A hospital employee in China was thrilled when his company gifted him a new iPhone 17… but his excitement soon turned to despair when he discovered what was really inside the box.
The Lunar New Year officially began on February 17, 2026. To celebrate the end of an old year and the start of a new one, the hospital where the employee worked threw a party with an expensive prize for one lucky staffer.
The worker, surnamed Jiang, ended up winning that grand prize — an iPhone 17. The base models tend to retail for RMB 5,999 in China (~$860 USD), but a gift receipt that came with Jiang’s new phone showed it was purchased for 9,988 yuan (~$1,450 USD). That’s a pretty nice bonus to ring in the new year.
The whole process seemed legit; Jiang was publicly declared the winner of the iPhone in front of his coworkers at the hospital, and the phone was even presented to him inside of an Apple shopping bag with the receipt attached.
Jiang was stunned to discover what was really inside the iPhone box he’d won at a work party.
However, after returning home, Jiang discovered that his job hadn’t actually gifted him an expensive smartphone. Instead, they’d filled the box with three lollipops, two chocolates, and a few tiles.
Man says company turned his iPhone 17 prize into “April Fools” joke
In a viral video that Jiang posted to social media, the disgruntled employee explained what happened and theorized that his company’s party planner may have mischievously pulled a prank on him in good fun.
Jiang, however, was not amused. “I expected the year of 2026 to have a lucky beginning, and they turned the year-end party into an April Fools’ Day event for me,” he said in the video.
According to Chinese news outlets, the hospital never approved the purchase of an iPhone on their dime, meaning the entire ‘gift’ was a sham.
Unsplash.com: Rohan KrishnanJiang described the incident in a viral video on Chinese social media platforms.
Users on Chinese social media platforms commiserated with Jiang. Oddly enough, he isn’t the only staffer in the country to go viral over a special prize won on company time.
In late 2025, an intern at a Shanghai-based tech firm won an NVIDIA graphics card during a business retreat. After learning of the prize, his company pressured him to hand it over to them… but he ended up quitting instead, taking the graphics card with him.
