Upwards to ten thousand (mainly elderly) people lined up through the night on Sunday to receive to receive a free sack of rice and bottle of cooking oil.
People began queuing up for the giveaway at around 2:00am the preceding morning, according to eyewitnesses. Photographs show several fights breaking out between security and those out for the freebies.
The turnout for the May Day charity/publicity event, held in the prefectural city of Binzhou in Shandong Province, perplexed many netizens who wondered aloud, "aren't we a great and powerful nation with prosperous people?"
As many tried to explain, however, those queuing up weren't necessarily poor at all: " This is truly the love of being cheap. What decade are you living in that you can't get rice and cooking oil?"
To be fair, though, by the looks of the crowd most of them can probably remember a time when rice and oil were indeed unattainable commodities.
Few netizens were impressed by the giveaway, supporting an alternative suggestion to "give [the food] to children in [poverty-stricken] mountain areas instead!"
In February, similar numbers of people lined up in Zhenjiang to cart off as much soy sauce as they could carry.
PHOTOS: '10,000' Zhenjiang residents queue up for free soy sauce, carting off as much as 350L
[Images via Sina]
0 User Comments