By Xinhua
Changsha : A 10-year-old girl in China’s Hunan Province swam for three hours in a tributary of Yangtze river Tuesday with hands and feet bound, hoping she would be inscribed into the Guinness book of world records some day.
Huang Li, a fourth-grader from Sangzhi county in the city of Zhangjiajie, managed to swim in the Xiangjiang river with her bound feet as her parents kept an eye on her.
She covered three kilometres before her mother told her to stop and fed her some cake.
“I know she can still continue, but I fear she might be in danger,” said Huang’s mother Song Jinfang.
“It’s getting cold and she had only a bowl of noodles for lunch before she started swimming at 12:45 p.m.”
“Next time, she will swim further and I’ll follow her in a boat to ensure safety,” said the father.
The family didn’t say whose idea it was to bind the girl’s limbs, but the father Huang Daosheng, a middle school teacher, insisted this would help improve the girl’s swimming skills and eventually help fulfil her dream to swim across the English Channel.
Huang Li’s father said she is a swimming prodigy. She learned to swim at five and her father has been her coach.
But many bystanders questioned the parents’ motive, saying Guinness was more a dream of their own. “It’s dangerous to swim with bound limbs,” said a university student. “What if she had muscle cramp and drowned?”