

One of the most viral and controversial stories of the month in China, starring a woman from a well-off Shanghai family dumping her boyfriend from rural Jiangxi after seeing the humble dishes offered by his family for CNY dinner has turned out to be completely fake.

As it turns out, the woman who posted the story wasn’t even from Shanghai and had never been to Jiangxi. The entire story was fabricated by a woman, identified as Xu, who decided to post it online because she was home alone during Spring Festival. Bitter, much?

In the original story, Xu explained how she was from a respectable Shanghai family and had been dating a man from a village in Jiangxi province. Apparently, she believed the relationship would work out despite the class differences, but after actually experiencing country life and the hardships associated with it, she had second thoughts. The final straw was the humble dishes served by her boyfriend’s family at Chinese New Year dinner, the one year relationship came to a sudden end and the story ends there, or so we thought.

While the topic was hotly debated online with some agreeing with the woman’s decision and other just calling her a “bitch,” netizens were also quick to become suspicious of the story. They discovered curious discrepancies in travel time and found that the photo of the “humble” food had actually came from another user.

The woman’s motives were questioned, with some thinking Xu was just working trying to promote herself or some unknown product; however, on Sunday it was revealed that the entire story had been a lie. She had simply made it up of boredom and bitterness.



As one would guess, netizens are still angry, but now for a different reason, as many users on Weibo have now directed their unbridled angry toward the fakery:

“This faker needs to be punished severely, ripping apart village and country, wasting everyone’s time!” one user fumed.

“Your world is too boring, relying on the internet to while the time away,” wrote another.

But another user was quick to point out the significance of such a story causing such heated discussion:

“Actually, whether the story is true or not is no longer important. This story could turn into an unending hot topic, poking fun at society’s problems, the disparity between rich and poor, regional disparity, the social hierarchy, there are too many points, it’s sufficient to say that our society has a lot of problems, running into some points will lead to uproar, even if this point is fake.”

It seems the lesson to take from this would be to never underestimate the internet, because the truth always, always gets out. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

By Kitty Lai

[Images via CCTV]

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