On the morning of 4 November in Shanghai’s Songjiang District, a resident, Mr Xi, was cycling past a river when he noticed a pair of rain boots floating upright on the water. The boots were still attached to trouser legs and appeared to be sticking straight up, looking alarmingly like a pair of human legs.

Mr Xi’s first thought was that someone might be standing in the water searching for something. However, after watching for two or three minutes with no movement at all, he began to suspect that someone could have drowned.

As he couldn’t swim, Mr Xi quickly called the police. Within five minutes, firefighters and police officers arrived at the scene. Out of caution, firefighters used a pole to hook the object and began pulling it towards the bank.

During the process, they noticed that the object felt unusually light, not at all like a human body. When it was finally pulled from the water, everyone burst into laughter, it turned out to be nothing more than a pair of connected rain boots.