The clip, shared on May 20 by the Weibo account of Dazhong Daily, a newspaper in the eastern province of Shandong, shows the primary school boy at a converted sewing machine in Anyang, in central China's Henan Province, working the foot treadle in a steady rhythm as his pen glides across the page.
The boy had long struggled to sit still while studying, his mother told mainland media in comments reported by Dazhong Daily. He would fidget with his eraser, shake his legs and repeatedly get up from his seat, sometimes spending half an hour staring at a single problem. Rather than keep nagging him, she moved his grandmother's old sewing machine into his study and let him channel that restless energy into the pedal.
The fix appeared to work, she said. With his hands and feet both occupied, the boy stayed focused for more than an hour, with noticeably better efficiency, and would settle in at the machine on his own. She added that it was an old Chinese brand called Feiren, oiled so it ran almost silently, and that she had fitted it with a new tabletop and a support to keep him from hunching too low over his work.
A Chinese boy pedals a sewing machine in a steady rhythm while doing his homework. Photo courtesy of Weibo
