U.S. writer Margaret Mitchell once said, “Life is under no obligation to give us what we expect.” Kang Xia, a young Chinese book lover who became an overnight sensation for selling his 1,741 books online at surprisingly low prices, never expected to sell his books along with his honesty and reputation.

    “I lost everything. No one trusts me anymore,” Kang wept during an interview with domestic newspaper The Beijing News on Saturday, recalling how the book-buying frenzy turned his life into a mess.

    A former Bloomberg Business journalist in Beijing, Kang, 26, posted a notice on his WeChat on May 16, saying that he was selling his massive collection of 1,741 books before going to the United States to study at Columbia University in July. He quoted his prices as three books for 60 yuan (US$9.7) and seven for 99 yuan, including delivery costs, even though he claimed that some of the books’ original prices were as high as 400 yuan.

    He said in the post that he didn’t have shallow self-help or health care books, but he did have some out-of-print classics and English books he bought in Britain. He asked buyers to leave messages about what kind of books they preferred when they transferred the money to him via Alipay and he would select the books randomly for them.

    Kang’s post caused an instant book-buying frenzy because of book lovers’ admiration for his collection and their excitement for this new way of buying second-hand books. Within 24 hours, more than 778,000 yuan was transferred by 6,500 netizens to Kang’s Alipay account.

    During the following weeks, Kang updated his WeChat and Weibo every day, saying that he was busy checking thousands of orders, payments and addresses, mailing the books to about 300 people on a first-come-first-served basis and refunding more than 6,000 people one by one.

    Since some netizens replied under his posts that they hadn’t yet received the books or refunds, Kang asked some buyers who had received the packages to take photos of the books and post them on Weibo to prove that he was not cheating them.

    However, the photos backfired, landing Kang in hot water. On Friday, some of his followers noticed that several buyers posted pictures of the same book, particularly a copy of “Alice in Wonderland,” which appeared in 11 buyers’ photos. “Why did a person buy 11 copies of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ for his collection?” some netizens asked on Kang’s Weibo.

    The irritated buyers soon contacted the delivery company to check how many packages Kang had actually sent. They quoted one delivery person as saying that Kang had sent 1,500 packages, putting the number of books sent at around 7,000, thousands more than the original 1,741 books Kang was supposedly selling.

    Some netizens began attacking Kang on his Weibo, suspecting that he didn’t want to refund so many people, so he bought a large amount of books at wholesale prices. Others suspected that Kang might be cooperating with some book dealers to clear their stocks by mixing surplus new books into his original collection.

    On Friday night, Kang deleted all of his Weibo posts and wrote an apology note, saying he would refund everyone, including those who had received the books. “This issue is out of my control. Even if I commit suicide, this can’t be solved,” he wrote.

    However, by not explaining the weird 11 copies of “Alice in Wonderland” and other duplicate books, Kang’s apology only angered netizens more. Some left threatening replies in his Weibo, saying they would report Kang’s dishonesty to Columbia University.

    A few hours later, Kang contacted The Beijing News, admitting that he did buy 6,000 new books at low prices and mixed them with his original collections in the mail because he wanted to send more packages to more buyers.

    “Among the 1,741 books, some were not worth reading, so I bought new books, but I don’t think ‘Alice in Wonderland’ is as shallow as some buyers criticized,” said Kang. “But it’s still my fault. I should have told the buyers that I would buy new books before I sent them out. Now no one trusts me anymore. I can’t believe I ended up like this.”

    On Saturday night, Alipay confirmed on its official Weibo that the company had helped Kang to refund all 778,133.22 yuan to the buyers.

    “I lost more than 100,000 yuan in this book-selling thing, including delivery costs and the payment for the 6,000 new books, but I never cooperated with book dealers to clear their stock.” said Kang. “My family is wealthy, so I never wanted to cash in by selling books. I welled up with pride when I saw the flood of orders, praise and social-networking followers after I posted the book-selling notice, so later I made a wrong decision.”

    An extensive reader of literature, history, economics and science books, Kang has a hobby to write book reviews and post them to WeChat, but yesterday morning he said on his Weibo and WeChat that he would never post an article again. “My father told me that every buyer trusted me because they had read my articles, but now everyone criticizes me. I am a person who cares about other people’s comments very much. I tried to please everyone, but this disgrace will imprint my life forever,” said Kang.

    (Cao Zhen)