People in China are losing their goddamned minds. Most recently, the head of a nursery school put rat poison in a couple of yogurt drinks given to children in order to damage the reputation of their rival. What the fuck?? Granted, grandmothers should know better than to pick up mysteriously left bags and feed the contents of said bags to children, but since when is poisoning children an acceptable method of beating the competition? Those children died.

And that's just one of many stories about poisoning.

Many in China have blamed the latest case on the vicious competition between nursery schools, which has led to owners employing increasingly aggressive tactics to win pupils.

But there have also been a number of chilling poisonings in the country in the past, often linked to disputes. In a notorious incident in 2002, two teachers and 70 children at a nursery in Guangdong became seriously ill after the head of a rival institution blamed it for the failure of his business and put rat poison into the table salt. The man, Huang Hu, was later executed.

The following year, 38 people died and hundreds were made ill after a snack-shop owner poisoned a competitor's food. Another 10 were killed when a widow spiked the meal at her husband's funeral over a family dispute. In a third case, a man sought revenge against his married lover as their relationship turned sour by poisoning her children's snacks. One of the children, and a classmate with whom he shared the food, died; 25 other pupils were taken ill.

...

Two years later a nursery pupil in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region died and 20 others were admitted to hospital in similar circumstances.

And in 2011 a sex shop owner in Hebei province attacked a competitor by leaving a tetramine-tainted snack in his store. His rival was taken seriously ill and the suspect tried to mislead detectives by leaving out other poisoned food, causing the deaths of three boys aged between two and 17.

What happened to the good old fashioned method of ruining your competitor by hiring thugs to trash their business? And why is nursery school such a cutthroat industry?

Is poisoning equally prevalent in any other country over the last decade, and we just haven't heard about it? Mebbe there's so much lead in the air pollution in China that people are going crazy.