Photographs showing a county official sleeping during a meeting have caused a stir among Internet users, the Southern Metropolis Daily reported on Thursday.

The pictures were released on Tuesday on a private micro blog. They showed Wang Yupu, chairman of Zizhou county committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference in Yulin city, Shaanxi province in Northwest China, asleep during a meeting of the Yulin conference that day.

Although the photographs were later deleted from the micro blog, they have been spreading on the Internet.

Three photos were released, one of them a panoramic view of the meeting, and the other two of the sleeping official, with the name plate “Wang Yupu” on a table in front of him. Official statistics show that Wang is chairman of the CPPCC’s Zizhou county committee, being elected in early 2012.

The micro blog owner, who did not disclose his name, said on his blog that Wang fell asleep 20 minutes after the meeting started and slept for the whole meeting.

Internet users who saw the photographs said jokingly that Wang might have been staging a protest about the lengthy meeting by falling asleep.

The newspaper said it tried to contact the CPPCC’s Zizhou county committee and Wang without success.