Asia-Pacific News

Taiwan magician aims at world record for being buried alive

May 30, 2011, 15:35 GMT

Taipei - A Taiwanese magician is aiming to set a world record by being buried alive for 100 hours, or four days, the organizer of the event said in Taipei on Monday.

Cho Sheng-keng, whose stage name is Igo, entered a telephone kiosk which was then filled with 3 tonnes of sand, on Sunday at 3 pm (0700 GMT).

Cho, 30, aims to spend 100 hours in the kiosk, situated at the Huashan Creative Park in Taipei, breathing through one tube and being fed water through another.

A hole in the front of the kiosk allows Cho to shake hands with visitors and signal if he is in danger. Staff members of his magic troupe, the Mirror Theatre, are monitoring his breathing, heartbeat and body temperature around the clock.

'If Cho points a finger downward, or if we see from our monitor that something has gone wrong, we will smash the glass of the kiosk to rescue him,' Chang Chia-lun, director of the Mirror Theater, told the German Press Agency dpa.

'One day has passed and he is doing fine. We believe he can come out of the kiosk at 7 pm Thursday safely,' he added.

Cho wanted to perform the feat to test the limits of human endurance.

'Some have tried it, but they were placed in a wooden box which was buried underground. Cho is buried in sand, and he wants to set a Guinness World Record for that,' Chang said.

Being buried alive is a dangerous stunt that has fascinated many magicians and escape artists, including the Hungarian-born American magician and escape artist Harry Houdini and American magician David Blaine.

On November 27, 2000, Blaine was encased in a huge block of ice located in New York City's Times Square, to perform his magic stunt Frozen in Time.

A tube supplied him air while his urine passed through another tube.

Blaine was encased in the box of ice for nearly 64 hours, or almost three days, before being removed with chain saws.