Black and White Cat

For the last month and a bit, one of the big Internet distractions in China has been the improbable “Zhou tiger.” Zhou being Zhou Zhenglong, the villager in Shaanxi who claimed to have taken 71 photographs of the almost extinct South China tiger. Here’s the one that was released to the media:

According to Wikipedia, there are believed to be only 30 South China tigers left in the wild, while others say the subspecies is already extinct except for a few raised in zoos. So if one of them really had been found in Shaanxi, this would be extremely good news. The Shaanxi Forestry Bureau was delighted. Its experts authenticated the pictures and awarded Zhou 20,000 yuan for proving there was at least one these magnificent creatures still living in the northwest. Zhou, by many accounts, was not delighted - he wanted a million yuan and he wasn’t going to hand over the rest of the photos until he got the money.

But almost immediately, Zhou and the Shaanxi Forestry Bureau were dismayed to find that people on the Internet, and many in the media, did not believe the photos were real. ESWN has collected and translated some of the skeptical reactions, the most entertaining being his translation from Fu Jianfeng’s blog.

Bloggers and journalists were not alone. Wildlife experts pointed out that the photograph was almost impossible, since wild tigers are incredibly cautious and would never be so relaxed in the presence of an intruder. Early doubters suggested the picture had been photoshopped, but this was quickly replaced by the much more likely theory that the tiger was a cardboard cut-out placed in the woods. So now the search was on for the original source.

Someone’s found it:

Here are the two pictures together for comparison:

The discovery spread throughout the news sites on Friday. It’s attributed to Tan Renwei of the Southern Metropolis Daily, though I’ve been unable to find it on the Southern Group website. Rednet’s copy includes a flashing gif image alternating between the two pictures.

Zhou Zhenglong declined the reporter’s invitation to comment. Guan Ke of the Shaanxi Forestry Bureau’s information office attempted to turn the story full-circle by declaring the poster to be a laughably bad piece of photoshopping and said only the experts could determine the matter.

Update: First, I should clarify a very badly written sentence in which I gave the impression it was a Southern Metropolis Daily reporter who discovered the tiger poster. What I was trying, and failing, to say was that Tan Renwei had written one of the most widely distributed reports.

The actual discovery was made by a singularly unobservant netizen who had hitherto failed to notice that the tiger that had been on his wall for a year was identical to the one in all the newspapers. Since that announcement, more proud owners of the poster have been popping up all over the place and the manufacturer has been identified. The fact that it took more than a month for so many people to notice what was right in front of their eyes must be very encouraging to criminals on the run.

Update 2: On one level, the hunt for the paper tiger has been mildly entertaining waste of time. On another, it demonstrated a healthy skepticism of official pronouncements and a rational search for the truth. ESWN has translated an op-ed from the Southern Metropolis Daily which praises the way the debate has been conducted and celebrates the role the Internet has played in giving the people a voice. At the end, however, the writer points out that this openness was only possible because it was a relatively minor issue:

The story is simple. Through the discovery of a wall poster in which the tiger resembled closely the one offered by the Shaanxi provincial Forestry Department. This wall poster delighted many people because it seemed that victory was achieved and speech rights in this society are now in the hands of the people. But the people were successful here because this was a minor incident for which discussion was allowed to be totally open. Meanwhile, the authorities had not used the full power that they control. While the people have good results (such as the maturing of the people to think independently and the increasing doubts of the people about their government), these may not be applicable when major incidents occurs.