A Chinese man frustrated at being single cut off his own penis then, in agony, decided to cycle to a hospital for treatment.

When he arrived doctors told him they couldn't help save his manhood and ordered him to cycle back home to get the penis before he could be treated.

When Yang Hu, 26, eventually arrived back at the hospital with the severed member, doctors told him that it had been without blood for too long, and it was impossible to reattach it.

Yang's friends said that he had been increasingly depressed about the fact that since moving to the city he could not find a girlfriend.

What was worse, they said, was that he was doing such long hours in a clothing factory in Jiaxing, in Zhejiang province in east China, that he doubted he would ever have a chance to meet a woman.

His depression grew so bad that after returning home after work at 9pm on October 27 to his rented room he had suddenly decided to cut off his member as there was no use for it anyway, and believing it would stop him thinking about getting a girlfriend.

Incredibly he managed to cycle to the hospital, then cycled home again to collect the severed member and then back to the hospital.

His friends criticised doctors saying that had they provided the man with an ambulance he might have managed to get home quicker and his private parts could have been saved.