The whistle taken out from Lin’s bronchus Photo: screenshot of video posted on Sina Weibo

How long can a whistle stay in the human body? A Chinese man's experience proves that it can be 20 years.

A man living in Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong Province went to a local hospital to treat his pneumonia, and when talking to doctors he said he had swallowed a whistle by accident at the age of 6 and had never had it removed. He said he didn't tell anyone for fear of being scolded by his parents.

Now the man, surnamed Lin, is 26 years old. He has had pneumonia multiple times, Shenzhen TV Station reported on Thursday.

Lin has been to hospital many times but could not find where the whistle was, so he began to be unsure whether it was still in his body.

This time he sought help again at another hospital in Shenzhen and after a computerized tomography examination of his bronchus, his doctor Liu Nian found something strange.

Liu used a bronchoscope to see a narrow ring in Lin's bronchus, but it could not be directly taken out. So Lin had to have a minimally invasive surgery, with the bronchus being cut open to take the whistle out.

The whole process took around 20 minutes.

The black whistle has a similar shape with the bronchus, so it was difficult to find it, the doctor told Shenzhen TV Station.

Lin's experience shocked many Chinese netizens. The related hashtag has been viewed more than 190 million times on Sina Weibo as of Thursday.

Besides discussing the bizarre story, some netizens turned to the educational issue and suggested that parents should not be too hard on their children, or they might not dare to share anything with them.

"It is so dangerous to contain an object in the body for many years. Parents should carefully think about how to communicate with children to avoid such a situation," one netizen commented on Sina Weibo.