The car with a forged license plate with an auspicious meaning. [Photo from website]

Driver caught with fake 'lucky' license plate

Chinese people will sometimes go to great lengths to gain mianzi, or face, which may lead to some absurd situations.

Recently, a man was stopped by the police on a highway at the border between Central China's Henan and Hebei provinces for using a forged car license plate, reported dahe.cn on Thursday. The forged plate number read C888B8: "8" in Chinese sounds similar to the Chinese character "發", which means "get rich", and "B" sounds like "必", or "must". Therefore, the plate number sounds like "must get rich". It turned out that the driver used this license plate to gain face at a wedding ceremony he was going to attend.

Ironically, the driver will be losing face now because he faces a detention of up to 15 days and a fine of 2,000 yuan ($320) to 5,000 yuan for using the fake license plate.

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