The Vienna Vegetable Orchestra makes unique organic music, using instruments made from vegetables.

Pepper trumpets, leek violins, celery bongos, cucumberphones, pumpkin drums – these are just a handful of instruments used by the Vienna Vegetable Orchestra to entertain audiences everywhere, with their organic music. This one-of-a-kind music group was born when its current members were students. At first they started playing vegetable instruments, as a joke, but quickly realized they might be on to something, and took their work more seriously.

The dozen members of the Vienna Vegetable Orchestra carve their instruments themselves, using whatever vegetables are available, at the location of their performance. After 12 years of making vegetable music, the group has learned what type of vegetables sound better in every country, judging by a range of factors, such as temperature and water content.

The Vienna Vegetable Orchestra needs 70 kilograms of fresh vegetables for every concert, and three hours to carve the instruments they use. But their music wouldn’t exist without modern technological equipment, like amplifiers or sophisticated microphones. Combined with the squeaking of cucumbers, crackling of cabbage leaves and banging of aubergines, they create a hypnotic type of music, described as something between techno music and whale songs.

A 58-year-old Chinese man has had to undergo surgery to remove 85cm of skipping rope from his bladder.

The rope became lodged after migrant worker Zhao Chenglin, 58, from Chongqing, inserted the skipping rope into his penis as part of a bizarre sex act.

Admitting it was the “stupidest thing in the world”, Chenglin brought the skipping rope from a local store before “locking myself into my three square metre shelter to enjoy it.”

Zhao inserted the whole 85cm plastic hollow rope into his urethra but when he tried to pull it out he found that it had become stuck.

He comments: “It was so painful that I tossed and turned on the ground.”

Zhao borrowed money in order to go to hospital where a scan revealed that the rope had become twisted into a ball and was now stuck in his bladder.

He was told that the only way to remove it was by surgery, which was something he couldn’t afford.

So Chenglin lived with the problem for the next two months, with the pain it caused making it difficult for him to work.

“For every step I walked the rope was poking my insides. It was very painful,” he said.

According to Chenglin he never dared drink water or other liquids because: “Each time urinating would kill me. Sometimes blood would come out.”

His secret soon spread amongst his porter friends, who tried their best to help him.

“If we had an easy errand we would give it to him, and since he has no income we often invited him for a meal,” said Liu Changfa, another porter.

Chenglin’s situation did not change until several months later when kind-hearted Liu called Chongqing Honglou Hospital, a professional bladder disease hospital, begging for help.

The hospital dispatched an ambulance and Chenglin was admitted the same day.

“We can cure his problem. We have the responsibility of helping each one, no matter how humble their life is,” said Xu Changzheng, general manager of the hospital.

The hospital successfully operated on Chenglin and removed the skipping rope from his bladder.