TV reporter confuses sex toy found underground for a mushroom

A TV channel in Xi'an City, northwest China Shaanxi Province has apologised after an "unidentified fleshy monster" it said had been discovered underground turned out to be a sex toy.

Xi'an City's Channel 2 made the humbling confession after viewers pointed out the embarrassing mistake, saying that their "reporters are young and unfamiliar with worldly affairs".



Broadcast last Sunday, a reporter on the Chinese station's "Zero Distance to Xi'an" show was seen gathering with group of villagers near a bucket of water in which the ‘mushroom-like' object was floating during the item.

One villager, named He, is reported to have told how the unusual find was discovered deep underground.

"I was helping a friend to dig a well about 80 meters under the ground where we found this fleshy thing," He is quoting as saying.

"We don't know what it is, but it seems to have eyes and nose."

The correspondent described the object as being like a smooth mushroom with one of the ends looking like a human mouth.

Villager He added: "Some elderly villagers, with some 80 years old, dropped by to study the object but they had never seen anything like it."

After taking to the web to look up the murky pink object, He began to wonder whether it was a type of fungus known as lucid ganoderma.

The reporter apparently said she would be taking the as-yet-unidentified toy to a botanist for analysis.

Eagle-eyed viewers however were quick to point out that the mysterious item was in fact an artificial vagina.

"Ignorance is horrible. How can the reporter mistake a sex toy for fungus?" one viewer commented on his Weibo microblog.

"I own a sex toy shop and this thing is exactly like the artificial vaginas I sell every day," said another viewer on Tianya.cn.

Channel 2 made it clear that they were stung by the mistake as they grovelled on their website yesterday.

"We are sorry to incur ridicule from the news coverage on Sunday. The incident has attracted wide public attention and comments," it said.

"We apologize for discomfort and misdirection brought to the audience because our reporters are young and unfamiliar with worldly affairs."

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