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Taiwanese pull a truck: using a delicate body part |
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October 30, 2000
TAIPEI (AP) - Chen Ruey-he spread his legs, gritted his teeth and craned his neck, straining to pull the six-wheeler roped to his body. Chen and two companions stepped back slowly, hauling the truck filled with more than 100 giggling women and children. But this was no ordinary feat of strength. They dragged the truck with a rope stretched between its front fender and their penises. Chen, 45, was one of six practitioners of the traditional Chinese school of health and meditation exercises called "qigong" who showed off their ability in a Taipei parking lot on Sunday "Olympic athletes should do this. They will be able to increase and control their strength," said Chen, barely a drop of sweat staining his white tunic after the three men hauled the truck one meter (3.3 feet) forward. Chen, a mechanic from the southern city of Pingtung, volunteered for the event organized by the Chiu-chiu Shenkung Association - which vigorously promotes qigong all over Taiwan. "People compete with all their four limbs, why not this?" asked Tu Jin-sheng, the association's founder, a beefy martial arts expert with muscles bulging under his leopard-print undershirt. A centuries-old tradition that combines the spiritual with the physical, qigong teaches that the human body is crisscrossed with streams of energy called "qi" that originate at a point in the abdomen. Qigong practitioners are known to perform feats to prove their strength, but Chen's association is the only one here that promotes such fantastic exploits. Tu said he wants his group to pull a 747 jet, too. Such penile feats, he said, free the body's qi and display the health- and strength-giving properties of qigong. Spectators clapped and cheered as Chen and his companions hauled the truck a second time, but not everyone would be willing to put their body on the line in exactly that way. "I'm afraid it might fall off," said 46-year old mechanic Koo Yue-yuan. |