Last Thursday morning, 57-year-old Xiao Yunzhi was taking a stroll in his home town of Guangyuan, Sichuan province, when his head started feeling strangely heavy.
But it was only when the local tobacconist stared at him, slack-jawed, and pointed to the top of his skull that he realised that something was amiss.
As Mr Xiao was passing underneath a high-rise apartment block, a five-inch kitchen knife had fallen from an eighth-floor balcony, embedding itself up its hilt in the left side of his head, but without piercing his skull.
As soon as the problem had been pointed out, pain washed over Mr Xiao and he sat down in the street, while someone called an ambulance.
"It was terrifying to see," said his younger sister, who only identified herself as Miss Xiao. "The knife handle was sticking out of the top."
On Monday, Mr Xiao was still being treated in his local intensive care unit, where the knife has now been pulled out.
"He is stable but is not fully out of danger yet," his sister said. "He cannot use the phone yet in case it has an effect on his condition."
The owner of the knife, a man named only as Mr Wu, said he had left the knife in a flowerpot on the balcony, never thinking that it might drop.
"They told the police that the wind must have blown it off. They have already come to visit my brother in the hospital and have paid some of his medical bills," Miss Xiao said. "I only hope he can get better soon," she added.
In 2011, doctors removed a rusty four-inch blade from the jaw of another Chinese man, 37-year-old Li Fuyan, who had been carrying it around for four years since being stabbed during a robbery.
Last year, meanwhile, a man in Yanji, Jilin province, arrived at hospital with a ten-inch knife sticking out the side of his head.
Asked what had happened, he merely said: "It is like this: I was playing a silly game with my friend and it went wrong. It could have happened to anybody."
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