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Supposed to help with rebirth, or at least a long life, what looked remarkably like a Buddhist act of faith called “releasing lives to freedom” went horribly wrong on the banks of the Yellow River this week when fishermen waited downstream with nets to “wildly” snap up a large amount of the released carp , Chinese media reported.

In “fangsheng,” or “release life,” believers take animals from captivity and release them into the natural environment. According to the Chinese intellectual Lin Yutang, turtles are released to pray for longevity and fish for enlightenment, often into rivers or lakes. Birds are released into the air. Reports said the act was to “restock” the river with carp.

Either way, the saved lives, or stock, are not supposed to be immediately captured by other people opportunistically waiting nearby. But that is what reportedly happened in Jinan on Wednesday, when a group of about 20 people released 800 carp weighing a total of about 2,200 pounds, only for the carp to swim toward a group of more than 50 men waiting 100 yards downstream, who threw nets into the water to scoop them up, china.org.cn said.

Photographs carried by major news outlets, including CNTV, the online section of CCTV, the state-run broadcaster, show two separate groups of people on the banks of the broad Yellow River near Jinan, in Shandong Province. Both had brought trucks — the releasers, apparently, to transport the fish to freedom, and the catchers, to carry them back to captivity.

Online, many Chinese were appalled at the failure of the venture.

“Our people are like that,” wrote a person with the online name Suorizhao mingdengshi, the single most popular comment on the website of Phoenix TV, with more than 2,500 people recommending it.

Others saw a lack of faith among Chinese as the cause of the debacle. “Having no faith is really scary,” wrote ccaatt33, in a comment recommended by more than 2,100 people. A similar comment by yunyun_1031, “A people without faith is really scary,” got 1,335 approvals.

It wasn’t clear from the reports how many carp were caught. Reached by telephone, the Shandong Province Buddhist Association declined to comment and the reports did not carry any comment from local government.