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A video has been viewed thousands of times in multiple Chinese social media posts alongside a claim that it shows a child entangled in a kite and swept up to the sky at a kite festival in Shandong province, in eastern China. The claim is false. The video was actually taken at a kite festival in northern Taiwan in August 2020. The 52-second video was posted on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, on September 23, 2022. It shows a child entangled in a kite and being swept up into the sky, with the child holding on to the kite's tail as it flies in the air. After being in the air briefly, the kite flies lower and the child lands in the arms of a group of people who were trying to save it. At the Shandong Weifang Kite Festival, an adult accidentally caused a child to fly through the sky, reads the text, written in simplified Chinese characters, on the video. Meanwhile, the post's caption reads: How careless are the parents, do they think this is like a roller coaster? This is even scarier than a bungee jump.. Screenshot of the misleading post, taken on October 6, 2022 The Weifang International Kite Festival is a kite-flying festival held annually in Weifang , a city in Shandong province, in eastern China. The same video also circulated in similar Douyin posts here and here . It also appeared on Twitter , where it had garnered more than 15,400 views before it was deleted. However, the claim is false. A reverse image search on Google found screenshots of the video published in a news report by Hong Kong news organisation HK01 on August 30, 2020 . The news report was titled: Accident at the Hsinchu Kite Festival: Three-year-old Taiwanese child caught by a kite and swept up into the sky, but was only slightly injured. A three-year-old girl was swept up into the sky by a large kite this afternoon (30th) at the Kite Festival held at Nanliao Fishing Port in Hsinchu City, Taiwan, the article partly reads. The girl eventually fell into someone's arms after (the kite) dropped to a lower height, suffering only minor injuries. Hsinchu is a city in northwestern Taiwan. The local government has held the Hsinchu International Kite Festival annually since 2017. Below are screenshot comparisons of the video in the misleading post (left) and the pictures in HK01's news report (right): Screenshot comparisons of the video in the misleading post (left) and the pictures in HK01's news report (right) Then Hsinchu mayor Lin Chih-chien posted an apology for the incident on Facebook on August 30, 2020 , stating: A kite accidentally entangled a child at the Hsinchu city government's Kite Festival in the afternoon. It frightened the child and caused bruising on the child's neck and face. We went to the hospital right away to seek medical attention. Fortunately, the child passed the examination with flying colours and has returned home to recover, accompanied by municipal government colleagues. Lin also posted a promotional video of the 2020 Hsinchu International Kite Festival on his Facebook page on August 25, 2020. The accident was also reported by local news outlets Taiwan News and Eastern Television on August 30, 2020. The New York Times reported the incident on August 31, 2020, using footage that showed the same incident from a different angle. The 2022 Weifang kite festival -- which was scheduled to open on September 24 -- had been postponed due to the pandemic situation in Shandong province, the organisers announced .
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