When pigeons began turning up in central Vietnam bearing Chinese characters on their wings, conspiracy theories began to fly that China was using the birds for spying purposes. But now it turns out the pigeons belonged to a racing club.
Since last November, residents of Da Nang City began catching
pigeons – 16 in total – with Chinese characters stamped in red
ink on their wings and strange rings on their ankles, the local
Thanh Nien News website reported.
Several local newspapers quoted residents as saying that the
rings appeared to hold something that resembled a memory card.
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The police traced the pigeons based on the markings on their
wings and determined they were their club registration numbers
and their racing names, Colonel Tran Phuoc Hung of the Da Nang
Police Department told the news outlet.
As it turned out, the pigeons belonged to racing clubs located in
China, Taiwan, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam itself,
having flown the coop, so to speak, on their racing careers.
Relations between Vietnam and China saw a decline previous year.
In May, riots erupted in southern Vietnam, the home of many
industrial sectors, after Beijing placed an oil rig in a part of
the South China Sea, which Vietnamese refer to as the East Sea,
claimed by Hanoi. More than 20 people were killed in the riots.