Guangbiao Chen, the Chinese Billionaire with an amazing business card, recently did an ice bucket challenge. Online in China, some folks are saying it was faked — something Chen denies.
You might remember Chen as the moneybags who sold cans of air with his face on it and helped a charity stunt that promised to givemoney to New York’s homeless. He loves a good publicity stunt.
In an 11-minute long video, Chen sits in a recycling bin as numerous bucket of water and then ice are dumped on his head. The video claims Chen sat in the bucket for thirty minutes. (Obviously, this is what the video 11-minute video claims.)
Chen says the water won’t be wasted but used for cooking meals for employees. Lovely.
As pointed out on major Chinese site Tencent (via ShanghaiIst), however, some commenters are claiming that the ice cubes aren’t real — that they are apparently acrylic. The rationale is that these ice cubes do not appear to sink.
After the ice cubes, what appear to be real ice chips are dumped into the recycling bin with Chen. Online in China, ShanghaiIst explains that the theory is that warm water was poured in first, making the ice chips bearable. Still, that looks cold!
Next, Chen reclines on a slab of ice and has another slab put on his legs and mid-section, making an ice sandwich. Then, some dude smashes it with a hammer. After that, Chen throws a slab of ice on the ground, all in the name of ALS.
Finally, there are two boxes of money — the amount, however, was unspecified.
One expert Tencent interviewed stated that surviving a stunt like this would depend on things like not only the water (and ice temperature), but also the amount of ice water Chen was submerged in.
Chen has denied that the charity stunt was fake and said he used to practice kung-fu at a Shaolin Temple. He’s no regular guy! Apparently!
All this attention for ALS is great — but I can’t help but feel the attention has become more on the meme and less on the disease. Whatever helps secure research funds, I guess.
You can watch Chen’s ice bucket challenge in the YouTube link below.
Guangbiao Chen’s Ice Bucket Challenge [YouTube]
Chen Guangbiao accused of using fake ice cubes in ALS Ice Bucket Challenge [ShanghaiIst]
陈光标否认”冰桶挑战”用假冰 系员工用模具自制 [Tencent]
Comments
8 responses to “Chinese Billionaire Denies Faking An Ice Bucket Challenge”
Clearly there is no actual gaming news at the moment…
Disappointingly, people seem to have forgotten their science classes. It’s quite well known that ice floats.
Who cares at least he donated money. Half the people that come up on my facebook feed don’t even mention anything about donating “UMmm I nominate my BFF staceeey, joaaaanaaa and hehe tom!”
Call me cynical, but this is exactly why I dislike flavour-of-the-month ‘internet causes.’ It’s all #bringbackourgirls and #kony2012 for a week until the next Transformers movie comes out.
If those boxes are as full as they look of money who gives a rats ass if he faked it.
People are getting upset about the ALS challenge an awful lot, but if it brings attention to a very important cause, and raises money to help research, who cares if there’s a whole bunch of self-promotion going on at the same time? Bigger picture is more important.
Ice cubes float.
Unless they are made out of heavy water, and then put into plain water, then they will sink
The 1up-ing has gotten out of hand, sitting in a wheelie bin for 30 minutes and then laying on a block of ice while someone smashes it with a hammer. At some point, is there a celebrity tied to the front of one of those ships that smashes through ice?
I’ll Donate to ALS to see that. Make it one of those train wreck celebrities 🙂
I’m more concerned about how he said he plans to reuse the ice/water for cooking. There’s some nasty looking brown ice in that animated GIF.