Refusing the advances of a local Hefei official's son landed Zhou Yun in the hospital, without legal recourse.



Burn victim Zhou Yun sustained burns on 30 percent of her body after rejecting the son of high-ranking local officials / Youku

China's popular micro-blogging site, Sina Weibo, is one of the best windows we have into urban Chinese society. The Twitter-like service has 250 million registered users and adds 10 million a month. Because it often moves faster than censors can keep up, Weibo users can discuss stories and ideas that would otherwise be too sensitive for public consumption. It's a remarkable gauge of what China is thinking and talking about, which is why we're launching a regular feature at TheAtlantic.com, reporting on some of the stories dominating Weibo and what they mean.



Trending on Weibo today is the story of the lovesick son of two high-level local officials from China's eastern industrial city of Hefei. He's charged with burning and disfiguring a young girl who refused his romantic advances.

Unable to seek lawful retribution for their daughter's injuries, the victim's family has taken their cause to the Internet -- specifically, to Sina Weibo, where discussion of the assault has spanned nearly five million messages in a little over a day.