Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi says ‘I do’ to rocker boyfriend Wang Feng’s drone proposal
Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi has accepted a marriage proposal from a romantic rock star who delivered a diamond ring to her by drone.
No doubt actress Zhang Ziyi - and many mainland internet users - were surprised when her boyfriend rock star Wang Feng used a drone to deliver a diamond engagement ring, but he wasn't the first to use the technology to make a proposal.
Mainland social media was abuzz on Sunday as pictures appeared online showing a smiling Wang reaching into a basket attached to a hovering drone as Zhang stood beside a large cake, covering her eyes.
Michael Perry, a spokesman for the drone's maker, DJI, said it was probably the first time a drone had been used in a marriage proposal in China.
But there had been a number of "drone proposals" overseas in the past two years, he said, including by a man in San Francisco who delivered a ring to his girlfriend in a park in 2013.
Wang's friends suggested using a DJI drone for the delivery, although the Shenzhen-based company was not consulted in the set-up or execution of his proposal, Perry said.
Needless to say, DJI has gained a lot of publicity from the event. The company's store on e-commerce website Tmall added a description to the Phantom 2 Vision+ model as "Same style that Wang Feng used".
But using a drone to deliver an engagement ring does little to show off the power of the technology, which is finding an increasing range of uses, from delivering packages to assessing damage and searching for survivors in inaccessible areas following natural disasters such as Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines in late 2013.
The mainland has cautiously embraced personal drones as a new consumer technology. Last week e-commerce giant Alibaba announced it had begun a trial programme for drone deliveries.
