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Amputee in rural China builds bionic arms from steel and pulleys

Amputee in rural China builds bionic arms from steel and pulleys

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sun jifa (ntdtv)
sun jifa (ntdtv)

When a devastating accident with a homemade fishing bomb destroyed both of Sun Jifa’s hands, the farmer from Jilin province in Northern China couldn’t afford the expensive prosthetics provided by the hospital. Faced with a family to take care of and rudimentary prostheses that made it impossible to do farm work, Sun began an eight-year quest to design and build his own bionic arms using whatever materials he had available. After a series of prototypes built from pulleys, wires, and scrap metal, Sun settled on a final design that proved so successful that amputees in neighboring towns have been clamoring to buy them. In this video from New Tang Dynasty Television, Sun reveals that he's already sold 1,000 of the arms at around $490 US apiece, turning his personal catastrophe into a prosperous family business.