Sometimes your job can feel like it’s eating up all your time, and it becomes hard to blur the lines between personal and work life. This is especially difficult when you live where you work, like computer technician Yuan Mou who accidentally broadcasted porn onto the jumbotron screen he was supposed to be fixing.
The incident happened last week when the video billboard near the Jilin Railway Station in China aired an erotic movie for about 10 minutes, garnering hundreds of confused and curious onlookers. By the time authorities were alerted to the situation and arrived to the Kaixuan building which housed the jumbotron, the screen had been shut off. Instead, police traced back to Mou, who was hired to perform maintenance work to the screen that had been malfunctioning since mid-June.
Mou explained that he had lived in the Kaixuan building for the duration for the job, and the LED screen was usually connected to a computer to air video advertising. When Mou left work that Wednesday evening, he thought the computer was disconnected before he kicked back, relaxed, and started watching erotic film “Xin Jin Ping Mei,” a movie South China Morning Post reports was the 2008 remake with the English title “The Forbidden Legend: Sex and Chopsticks.” What sex and chopsticks have to do with each other is beside the point, of course.
Mou reportedly confessed to the mishap and complied with authorities, though it is unclear whether he will be charged with any crime. Naturally, the incident went viral on Chinese Web forums, with many netizens poking fun at the photos and offering varied opinions on Mou. Some saw him as an uneducated “day laborer,” while others felt bad that he worked such long hours and was publicly humiliated for trying to de-stress. Fans of Sex and Chopsticks? “This is good advertising,” one commenter wrote, suggesting that the jumbotron should broadcast porn more often. Not so sure that would count as a public service.