Mind power turns boiled eggs into chicks in China? You must be yolking
- Social media users heap scorn on report but school principal says she has trained many students in her secret method
- While only one egg out of seven is said to have hatched in experiment, she is confident of better results in future
Claims by a vocational school in China that its students “hatched” boiled eggs through the power of their minds have been ridiculed on social media.
Guo Ping, principal of Chunlin Education in Zhengzhou, in the central province of Henan, is standing by the claim, published in the March issue of Jilin-based tourism journal Pictorial Geography, that she led a group of “special students” who channelled their “mind power and energy” to turn boiled fertilised eggs into live ones.
According to the article, one of seven eggs used in the “experiment” was successfully incubated and hatched on September 1 in a process that was witnessed by a number of people, including seven students, six parents and two professors. “Although the success rate was only 14.3 per cent, we are confident we will achieve better results in the future,” it said.
“I thought I was reading Harry Potter. Is the school Hogwarts? Such magic only belongs there,” one internet user wrote on social media platform Weibo. Others questioned how such claims could be published. “It’s a reflection of the chaotic education and publishing sectors,” another user wrote.
“You have to concentrate and reflect the eggs in your mind. Then you apply a way – which is a core secret – to make the eggs resurrect,” Guo told the Anhui-based Xinan Evening News. She also claimed to have trained many teachers and students in the method.
Another report by the same authors published in the tourism journal in June claimed students had used “super-psychological consciousness” in another experiment to resurrect more than 40 boiled eggs.
Calls to the school and Pictorial Geography were unanswered but an unnamed staff member of the journal told ThePaper.cn, a Shanghai-based state-owned digital news site, that it only accepted articles related to geography and charged 800 yuan (US$123) for each one published.
Chunlin Education was set up in 2009 with the approval of the Zhengzhou authorities. When not engaged in occupational training, it holds events to tap children’s potential and creativity, according to its website.
