‘Like a Stephen Chow comedy’: angry Chinese woman lured to bogus oceanarium which turns out to be just small fish tanks in spartan living room

• WeChat scam lures online sea life fans with promise of 'oceanarium' which is just some simple tanks in a small room
• Racket draws much ridicule online with one online observer describing the scenario as being 'like a scene from a Stephen Chow comedy movie'

A fishy story about a bogus oceanarium in China has raised much amusement - and ridicule - on mainland social media.

A short video posted online by a woman from Yinchuan City of Ningxia, a landlocked autonomous region in north central China, explains how she followed up on a link sent to her on WeChat about a new oceanarium.

The link explained that adults with the requisite amount of WeChat likes could gain free entry.

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The curious woman then forwarded the link to her WeChat followers and collected the required number of likes.

© Provided by South China Morning Post Something fishy: visitors discover that the

However, when she arrived at the entrance to the "oceanarium" the woman discovered that while entry for adults was indeed free, children had to pay 25 yuan (US$3.6).

Also, the so-called "oceanarium" was the equivalent in size and design to an undecorated living room and the "exhibits" were fish and shrimps in simple small tanks.

Despite the sparseness of the surroundings, the room was packed with people, mostly children, whose parents appeared to have experienced the same scam as the woman who by this stage was filled with anger.

"I am disappointed and angry. I feel like it is pure fraud on consumers," she said.

© Provided by South China Morning Post The real thing: visitors admire marine animals kept in the Grand Aquarium at Hong Kong's Ocean Park. Photo: SCMP/May Tse

On the social media platform Douyin the video has attracted 19,000 comments.

One said: "This is not an oceanarium. This is a seafood market."

Another said it was "like a scene from a Stephen Chow comedy movie".

Others joked that opening an "oceanarium" in an inland region like Ningxia was like opening a ski resort on the tropical island of Hainan in southern China.

A Weibo's discussion about the incident, saw one online observer recall how he was deceived by an advertisement promising penguins could be viewed at a market only to find they were toy versions of the animal when he got there.

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This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (www.scmp.com), the leading news media reporting on China and Asia.

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