The best soap opera currently running in China is not on your tube. It is unfolding with more fascinating details - accusations, counter-accusations and all - than a regular courtroom drama series.

A while ago, a farmer in Shaanxi Province, who shares my surname, said he had spotted the South China Tiger. He can prove it with some 70 photos, both digital and print. Local authorities confirmed the authenticity of the photos, but the media became suspicious.

The tiger is conventionally believed to be extinct, and scouting expeditions by scientists have not yielded evidence to the contrary. But local governments are not discouraged. The prize money Zhenping County - where Zhou resides - offered was as much as 1 million yuan ($135,000) to anyone who captured the tiger on a photo. Zhou received only 20,000 yuan ($2,700), but that's another story.

If the tiger is still "burning bright" within its jurisdiction, the local government can ask for protection funds, and presumably hordes of tourists would descend for a tiger-watching experience. In other words, we need a modern-day Wu Song, who would flaunt his camera instead of his fists in tackling the big cat.

In Chinese legends, the tiger is an animal to be feared. I don't know how animal-rights activists would view Wu Song, but the fictional youth became a national hero after getting drunk and killing a man-eating tiger. (He later killed his sister-in-law, whom he discovered had held "a branch of red apricot out of the family wall" and poisoned her husband as a result. Both episodes have evolved into countless opera and movie adaptations.)

To make the long story short, Zhou Zhenglong, the Yellow Earth-tilling photographer, swore that he would be willing to lose his head if his photos were fake. On the other side of the equation, a scientist also bet his own head against the authenticity of the photos. The vast majority of netizens and press pundits - the Greek chorus, so to speak - seemed to agree that, yeah, it's a bad Photoshop job.

Act II of the melodrama started with a sudden twist. Just as Zhou was reluctantly letting more experts scrutinize more of his photos, a new character burst upon the stage. He shouted: "I've seen this tiger before! It's the one on my calendar!"

The tiger-is-alive-and-kicking camp suggested that the calendar makers have copied Zhou's photo. That argument did not go well, because the calendar was printed five years ago.

Now, Zhou has raised his mission to a higher level: He swears he'll bring back a live tiger. Poor Zhou, maybe he's telling the truth. Maybe his tiger happens to share the same pattern of stripes with the calendar tiger. But with so much circumstantial evidence stacked against him, even if he captures a real tiger, people might say it's a paper tiger - unless they end up as food in its stomach.

Most commentators are lamenting the lack of honesty in our society. My conclusion is somewhat different: How come all those experts cannot determine whether a photo has been doctored or not? If an amateurishly touched-up photo can rake in 20 grand, imagine what wonders a skilled user can create.

(China Daily 11/28/2007 page20)