In March, Zheng Juming, a 53-year-old man in southeastern China, became a paragon of humanitarianism when it was reported that he had been shelling out money to support an orphaned girl in a province over a thousand miles away, for eight years.
The touching story was carried by dozens of media outlets throughout China, and even local authorities held Zheng up as a social role model.
His claim to fame was short-lived, as villagers living in the girl’s home province of Sichuan revealed in April that she was in fact Zheng’s daughter by a mistress.
