A MAINTENANCE worker surprised passers-by near a Chinese railway station when he started watching a banned porn film, not realising his computer was connected to a giant screen, state media said.

The worker, identified only by his surname Yuan, was supposed to repair the screen, on a building near the main railway station in Jilin in northeast China, the Global Times reported.

But when he began playing "The Forbidden Legend: Sex and Chopsticks", hundreds of local residents stopped to watch as well, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

The company which owns the screen called him after about 10 minutes, and he immediately disconnected the computer before throwing the disc out of a window, the Global Times said.