Chinese police were alerted to a June 12 report of a healthy baby body being offered for sale on Taobao, an eBay-like shopping website.
The seller asked 100,000 yuan (about $15,000) for the pudgy infant, China’s Chongqing Morning Post reported June 13.
“Baby boy, almost two months old, must be held at night in order to sleep, parents cannot bear it,” the seller, from the southeastern city of Fuzhou, wrote. “Want to sell baby to a kind-hearted person, price is negotiable, begging to send him away.”
When police stepped in for investigation, they found that the mother, surnamed Zheng, was actually pulling a prank to make up for “feeling uncomfortable after labor” and had no intention to sell her son.
But because human trafficking in China is a widespread phenomenon, many internet users thought Zheng was serious. Below her ad, comments unironically tried to bargain to get a cheaper price for the boy.
“This may well not have been a joke,” one comment on Sina Weibo, a popular Chinese social media site, says. “There are many young parents who do this sort of stupid thing.”
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