Vietnamese Television (VTV) was fined some RMB4,500 recently after broadcasting a map of southeast Asia that accidentally ceded the nation's capital to China.
A travel program aired by the state broadcaster, sponsored by regional low-cost airline Air Asia, offered contestants the prize of a free return trip to Bangkok from either Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City.
Instead of its usual location on the right bank of the Red River, however, Hanoi was inexplicably situated north of China's Leizhou Peninsula, near present-day Yulin in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region - home to nobody's favorite festival of animal cruelty and senseless dog slaughter.
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The epic geography fail precipitated a flood of complaints from viewers and earned the national broadcaster a fine. However, VTV says the blame lies firmly with Air Asia, who supplied the graphic to the program.
Needless to say, an airline not knowing where the hell any of their flight paths lead is probably even more worrying than the nation's public broadcaster not knowing where the national capital is. One sincerely hopes that their pilots are better informed than their advertising department.
An alternative explanation for the VTV oversight that, surprisingly, has not been forwarded, is that they deliberately colluded with Air Asia to subtlety assert Hanoi's rights to the lands of the historical kingdom of Nam VIet, which that reigned in Vietnam in the third and second centuries BC, stretching as far north as modern-day Chaozhou.
We're onto you, VTV.
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[Images via Oriental Daily, Wikimedia]
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