Watch Out, Mo Yan: A Six-Year Old Writes Better Than You!
Posted: 05/27/2014 8:00 amTiger Mom is so out. Behold the new poster boy for extreme parenting, He Liesheng — better known by his moniker, Eagle Dad, claims that his son, six-year-old Duoduo, has published a book that is much better than any book written by Chinese writer Mo Yan, the winner of Nobel Prize in Literature in 2012.
Duoduo at his book tour stop in Guangzhou. Photo credit: Yangcheng Evening News
We have to hand it to him because perhaps the term “humble” was never in his dictionary. Not only did he bash Mo Yan by saying Duoduo writes better than the literary giant with his pictorial book entitled I Am the Naked Running Brother, but he also announced his ambitions during his son’s Guangzhou book tour to send his fourth-grade son to Tsinghua University when he reaches the age of ten, Yangcheng Evening News reported.
If this plan is realized, Duoduo would become the youngest student to ever enter the top university in China, whose graduates include former premier Zhu Rongji and hundreds of the country’s best and brightest.
The eagle dad has not been short of controversies. He first made international headlines in 2012 when he forced his then four year-old son to run naked in his yellow underwear outside in the snow in New York’s winter, one of the many extreme parenting methods he has since embraced to train his son to be tougher. When interviewed by CNN, he said, ”Like an eagle, I push my child to the limit so he can learn how to fly”.
Duoduo running in New York’s winter. Photo credit: Sina
The same year, the pair also made headlines when he and his son got stranded on Japan’s Mount Fuji at 11,000 feet when trying to climb the 12,388 foot mountain. Despite the failed attempt, Duoduo managed to unfurl a banner which read: “Diaoyu Islands belong to China! I want to land on the Diaoyu Islands!” A year later, at the age of five, Duoduo piloted a light aircraft on his own for 35 minutes because his father wanted him to “become braver by flying a plane and develop his curiosity and desire to explore,” Global Times reported.
This year, Duoduo will be busy travelling to different cities to promote his first book, and preparing for the second, third and fourth books to come. His father claims Duoduo writes every day, and each book is ready for publishing.
Perhaps by the age of 10, we will have a child prodigy at Tsinghua University. But four years from now, Duoduo surely will have had to accomplish more tasks, likely extreme ones, assigned by his dad. In other words, four more years robbed from his childhood.
Duoduo and his dad He Liesheng, aka the Eagle Dad. Photo credit: Sina
Home page image: Yangcheng Evening News
