He played on pity: a Chinese man was arrested for filming sad videos with a baby (2 photos + 1 video)

Man claims wife left him with baby, police find he was lying





A Chinese man has been arrested for posing as a food delivery driver 43 times in one day, using his baby to gain online sympathy and boost his rankings and profits.

A powerful Chinese blogger with over 400,000 followers has been arrested by police after fabricating a story about delivering food with his baby daughter to pose as a single father.

A man who went by the name @qianyibaobei on Douyin claimed to be the single father of a girl named Qianyi, who he took in while working as a delivery boy because her mother abandoned them.

He wrote in large captions on all of his videos: "She has no mother."

In one particularly sad video, a man dressed in the yellow uniform of food delivery app Meituan claims to have delivered 43 orders with Qianyi and earned just 300 yuan ($40) in one day to buy her food.

He also urged viewers to like his videos, revealing that he accidentally injured his daughter's face while working.

He has amassed a combined following of over 400,000 on Chinese social media sites Douyin and Kuaishou, produced over 100 similar videos, and profited from livestream sales — all under the guise of raising money to live.

In early December, police said the man had distorted his past. He was neither a delivery boy nor a single father, and Qianyi's mother was still "happily living" with them.



The uniform he wore in the videos was purchased online.

Police said they had punished the man, surnamed Yu, for disturbing public order. They did not disclose the details of the punishment.

According to the Punishment Law of the Public Security Bureau of China, intentionally disturbing public order by spreading rumors can result in up to 10 days of detention and a fine of 500 yuan (US$70).

Yu is not the first person to "play on pity" on social media to make more money, however. Earlier this year, an activist known as @Liangshanmengyang was sentenced to 11 months in prison and a fine of 80,000 yuan (US$11,000) for lying about her life in poverty.

Du Yun, a 21-year-old blogger with nearly four million followers, claimed to care for her siblings and eat only potatoes while living in the impoverished Liangshan Yi Autonomous County in southwest China's Sichuan Province.

It was later revealed that the dilapidated farmhouse shown in her videos was actually a pen for goats and cattle, and that her parents were still alive. She was also found to be wearing luxurious clothes and jewelry when she wasn't recording.

Police investigated and found a multi-channel networking company that facilitated the creation of sad accounts, which have been dubbed "sadfishing." The owner of the company, surnamed Tang, sold fake agricultural products through these accounts, earning more than 10 million yuan (US$1.4 million) in profits.

He was sentenced to 14 months in prison and a fine of 100,000 yuan (US$14,000).

"I don't believe in such sadfishing videos. People whose lives are really hard don't have time to be bloggers and make videos every day," one viewer commented.