Canada said it regretted the "misunderstanding" after a diplomat ordered custom T-shirts featuring the word Wuhan over the Wu-Tang Clan's batlike symbol.
Images of the T-shirt logo created last year recently began circulating on China's Weibo social media platform, with users describing it as depicting a bat without mentioning thehip-hop group, Reuters reported.
"We are very shocked by this and have lodged representations with Canada, asking for a thorough investigation and a clear explanation," foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said in response to a question at a daily briefing on Monday.
China's Foreign Ministry says it has lodged a solemn representation with the Canadian Embassy over reports staff ordered t-shirts last year with "Wuhan" and a "bat symbol." Per blogger Zhou Xiaoping, this is the image. Any hip-hop fan can tell you though that's a W for the Wu pic.twitter.com/ooTFzh2oRn
Covid-19 is believed to have originated in an undetermined bat species with the first clusters in January 2020 traced to a wet market in the Chinese city of Wuhan.
