Written words have power. Two mainland Chinese men believed so that they used it to change their fate.

Zhang and Li, both from Heze in northern China’s Shandong province, climbed the sacred Taoist mountain of Mount Tai and wrote the words “success,” “good luck,” and “blessings” on its stone pillars on 18 July 2021, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reports.

Along with the phrases seeking blessings and good fortune they wrote their names in red ink.

The authorities, however, deemed the graffiti in the Unesco World Cultural Heritage site as vandalism that violated the revised law on Cultural Relics Protection.

The Taishan District People’s Court found Zhang, who completed only primary school, and Li, who is illiterate, guilty of intentionally damaging cultural relics. It sentenced Zhang to one year in prison with two years’ probation and a fine of 2,000 yuan, while Li was fined 1,500 yuan, according to SCMP.

Meanwhile, 58-year-old Lorraine Forbes from Eastbourne, East Sussex, United Kingdom had been sending messages in plastic bottles from a local pier in the hope of finding romance with whomever will respond.

Forbes last sent a bulk of bottles with notes inside that included her name and address on 5 September. She received one reply on 7 October but there was no sender’s name, New York Post (NYP) reports.

“Please stop throwing rubbish in the sea. It goes to Pevensey Bay or Normans Bay one day later. Many thanks, a rubbish picker,” read the angry response that shocked Forbes, according to NYP.

She remembered being stopped by staff at the pier from throwing the bottles into the water for the risk they pose to environmental health and decided to stop sending messages in plastic bottles to avoid getting into legal trouble, NYP reports.