Teland La to reclaim Guinness World Record with chopstick prowess

About 100 students gathered in White Plaza on Sunday afternoon to support and spectate a birthday celebration for Teland La ’24 M.S. ’25, where he sought to break the Guinness World Record for most grains of rice eaten with chopsticks in one minute.

La picked up 62 grains. He first broke the record with 27 grains in April 2022, when he was a Stanford sophomore. That record was beaten in February 2024 with 37 grains, which La said he reclaimed on Sunday.

La’s Sunday attempt has yet to be adjudicated by Guinness World Record. It may take up to 12 weeks for the video to be reviewed and validated by Guinness World Records.

La said he did not care much when his first record was broken by someone else and he did not take Sunday’s attempt very seriously. He said he wanted to do something special for his last year at Stanford.

“It was much less about the record and more about just having fun, getting people together for my birthday. Afterwards, we celebrated, and we all hung out together and watched stuff, and it was nice,” he said.

He said it was funny and surreal that the event drew such a large crowd, with many people recording him. Flyers about the event were posted around campus and posts were made on Reddit, Fizz and Instagram. Nikhil Lyles ’24 M.S. ’25 said he spontaneously helped La put up the flyers in an after-midnight decision. 

“I was really happy for [La], and it definitely felt pretty special since he was doing his reclaiming attempt on his birthday,” Lyles said.

Despite beating his first record by 35 grains, La did not practice that much for the event. La said he occasionally practiced at restaurants when he wanted to mess around, and also for a half-hour minutes before the event.

Luke Virsik ’24 MS ’25 was one of the timekeepers in 2022 during La’s first record breaking moment. He said it was cool to see La doing something special for their last year on campus. 

“So it’s kind of coming full circle, right?” he said. “That was our first year on campus, and this is our last so it felt like we were doing something we’ve done before, but doing it better.”

Carolyn Ky ’24 M.S. ’25 said she has not spoken much to La since their sophomore year, but she decided to come to support him after seeing an Instagram post promoting the event. 

“It’s just nice to see students just do very random things for the sake of just trying it out,” she said. “One thing that I know about Teland is that he does outlandish things all the time. He’s someone who pushes himself, I think, to make the most of opportunities around him.”