China Focus: Dangerous choking game incident in Chinese school gains public attention

BEIJING -- A recent incident of a dangerous, euphoria-inducing choking game in a Chinese school has drawn public attention.

After playing the game, a middle school student fainted, fell down and broke out into a cold sweat in the city of Yiyang, Central China's Hunan province.

According to the boy's mother, who chose to go by her surname, Dong, as her son had a headache and nausea for about two days after the incident, she took him to the hospital for a brain CT scan. Dong said though the scan showed no serious issue, she had been scared.

The Yiyang education bureau said it had initiated an investigation into the choking game in the city and made arrangements to strengthen life safety education.

The game usually involves a player leaning against a wall, taking a deep breath, and then holding it in while another person presses on the player's chest, leading the player to enter a state of suffocation and hypoxia in a very short amount of time, according to players' description on the Internet.

Some netizens say the experience led them to see scenes from their childhood, "fantastic" scenery, or even a "past life." Some describe their experience as a "long dream" or a "blackout."

Gao Lu, chief cardiologist at Nankai Hospital in Tianjin municipality, said that using external force to compress the heart and inhibit breathing can cause brain ischemia and hypoxia, leading to suffocation in a short time.

In mild cases, participants may feel dizziness, nausea and weakness in their limbs. In severe cases, people can lose consciousness or hallucinate, and all organ functions can stop, endangering the life of the players, Gao said.

The choking game has multiple names such as the "death in three seconds" and the "game of death," and was referred to as "Dream Back to the Tang Dynasty" during the latest incident. Back in 2004, China's Ministry of Education said that the "game of death" could easily damage the physical and mental health of teenagers, calling for its spread among students to be stopped.

According to media reports, the game has led to incidents in regions such as Hebei, Hunan and Xinjiang, harming their health.

Similar games have also spread in countries and regions such as Southeast Asia, the US and Europe. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the US shows that at least 82 children between the ages of 6 and 19 died after playing the "pass-out game" between 1995 and 2007.

Xiong Bingqi, director of China's 21st Century Education Research Institute, said the game is often spread on the internet, and called on online platforms and supervision authorities to strengthen oversight over the dissemination of harmful information.

Xiong said parents and schools to help students form the correct understanding of life. "School campuses, families and even society should provide activities that are beneficial to physical and mental health, meet students' recreational and social needs, and help relieve their mental pressures."