Meet China’s West Lake phone retriever, the cop making a splash by fishing mobiles out of the water
Number of butterfingered visitors to world heritage site means officer has developed a special fishing rod to scoop valuables out of the water
Careless visitors to West Lake – a world heritage site in eastern China – are dropping so many phones in the water that fishing them out has become a major part of one police officer’s duties.
Zhou Xiangjun, who has been dubbed the West Lake phone retriever, said he has even designed his own fishing rod to help him pull mobile phones and other items from the lake in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province.
Zhou spent 3,000 yuan (US$450) building a rod equipped with an infrared camera and display monitor, Thepaper.cn reported.
He was quoted as saying that the rod he now used for recovering valuables was an upgrade to his initial design.
“With the first generation rod, which was fitted with magnets, it would normally take 40 minutes to find a phone, but now it takes just two to three minutes and the success rate is much higher,” 56-year-old Zhou said.