As a result of domestic strife, a 20-something woman in a residential compound in the Daoli district of Harbin, Heilongjiang province locked out her boyfriend, stepped onto the balcony of their 5th story apartment, and threatened to jump. She crawled out of the window and onto a wire clothesline, where she remained, distraught, according to a witness on the ground, as reported by Xinhua.

Neighbors and passersby called up to her and begged her not to jump, because she was young and had her whole life ahead of her. They said, “Think about your parents!” Her boyfriend went downstairs and knocked on his neighbor’s door, who let him in. Directly on the floor below her, he stuck his body out of the balcony window and tried to get her to calm down.

And then, the clothesline teetered, according to the eyewitness. She fell.

He caught her.

Several people helped hold the woman as she dangled in the air. According to witnesses, she pawed at her helpers, wanting to fall. Shortly after, firefighters arrived. They climbed to the third-story balcony and helped push her to safety.

There’s more to this story. The neighbor, Liang Shuang, played an integral part in the rescue. He grabbed the boyfriend’s belt and also reached out for the falling girl. His wife and daughter, home at the time, also helped.

It was serendipitous that they would all even be there to begin with. His parents, who had been visiting from Yichun, Heilongjiang, wanted to return home the day before, but Liang Shuang convinced them to stay an extra day.

A journalist dialed up Liang Shuang’s father, Liang Xibin, 51, who, when informed of what his son did, said, “That’s nothing. How can one not help someone in need? Can’t possibly just stand and watch. I think anyone in this situation would have reached out a hand and helped.”

For his efforts, netizens have dubbed Mr. Liang “China’s Good Neighbor.”

We’ve seen suicides caught on tape in Harbin before — leaping from a residential building, specifically, after a break-up. This rescue was a lot better.

(H/T Alicia)

A two-and-a-half-year-old girl is lucky to be alive after she fell from the fourth story of a building in Ningbo, Zhejiang province.

The toddler, identified as Qiqi, climbed on the window sill and — sigh if you’ve heard this before — crawled right on out. Her parents had left her home alone as she was sleeping, because toddlers never wake up when they’re home alone or anything.

Ah, but I don’t mean to bury the good part: a group of deliverymen, passing underneath, saw the girl dangling, and managed to catch her as she fell. (We’ve seen this before, wonderfully.) Two men appeared to sustain injuries, but the girl is okay. She’ll have one heck of a story to tell later.

The deliverymen, we hope, get all the credit they deserve.

Nearly die. Not die. And thank goodness for that and all, but do cats ever walk out of fourth-story windows? Do dogs? Do rats? How dumb are the younglings of the human race?

In Shishi, Fujian province recently, a five-year-old boy woke up, saw no one was home, opened a window, and crawled out. He avoided serious injury and possible death thanks to an air conditioning unit. Pinned between the AC and side of the building, there the child remained until adults could rush up to save him.

According to Daily Mail:

A neighbour who first saw the boy said: ‘Suddenly I heard loud baby cries. Looking out I was terrified to see a boy was struggling in the air, with his head stuck behind the air conditioner.’

Five neighbours rushed up to the boy’s flat and broke in. One said: ‘I grabbed the boy’s head, preventing him from slipping down further.’

Meanwhile, the other three broke into the flat below so that they could lean out the window and support the boy’s weight. The boy was eventually rescued 40 minutes later.

Keeping in mind that we’ve seen this before – many, many times – here are two more looks at this representative of our dum-dum race:

Five-year-old boy falls from fourth floor window… (Daily Mail, h/t Alicia)

Ah, the classic China story: toddlers falling off balconies. I’ve gotten a bit complacent and let a few of these tales go unblogged, but this one from Zhongshan, Guangdong province has to go up.

On March 21 at about 11 pm, a small girl crawled or walked out of her sixth-floor apartment balcony. She clung onto the ledge for dear life. Seeing this, about 10 passersby quickly grabbed a tarp in expectation of catching her if she fell. Sure enough, because she’s a toddler, she fell.

The tarp wasn’t quite in place, but the newscaster in the above video reports a gentleman surnamed Deng used his head to redirect the girl to the tarp. (Like Peter Crouch?) Thus, a life was saved.

The girl’s mother is interviewed later in the vid. Apparently the little girl, because she’s a stupid liar, said she would go the fuck to sleep*. Once her mom was out of sight, she crawled off a balcony.

The girl broke her hand. Deng, the hero, suffered injuries as well, but he’ll be fine. A good ending all around, with the winner being the news station that created this computer-animated dramatization of the fall and catch. I GIFed it for you:

Here’s another look, but with feeling.

In Dianjiang, Sichuan province recently, a woman and child found themselves trapped on a balcony as a fast-moving fire laid waste to their apartment. It turned into a dramatic race against time for rescue workers, who fought to reach the two before the flames ate them alive.

Russia Today has the video.

We’re not mean people who enjoy laughing at others’ misfortune, but if your head gets stuck between railings — concrete ones, requiring firefighters to be called in, with half a neighborhood watching — you deserve to be clucked at. Sorry, kid.

But you live and learn, and life gets better. Easier? Probably not. But better.

Also, you now can empathize with Medieval thieves who were put in the stocks. So there’s that. Also, you didn’t die. Youku video for those in China after the jump.

