A Chinese man spent almost US$3,000 on a ‘lucky’ phone number. It made his life a misery
- Zhejiang resident was bombarded with crank calls after his ‘auspicious’ phone number featured in a television drama
A man from eastern China who spent almost US$3,000 on an “auspicious” phone number found that it was making his life a constant misery after he was bombarded with crank calls when a TV production company used it in one of its dramas.
The Yangtse Evening Post reported on Monday that eight years ago the man surnamed Shen had spent 20,000 yuan on a phone number that ended with 888 because eight – which sounds like the word “fa”, meaning wealth and fortune – is considered a lucky number in China.
But it was used as the villain’s number in an episode of the TV drama Skynet Action broadcast in March this year and he began to receive so many calls that he was forced to keep his phone on permanent do-not-disturb mode.
“I did not pay much attention at first because many people around me got crank calls now and then.
“But later, some calls came at 1 or 2am and I could not sleep. Then I realised that something must be wrong,” the resident of Zhejiang province told the newspaper.
In April he spoke to one of the callers and asked the stranger at the end of the line how they had got hold of his number.
The caller said it had featured on an episode of the show when a criminal suspect gave the number to police.
“The number came out of a criminal’s mouth. That is bad for my image too,” Shen said, adding that he intended to sue the production company and Youku, the popular video platform that broadcast the show.
While telecoms providers in many countries produce lists of dummy numbers for use by TV and film production companies, no such system exists in China.
In February this year, a court in Beijing, awarded a man 35,000 yuan after he sued production firm Xinli for using his number in an episode of TV drama The Revolution of Our Love, according to People’s Court Daily.
The distribution company for Skynet Action published an apology on its official Weibo account.
Shen, who has now changed his number, said the online apology was too late and the producers and platform should be held to account for the harassment he had suffered.
Youku is a subsidiary of Alibaba, which also owns the South China Morning Post.
A spokesman from the distributors later told the newspaper that it had immediately changed the TV programme’s dialogue and subtitles to prevent problems in future.
The spokesman also said that the firm had tried calling Shen by phone and messaging him – but he had not replied.