After part-time philanthropist, full-time media whore Chen Guangbiao participated in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge in Nanjing this past Friday, he posted a few pictures of the event on his official Weibo account and announced that a video of his challenge would be published very soon.
“As China’s chief philanthropist and number one low-carbon environmentalist,” Chen wrote on his Weibo account, “it is my honor to help people afflicted with motor neuron disease.”
“If anyone can sit in this ice water longer than my 30 minutes, I will donate another one million yuan,” he added. “This challenge stands for six days.”
In a bizarre attempt to preemptively counter critics, Chen added, “None of this ice water will be wasted. Tonight, we’ll be re-using this water to make staff dinner.”
The 11-minute-long video showed Chen sitting in a rubbish bin while over 30 buckets of ice were poured over his head. According to the host’s narration, Chen had stayed in the ice bucket for 30 minutes.
When the video got reposted by thousands of netizens, many doubted the authenticity of of the stunt, namely, the ice. A web user named 才让多吉 observed that the ice sank into the water, and claimed that it was acrylic.
Another netizen named 钢铁侠 claimed that “Human beings can only stay in ice water for a few minutes. At the beginning, they must have poured warm water and fake ice onto Chen,” Tencent News reports.
Yesterday, Chen posted to Weibo and denied the fake ice accusations. He claimed that the small ice cubes were made by his company staff with plastic moulds. To back up his claim, he said that that he would post a video showing him eating the ice cubes to prove they were the real deal. He added that he used to practice Kungfu in Shaolin Temple, so his health is much better than most other people (Chen has made it very clear in the past that he is not like most other people).
Wang Yingjie, head of public relations for the Lantian Rescue Team, explained to reporters that if the ice cubes accounted for 60 percent of the contents in the bin, sitting inside of the ice water for 30 minutes could result in death. It all depended on how many ice cubes were in the bin at the time, he said.
When analyzing Chen’s video, Wang noted that the garbage bin wasn’t very big and Chen’s “chubby” figure took up a lot of space. When he squatted in it, there wouldn’t be much room for water and ice.
“The ice-water mixture hardly reached zero degrees. For the first ten minutes, the temperature was probably higher than 16 degrees; but later, it likely ranged from six to 10 degree celsius. A person can stay in such a temperature for around 10 minutes, and Chen did appear pale,” Wang said, concluding that the ice cubes probably weren’t fake.
You can watch the video below:
By Lucy Liu
