'Lifetime Express' Train Helps China's Poor (Photo : Getty Images)
Netizens, whether in China or other parts of the world, are often the victims of hoax news makers who create fake stories to get clicks. One such story involved a rich girl-poor boy plot that became viral on the Internet.
However, Jxnew.com.cn exposed on Sunday that the article was a hoax. The fake article involved a rich 28-year-old Shanghai woman who separated from her poor boyfriend after she ate Spring Festival meal at his family’s house in a small village in Jiangxi Province.
Besides splitting from him, she shared that she could not stomach the poor man’s Lunar New Year’s fare of her boyfriend’s family. The travel to Jiangxi itself was difficult, particularly having to ride a tractor along a rural road to reach his house where the meal was only six dishes and rice on an old wooden table.
The hoax story led to heated debates of Chinese cyberspace on the rich girl-poor boy relationship which is a fodder used in a lot of movies and TV dramas.
But an officer from Shanghai’s cyberspace regulator said the story was written by a mother named Xu who did not live in the province or have been to Jiangxi. The article was her way of getting back at her husband with whom she had a quarrel over whose family they would go to for the Spring Festival.
The woman’s behavior was called an abuse of the Internet by Li Yuxiao, head of the Internet Management Law Research Center of Beijing University. However, Zhu Wei, deputy director of the Communication Law Center of China University of Political Science and Law, pointed out that the Internet has a way of self-purification done through online discussion which eventually reveal fake news.
Snopes.com, a website dedicated to exposing hoax news, cited Russia and China as favorite settings for urban legends spread on the Internet. One classic example is the story of the Chinese man who allegedly sued his wife after he found out when they had ugly kids since she was really ugly but only had plastic surgery.
