Security officials in remote western China brag about taking stunning wolf pack photo – then admit ‘mistake’
Officers patrolling snowy wilderness in Xinjiang took this photo or did they?
For government workers stationed in one of the most remote, uninhabited regions in China, sometimes there simply isn’t much to announce.
One solution: post images of events and incidents that look stunning and worry about whether they actually happened later.
The official Weibo account of the security bureau in northern Xinjiang’s Altay prefecture can often make for dry reading. With just one resident for every 5 square kilometres, there is a lot of empty space to patrol.
But the blog generated some excitement over the weekend after it was forced into an embarrassing U-turn.
The bureau posted a photo on Sunday afternoon that showed a long line of wolves walking single file along a snowy mountain trail, according to news website Thepaper.cn.
The caption read: “Wolves in the north! This is Xinjiang’s Altay prefecture ... officers patrolling on the border spotted and photographed this.”