Chinese father makes daughter swim for 3 hours with hands and feet bound

A father tied his 10-year-old daughter's hands and feet and watched her swim in a chilly southern China river for three hours in a task he said would help the girl achieve her dream of swimming across the English Channel.

Huang Li swam more than a mile in the Xiang River on Tuesday, traveling with the current, her father said. The girl swam by moving like a dolphin and would sometimes paddle with her bound hands.

"Her swimming skills are perfect and she insisted on doing this," Huang Daosheng said in a telephone interview. The girl, who lives in the city of Zhangjiajie in Hunan province, got the idea after seeing something similar on a local television program, he said.



"It's not dangerous because, first, her swimming skills are really good and second, I was swimming with her, staying close to her," the father said. "I had her when I was 35, so she is my heart. I would never play around with her life."

The father, a teacher who enjoys swimming, coaches his daughter and said the family does not have enough money for her to have a better coach. The girl started the sport when she was six and her father said her goal is to one day swim across the English Channel.

"She asks me every day, 'Can I achieve this? Is the English Channel wide? Are the waves really big?'" Huang Daosheng said.