Adults continue to be unable to resist doing noble things for young children in need. Danwei noted yesterday a story that made the front page of Today Morning News: on Monday evening, a man surnamed Liu heard the cries of a young boy outside. He then…

…saw the boy dangling from a third-floor window of the apartment building opposite his, about to fall. He bolted down 6 flights of stairs and scaled the other building to where the boy was stuck. Clinging to the outside of the building, with one foot on the second-floor anti-theft grate, he managed to support the boy’s body with one hand for 20 minutes until firefighters arrived to cut the iron railing and free the boy. The child was saved, and Xiao Liu became a local hero overnight.

One line in particular that he told journalists — “When you see other people in trouble, it’s normal to help them” — has netizens swooning. What a concept!

We’ll mark this one down as favorable outcome. The last incident involving a baby and a balcony, unfortunately, did not end so well. 

Also see:

June 3, Guangdong province: 4-year-old stuck on 4th-story balcony

June 8, Guangxi autonomous region: 4-year-old stuck between 4th-story guard railings

June 11, Guangdong province: 2-year-old stuck between 7th-story guard railings

Jesus. It was only six hours ago that I wrote, regarding balcony railings, “When until — heavens forbid — a young child actually falls through?” At 2:41 pm today, China News posted a video from a Shenzhen TV station (embedded) reporting that yesterday, a three-year-old girl died after falling off a fourth-story balcony. According to the father, who is interviewed in the video, the girl woke up from her nap and began milling about when she couldn’t find anyone home (both parents work, and the person they asked to look after her had supposedly gone out to buy groceries). She found her way outside, and that’s when tragedy struck.

The father says their balcony railings are spaced too far apart. Incidentally, national regulations for balcony construction exist for residential buildings, according to the news report: railings should not be spaced more than 11 centimeters apart.

We’re then told that there was a separate incident recently, in Foshan, involving a mother and her daughter, a fifth-grader. The two were leaning against a balcony railing when the railing broke — the nightmare of acrophobics everywhere. We’re not told how far the two fell, but the daughter died and the mother suffered serious injuries.

The anonymous man who rescued a young child last week from a fourth-floor balcony has been tracked down and rewarded 50,000 yuan and a job from the Guangzhou municipality. According to China Daily, which curated content from ycwb.com (assume [sic]‘s):

Zhou Chong, 23, rescued the little girl falling from the balcony on June 3, but left after she was safe. The local government ordered an all out effort to find him to promote his heroic deed.

Shi Qizhu, head of Tianhe district in Guangzhou, visited Zhou on Sunday, saying “Zhou saved a girl’s life and the family’s happiness regardless of his own safety. As a local government, we must never forget this.”

There’s no word yet about this man‘s reward — he also scaled the side of a building to rescue a young child from a high place — and below is a man climbing from the seventh story to rescue another child dangling from a railing.

On that note — what’s going on here? I mean, in the apartment buildings of this country, occupied by parents with toddlers. When until — heavens forbid — a young child actually falls through? (Or is that not possible, and that’s some sort of cosmic point?) UPDATE, 5:38 pm: Ugh.

Guangzhou’s municipal government has set quite the precedent — will the governments of the other two places follow suit?

We’ll end on this from hero Zhou:

Zhou said he never thought his heroic act would earn his a reward and job offer. He added that he just did what was right and he was not scared of heights due to his working experiences as a welder.

It was only last Sunday that a kid in Guangdong province wandered onto his balcony and fell through a crack, and might have plummeted to serious injury if not for a Good Samaritan who climbed out of his window to help.

Two days ago, the exact same thing appears to have happened in Guangxi province. Once again, a young boy falls through a railing — this time from a window — and would have slipped through if not for his head getting get pinned between the bars. (Good on the manufacturers of these railings, by the way, to make them just narrow enough so that a toddler can’t pass through.) A 50-some-year-old man surnamed Chen climbed outside and, to loud gasps from onlookers, freed the boy from his predicament. Afterwards, people discovered that no one was home, and that the door to the apartment was locked.

The mother, interviewed with the child at a hospital, said she got complacent when she saw her boy asleep, and went outside to buy some groceries. That mistake, she said, will never happen again. Ku6 video for those in China after the jump. (H/T Alicia)

See update, 6/12.

A small child in Guangdong province slipped out into his family’s fourth-story balcony on Sunday morning, then slipped through a crack. Luckily, the crack was just narrow enough to catch his her head — that is, in the above video, she’s not really holding on with hisher hands… she’s dangling from his her noggin. Residents who heard the boy’s girl’s cries called emergency personnel, but while waiting, some opened up a big bedsheet underneath to catch him her should she fall, while a man (identified simply as “yellow-shirted man”) climbed out from his third-story window and tried to push the child up. Dramatic, all.

The incident is being used as a cautionary tale by news media here for parents to pay more attention to their children. Um… like, yeah. Though I’m not sure what more can be said in this case than, “Don’t let the lil’ one crawl out onto that balcony with those cracks he can fall through.” Longer Sina video after the jump. UPDATE, 3:04 pm: Can’t stop Sina‘s auto-play, so you’re getting Youku’s embed instead. Here’s the raw video though.