The discovery of a double-headed sex toy, which was mistaken for a mystical rare fungus, brought national notoriety to a Chinese village and TV program this week.
Villagers from Liucunbu, a rural community outside western Chinese city of Xi’an, came across the sex toy while drilling a new well shaft.
Unable to identify the flexible, fungi-like object, perplexed residents alerted the local news station, which immediately sent reporter Yunfeng Ye to the scene.
In her coverage of the finding, broadcast last on Sunday on the station’s investigative journalism program Xi’an Up Close, Ye thoroughly probed different aspects of the discovery, interviewing locals and inserting her own research on the alleged mushroom.
Despite Ye’s earnest reporting, her and the villagers’ obliviousness of the object’s real identity has now lent itself to national amusement.
The report opens with Ye announcing the discovery of the mysterious object, the likes of which 'not even an 80-year-old local man has seen'.
Villagers are seen crouching around the object, floating innocently in a water-filled bucket.
“It has an eye and a nose, but we don’t know what it is,” ABC News quoted a man who was among the drillers who discovered the sex toy, as saying.
Describing the object’s qualities in explicit detail, Ye and the villager determine that it is a type of lingzhi, a shelf fungus of the Ganoderma lucidum species, which according to legend has the rare ability to give immortality.
Asserting that the mushroom is rarely seen because it grows underground, she said, “When the Emperor Qin Shi Huang [the First emperor of China] was on the hunt for the secret to longevity, it is said he discovered this lingzhi was the answer.”
After the program aired, many viewers immediately recognized the object as a sex toy modelled after female genitalia, and online video of the report gained millions of views overnight.
While the video received many comments lauding the station’s and villagers’ 'purity', the day after the program aired the Xi’an news station posted an apology on Sina Weibo, a Chinese blogging website.
“Our program last night made everyone laugh,” the apology said, expressing regret for an 'uncomfortable and misleading' report.
“Our reporter is very young and sheltered,” it read.