They say life imitates art, and if you consider the Bridget Jones series a work of art you will surely recognize its shadows in the journalistic catastrophe incurred by Chinese reporter Ye Yunfeng – but let’s start from the beginning.

A few days ago some workers from Liucunbu, a village in the Shaanxi province, called the media with exceptional news: during a very deep dig they uncovered an extremely rare língzhī mushroom. Now, according to traditional Chinese medicine the língzhī family (also known as ‘supernatural mushrooms’) is a potent curative ingredient, source of the longevity of ancient emperors – and the stranger the specimen, the stronger its powers are supposed to be.

First on the scene is a new hire of the Xi’an network who, as you can see in the video, is very enthusiastic about the mysterious discovery and promises further reports about the unusual, “very smooth and meat-like” vegetable, never seen before even by the village elders. There is just one little problem…

As should be evident to my readers, the magic mushroom is simply the silicone part of an old Fleshlight, the absolute best selling male sex toy. Unfortunately the young reporter isn’t exactly a woman of the world (nor her colleagues), so her newscast gets aired to the protests of many watchers.

The repercussions incurred by poor Ye are not known yet, but the local street vendors adore her: in fact, they are using her newspiece as the perfect advertisement for their $2,800 “língzhī”. «It’s on the news» says one of them «How can it be fake?»