Quirky China: Leukaemia boy’s wish lights up social media, Yakult makes false coronavirus claims and girl forced to skip 3,000 times a day
- A brave five-year-old has caught the attention of Chinese social media after a video of him telling his mother to have another son if he dies goes viral
- Yakult makes false claims its products can prevent coronavirus and has received a hefty fine
The story of a five-year-old boy who has been fighting leukaemia for nearly two years and undergone 17 chemotherapies told his mother to have another child just like him if he dies, has gripped Chinese social media.
“I want to live for 1,000 years,” the boy named Momo said with tears in his eyes in a video uploaded to social media by his mother, who lives in Langfang, Hebei.
“I couldn’t speak at all,” his mother, whose name was not released, told state broadcaster CCTV. “I felt overwhelmed. I couldn’t accept that.”
The mother described Momo as a sensible and strong child who is cooperative when going through lumbar punctures by not moving at all, despite describing the pain as: “it hurts to death”.
He has undergone a bone marrow transplant as well, but his condition has not improved remarkably since, his mother said. The family has also accumulated debts to pay for Momo’s treatments.
“What a lovely and sensible boy. He actually understands everything,” wrote one user on Weibo. “I hope he recovers soon.”
Yakult fined over false coronavirus claims
Japanese beverage producer Yakult has been fined 450,000 yuan (US$65,000) by the Shanghai Market Supervision Authority for advertising that claimed its probiotic products can treat coronavirus.
The Shanghai-based China headquarters of Yakult apologised on Tuesday for: “the lack of scrutiny in its advertisement and serious loopholes in management”.
The fine came after some consumers reported the company to the authority for brochures distributed in a supermarket in Pudong District in April last year which said: “circulars from the state authorities for the first time proved that probiotics play an important role in preventing and treating the coronavirus”.
The Shanghai authority said Yakult’s false claims could easily influence the public and create a false sense of trust in its products, leading people to think mistakenly that probiotics could prevent the virus.
“The advertisement is helpful to increase Yakult’s sales and gain a competitive advantage,” the authority said in a statement.
The incident has been a major story in China where the company enjoys a high share of the probiotics market.
“It screwed up its own brand,” wrote one person on Weibo. “Why didn’t it say its products can make people stay alive forever?”
Mother forces daughter to skip 3,000 times a day, causes joint damage
A 13-year-old girl has developed joint damage in her legs after being forced by her mother to do 3,000 skips per day with a rope in order to make her taller.
The mother from Hangzhou in Zhejiang in eastern China said she told her daughter, identified with the pseudonym Yuanyuan, to skip extensively because of her anxiety about the girl’s appearance, she is 1.58 metres tall and weighs 60kg, the Beijing Evening News reported.
“She started to menstruate, but her bone can still grow a little bit. If she can grasp the chance, it’s likely that she can grow to 1.6 metres,” her mother said.
“Doing plenty of exercises can also help her lose weight. I hope she will become taller and thinner, so she will look more beautiful,” the mother said.
At the beginning of this year, the mother told Yuanyuan to skip 1,000 times a day, but this was raised to 3,000 per day during the summer holidays.
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When the girl complained of pain in her left knee, the mother assumed she was being lazy and forced her to continue skipping.
Several days later she took her daughter to a hospital where the girl was diagnosed with epiphysitis in her tibia, a bone disease often caused by excessive physical activity.
Yuanyuan is not the first case in China of a child injured from excessive skipping. It is a common belief among parents that skipping can make children taller.
