China’s Guinness World Records: from a diamond-encrusted toilet seat to a head full of needles to skipping to solar panel art
- From collecting the most snow globes to performing incredible gymnastic feats, there is no shortage of Chinese world record holders
- Here is a selection of records that show grit, determination and persistence
Wendy Suen’s living room in Shanghai is filled with the world’s largest collection of snow globes. Her passion for the ornaments began in 2000 when her husband gave her one as a gift.
“It has a cat and a mouse inside and holds a lot of symbolism,” says Suen. “My husband was born in the Year of the Rat, and the mouse is 24-carat gold, which, to me, symbolises pure love.”
Charmed by the magical landscapes inside the snow globes, Suen decided to start collecting them. The Hong-Kong born human resources executive looked in souvenir shops to add to her collection wherever she travelled. She also started searching online for discontinued and collectible series, and by 2005 her collection had grown to 904.
One day while flipping through a copy of Guinness World Records in a bookshop, she decided to look up “largest collection of snow globes”. There was no such record at the time, so Suen contacted the publishers.
She told them about her collection and an official suggested she could be the first person to set a record for owning snow globes. She has since broken her own record twice, increasing her tally of globes to 1,888 in 2008 and reaching a whopping total of 4,059 in 2019.
Over the years, Guinness World Records has recorded a wide range of intriguing human achievements, particularly in China in recent times.
