On August 27, 1955, the first edition of Guinness Book of Records was published. During the past half century, it has become an internationally renowned “notebook” for recording humans’ singular behavior. Today, the Chinese find their passion in challenging Guinness world records.
Tang Risong, Director of the Chinese Liaison Office, Guinness World Records, said that more than 1,300 applications, with more than 20 entries chosen for the Guinness Book of Records, flood in each year.
Last October, Tang awarded world record certificates to the Confucius Pedigree and the nushu (women’s characters). The Confucius Pedigree is regarded as the longest pedigree in the world, recording Confucius’s 86 predecessors and lineal descendants from the eighth century B.C. until today, while nushu found in Hunan Province, is regarded as the most unique language used by women in the history of the world, recording women’s conversation and communication for 1,000 years.
According to Tang, Chinese entries successfully accepted as Guinness world records can be divided into four main categories.
The first primarily includes items that reflect China’s ancient civilization and history. For example, the Great Wall, with its 3,460-km-long main segment, is considered the longest wall in the world, while the 39.6-hectare Tiananmen Square in Beijing is the largest in the world.
The second category represents China’s achievements since 1949, especially after the country’s reform and opening-up since the late 1970s. For example, the “Three-North Shelter Belt Project,” which was intended to grow 35.6 million hectares of forest, is the biggest tree-planting project in the world, and Chinese astronaut Yang Liwei’s 1,283-minute space trip is the longest maiden space voyage in the world.
PROPER BALANCE: Cui Mengting from Hebei Province demonstrates a stunt in a large urn
The third type reflects social and cultural events. For example, Fu Mingxia was only 12 years and 141 days old when she won the World Women’s Diving Championship in 1991, becoming the youngest world champion, while a 100-hour-long karaoke competition, which was held by Guangdong South Television Station and attracted 399 participants, is regarded as the longest “collective karaoke marathon” in the world.
The fourth comprises unusual people and items. For example, a 4-mm-high and 6.8-mm-long teapot made by Chen Yupei, a micro-sculpture master from Shanghai, is regarded as the smallest teapot in the world. The teapot can hold 0.03 milliliters of hot water, which can be poured out through its spout.
These are just a few examples. In order to produce world records, many groups and individuals on China’s mainland have come up with unusual projects.
In October 2001, four young girls from Zhejiang Province tried to set a new Guinness record of cohabiting with snakes at a park in Xiamen, Fujian Province. They lived with 2,001 snakes in a 48-square-meter glass room from October 1 of that year until February 2002, breaking the 288-hour record they had set six years earlier.
In September 2005, 44-year-old Liu Shubin arrived in Shenyang from his hometown, Kedong County of Heilongjiang Province, after a one-day trip by bus and a one-day train trip. He had only one aim--to ceaselessly wave an octagonal handkerchief with a 2.4-meter-long diagonal and declare a Guinness world record at the scene.
By no means is Liu the only one to claim a world record in a seemingly odd category. A man from Shenyang used three pens, held in his left and right hands and his mouth, to write different Chinese characters at the same time. And Che Honggui from Benxi in Liaoning Province could spin his body around in a circle 100 times a minute while doing needlework.
BIG ENOUGH TO STAND IN: A 0.85-meter-high porcelain bowl with a 1.97-meter diameter comes from Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province
The idea for the Guinness world records emerged during a hunting expedition. In 1951, Hugh Beaver, then the managing director of the Guinness Brewery, was part of a hunting party and became involved in an argument with his fellow hunters over whether the fastest game bird in Europe was the golden plover or the grouse. They could not find the answer in any book at that time, and Beaver realized that a book supplying the answers to these sorts of questions might prove popular.
Four years later, the first edition of Guinness Book of Records was published and reached the top of the British bestseller lists by Christmas of that year. There have been 23 versions of Guinness Book of Records and its yearly sales now total 3.5 million copies worldwide.
Actually, it is only in the last decade that the Chinese came to understand Guinness. Today, the desire of some Chinese people to hold a Guinness world record certificate is very strong.
Local government in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, set a record for having 1,064 persons play two-stringed Chinese fiddles at the same time. But in less than a month, the record was broken by the government in Xuzhou from the same province, where 1,490 persons played the instrument.
Some experts from the Institute of Sociology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences scoff at the desire to set Guinness world records because they are only regarded as entertainment in other countries. They say it is “abnormal” for Chinese people to have such enthusiasm.
In fact, some enterprises try to set a Guinness world record as a form of advertising and promotion. In Anshan, Liaoning Province, a furniture factory produced a 2.4-meter-high chair. Wang Bin, a consultant of the factory, said, “I don’t think we are wasting our time because we hope to further improve the fame of our enterprise and create more business opportunities by making the huge chair. Declaring the Guinness world record is a kind of commercial behavior.”
Some challenges can be very dangerous. For example, Chen Jianmin, an herbal doctor from Luzhou in Sichuan Province, who was given the nickname of “Oriental Superman,” locked himself in a glass room without any food and water for 49 days in 2004, to challenge the Guinness record of 43 days without food created by an American magician, David Blaine.
A BIG FAMILY: British Guinness World Records declares that the Confucius Pedigree is the longest pedigree in the world
Medical experts think that the average person can only live for three to four days without water, and that a long fast will harm such organs as kidney, brain and stomach. “It is inadvisable to hurt one’s health only to break a record,” one expert commented.
As the sole Guinness world records liaison officer in China, Wu Xiaohong has her own viewpoint. She said that China’s recent enthusiasm for Guinness world records merely indicates an improvement in national power and the harmony of society.
Guinness records are considered the “Olympics of the common people,” and the Chinese, who are entering an increasingly well-off society, are taking a greater interest. Wu said that while some governmental organizations and enterprises are also zealous to declare Guinness world records, they are beneficial in developing an advanced culture and demonstrating an enterprise’s positive features. “In Chinese traditional culture, indirectness and modesty were virtues, but today exposing one’s personality is in vogue,” Wu said.
She also said she believes that all the challengers should have a rational mind for Guinness records. It is inadvisable and unreasonable to waste money and time only to create a record.