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A post box has become an unlikely object of adoration in Shanghai, after a former boy band star posed alongside it and shared the photo online.

Pop singer Lu Han, once a member of million-selling Chinese-Korean group EXO, posted a snap of himself leaning on the post box on Friday night. It received more than 800,000 likes , but the fervour wasn't just online. Hundreds of fans keen to follow in their idol's footsteps tracked down the box in question - on one of Shanghai's busiest roads - and began queuing to have their photos taken with it, popular news website .

The line stretched up to 300m (1,000ft) along the pavement and some fans queued into the small hours, determined to give the post box a hug or a kiss. "He walked on this road, he saw this landscape, I feel a little closer to him," one woman tells The Paper. Another says she felt "very, very excited" when she finally got to touch the box.

Most of the site's readers are a bit baffled by the scene. "A mailbox influenced this much worship, are these people spiritually empty? *sigh*" writes one person. Another simply describes them as "crazies", a view echoed in thousands of comments on Weibo. But a few users are more charitable, pointing out that as crowds go, they were rather civilised. "They are politely and orderly queuing," , adding that the women weren't affecting public order or making a mess.

While it might be the Shanghai post box's first brush with fame, it's not the first to become an internet hit. In 2015, two lop-sided post boxes - damaged by Typhoon Soudelor - had people queuing round the block for photos in Taiwan, images that went viral in China.

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