Love or hate Guangzhou, the city certainly doesn’t lack for colourful entertainment. Take last Thursday afternoon for example: according to a story in the Yangcheng Evening Daily, as people shuffled past the entrance of Huimin Primary School, located at 182 Zhongshan Road, they were confronted with the unusual site of a camel. Fastened to a nearby lamppost, the camel was accompanied by a homeless man begging for money. According to the man’s sign, he suffers from epilepsy, a brain tumour and needs money to care for his crippled mother.

Speaking to a local hawker, the reporter was told that the man often makes an excess of RMB 1,000 per day, and is known to wander with the camel throughout the city. Some passersby noted that they encountered the man a few days before in Baiyun District. Apparently, the man has a habit of striking the camel when no one will give him money; but, it remains unclear whether this strategy is successful in obtaining donations.

While there’s no word on where the man keeps his camel or how exactly the poor beast found its way to downtown Guangzhou, believe it or not, this isn’t the first time a camel has been used to drum up money for panhandlers. Last November, there was a similar case in the city of Shaoxing in Zhejiang Province. Is it safe to say that camel-begging has officially become a trend?