in Hubei province, arose to join the mourners at her wake.

‘It struck me that people spend all that time and effort on someone when they are gone and they cannot appreciate it,’ she said.‘I wanted to see what people would think of me so I decided to hold my funeral while I could enjoy it.

‘Experiencing death has made me appreciate life more keenly.‘I feel so good living after coming out of the coffin.’Zeng apparently came up with the idea after attending her grandfather’s funeral recently and invited friends and family to witness her own.

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