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A 41-year-old Dutch man was hospitalized after recently spending 10 days at an airport in China’s Hunan Province waiting for his online girlfriend, according to multiple reports.

Alexander Cirk flew from his native Holland to China to meet a 26-year-old woman about two months after the pair struck up a relationship through an app, the BBC reported.

Cirk believed his internet girlfriend, who was identified only by her surname of Zhang, was going to meet him at Changsha Airport. But when he arrived, she wasn’t there to meet him as promised, CCTV reported.

Zhang also didn’t show up over the next 10 days, which was how long the love-struck man spent at the airport before he was taken to a local hospital.

A series of photos taken over a period of days circulated online showed Cirk reclining in an airport chair, and later looking exhausted and frail.

Zhang told a Hunan television station that she thought it was a joke, saying they had agreed to wait a year before meeting in person, according to CCTV.

“We had advanced our romantic relationship but later he seemed a little callous toward me,” she said, according to a post on the network’s Facebook page. “One day he sent me a photo of air tickets abruptly, and I thought it was a joke. He didn’t contact me later.”

Zhang told CCTV that she was in another city having cosmetic surgery at the time, and that she didn’t see Cirk’s messages when he arrived in China.

Still, she indicated she was interested in continuing the relationship and would meet him after she recovered from the surgery, the station reported.

The man’s story the airport took over local news and social media, with some expressing sympathy for him and others decrying the whole thing as “weird,” according to CCTV.

Cirk apparently returned home Monday, purchasing a return ticket to the Netherlands, the station reported.

A version of this story originally appeared on Newser: Man Spends 10 Days in Airport Waiting for His Internet Girlfriend

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