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A university student in China was enjoying a meal he bought from his school canteen when he noticed that a piece of meat on his plate looked amiss.

It was black and hairy. There were also teeth visible.

It appeared to be the head of a rat.

Rat head

The incident occurred on Jun. 1 at Jiangxi Industry Polytechnic College in Nanchang, an English-language state media Shanghai Daily reported.

A video recorded by the student showed the rat's head inconspicuously lying among a plate of rice and pieces of long beans.

This trending topic received over 310 million views on Weibo today and it's quite Kafkaesque. June 1st, a student at a Jiangxi college finds a rat head in his cafeteria rice meal. When he makes a complaint, he's told that it's actually duck. He says, "but you can see its teeth!" pic.twitter.com/MCnW7V2JSG

— Manya Koetse (@manyapan) June 7, 2023

He could be heard saying that the black, hairy object on his plate was a "rat". He also mentioned that the rat's teeth were visible.

The student then made a complaint about the foreign object to the staff.

However, the cafeteria staff responded to the complaint by saying that the unidentifiable object was duck meat.

Not rat's head, duck neck

The student then uploaded a video of the rat's head online, sparking public outcry.

On Jun. 3, the school issued a statement that after "repeated examination and comparison", they found that the "foreign object" in the meal was a part of a duck's neck.

The head of the Changdong branch of the market supervision administration of Nanchang's Gaoxin District, Jiang Xiexue, also went on China Jiangxi Radio and TV Station program to confirm that the strange item on the student's plate was duck's neck.

Rat-duck

Despite clarifications, many people online insisted what they saw in the video was a rat's head and not duck's neck, sparking intense discussions.

One user also did a side-by-side image comparison to prove that the unidentifiable object came from a rat.

Others decided to make a meme out of the situation.

Significant decrease

Despite clarifications, the number of students eating at the university canteen decreased significantly.

Many students opted to order takeout or eat in their dormitories instead of going to the school's cafeteria.

Some students also revealed that they were asked not to comment on the incident online.

Top image via Shanghai Daily.