Ms Cai, from the Guangdong province, a coastal region of south-east China, claims she was eating lunch with her family when she bit into a tightly rolled piece of paper that was disguised in a bowl of cooked rice.
Cai told local police she bought the rice from a street hawker who promised they were grown in the countryside in a “very environmentally friendly” way “without any pesticides.”
Hong Kong Free Press reports that the woman and her family had been buying rice from the same hawker since the beginning of this year.
HKFP adds that the seller is unlikely to get caught because street hawkers are very mobile and Cai did not get a receipt when buying the rice, Shantou Metropolis Daily said.
The fake rice phenomenon has been in China for a while. Some of the reports indicate that the fake rice is sometimes made from a mixture of plastic and potatoes.
