8-year-old Chinese girl Zhang Huimin has just completed a grueling 55 days, 3,558 km (2,211 mi.) marathon from her hometown of Hainan to Beijing. That’s her father on a motorcycle – apparently, he can’t keep up running with the girl!
Link | Original Article [in Chinese] – Thanks Jee!
Previously on Neatorama: Child Marathon Runners of India | Budhia Singh, India’s Forrest Gump
Kirbie
More Chinese propoganda? I hear that some children training to be athletes are forced to train while injured resulting in permanent injuries leaving them crippled for life. How the olympics can be held in a country that claims to be developed while failing to achieve basic standards of human rights is beyond me.
Dim67
This is pure child-abuse and the father should be jailed for making his daughter do this. I also think we should boycot the Olympics. Nuff said.
Sid Morrison
Well, at least daddy didn’t bury her shortly after birth as is more the custom there for unwanted girl babies.
John
It is so nice to see children being active. Not like here, where American children are getting fatter and fatter at alarming rates and childhood diabetes is at epidemic levels. This really embodies how a stron communist governemnt can inspire people to be individuals and do great things while the American democracy is a stifling coddling nightmare, an endless womb that most children never want nor need to crawl out of. Go China!
meg
Ugh. Happy medium between the US’s fat and hideous children and the Chinese propaganda and forcing children into sports is what I think we need. We’re not right. China’s not right.
Angela
Does that girl look like she was forced into it? Yeah yeah say its Chinese propaganda, but fact is Americans cuddle their children way to much; even camping requires the parents to haul half the house to a camping site, and then layer so much lotions and sprays on them that water will just kind of repel and flow around them when they swim. Gimme a break, your quick assumptions and dismissal only shows the extent to which you’ve come to accept the propagandas in this country without questioning.
Jesse
I agree with Angela. I don’t think she was forced into it. How can you make a 8 year old run for 55 days? buy her a pony? At least she is not making blouses for Walmart.
meg
I’m simply going off the fact that I KNOW several good people who have come here from china, and both them and their siblings were forced into gymnastics and diving respectively, and they hated it so much. It was never an option for them to quit. To quit would be shameful and that’s something that most rural chinese find impossible to handle.
I agree-at least she isn’t making blouses for walmart.
The fact that her father was able to go along with her on that run shows that he had enough money not to work those 55 days-something most Chinese people dont have. It’s the people with enough money like that who tend to force their kids into sports the kids want no part of but continue to work in simply because they cant say no.
For the sake of happiness, let’s just assume she’s a little girl who loves to run and she’s supported by donations given by her cheering onlookers.
meg
I’m sure that came across wrong. It does look like an incredibly happy child and father team. I’m amazed they were able to support that trek, but more power to them for it.
My point was just that not everything that the Chinese push on their kids is right. Just like (the lack of pushing) here. Just like the rest of the world.
Caz
Chinese propaganda? Oh give me a break. We should be so lucky to have this kind of “propaganda” in the US instead of the nation of fast food eating video game playing zombies we’re raising.
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