Social media is buzzing with excitement over a video where two Chinese schoolchildren demonstrate incredible speed and coordination. The boys assembled a classic Rubik's Cube in just 8.57 seconds, setting a new world record in the pair assembly category. This result was made possible thanks to perfect synchronization and the lightning-fast reactions of the young athletes.
The event took place at a speedcubing tournament in Haiyan, Jiangsu province. Spectators witnessed not just a competition, but a true performance. Before the timer started, the children exchanged phrases in their "secret code" in a split second to distribute zones of responsibility. One of the participants clearly commanded: "First put the blue, then the orange, turn it into XC, and then do this".
After this command, they instantly began manipulating the 3x3x3 puzzle with four hands. The boys' movements were so refined that netizens jokingly compared them to the Jaeger pilots from the sci-fi film "Pacific Rim," acting as a single organism. Despite the figure of 8.57 seconds appearing in some amateur reprints, the time on the timer was actually exactly 8 seconds.
This success is just the tip of the iceberg. In recent years, China has become an absolute dominant force in world speedcubing, largely due to a developed training system introduced in elementary schools. Young cubers from the Middle Kingdom regularly break official records of the World Cube Association (WCA).
At the end of 2025, 11-year-old Chinese speedcuber Ziyu Ye set a historic world record in assembling the mini-cube 2x2x2, completing the task in 0.39 seconds. In the 3x3x3 discipline, leadership was also long held by the Chinese: 11-year-old Wang Yiheng showed a result of 3.08 seconds. However, in February 2026, he was surpassed by 9-year-old Pole Teodor Zayder, who assembled the cube in 2.76 seconds. Nevertheless, the pair record of Chinese schoolchildren remains a unique achievement, demonstrating the highest level of teamwork in the world of speed puzzles.