Another day, another great rescue by a firefighter in China. On Monday in Tongren, Guizhou province, a woman who had slit her wrist crawled out of a 7th-floor window and threatened to jump. It took a fast-thinking firefighter with an even faster move to save her.

Last Wednesday, a firefighter neutralized a gunman in Fujian province. And of course, there was this miraculous catch of a jumper in Harbin last week.

Apologies for the music in this video.

A young woman scaled a railing above the Sanlitun Hooters in Beijing yesterday at around 9:30 am and threatened to jump. Policemen were soon on the scene. After a bit of talk, one quick-thinking officer handcuffed his wrist to hers before pulling her to safety.

Sina has this story:

After receiving the report, the police soon arrived at the scene and began to persuade the woman out of suicide. Some of the policemen used his handcuffs to stabilize the woman. She was finally brought to the ground safely after half an hour of mediation.

Nice going. Of course, it’s only the second-best suicide rescue of the week.

(H/T Alicia)

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 woman jumped in front of a train at Guomao Subway Station on Line 1 in Beijing yesterday and lived to tell about it. When she emerged from between carriages, pulling herself onto the platform from the tracks, she cried over and over, “Impossible…”

“Didn’t hit her,” a bystander marvels while police implore the people around her to stop filming.

We hope this woman, whoever she is, makes the most out of her new lease on life. We’re not ones to believe in providence, but in this episode, a sign, perhaps.

A massive police and paramilitary presence has descended upon Fengtai District around Jingwen Clothing and Apparel Shopping Mall, the scene of either a suicide or murder last Friday.

On May 3, a young woman from Anhui province fell to her death from the Jingwen building after allegedly being gang-raped. Police hastily ruled her death a suicide and refused her family’s request to see the surveillance footage.

This afternoon, thousands (edit: possibly only “hundreds”) of people — many who are migrant workers from Anhui — gathered in a planned protest between Jingwen and Yongdingmen, a gate just south of the Temple of Heaven on Second Ring Road (a few kilometers north of Jingwen). Hundreds of police have shown up in turn, many in riot gear. Traffic is reportedly backed up for miles.

As of this moment, Baidu searches for “Jingwen” are blocked “according to relevant laws, regulations and policies.”

Sina Weibo, meanwhile, is blocking searches for “Yongdingmen”:

One clever netizen, @伊莲娜月光手帕, has posted the following pictures with the comment: “今天北京YONG定门” (“Today at Beijing’s Yongdingmen,” with YONG written in English to elude censors). Please take note of the chat conversation that follows, which was posted about fifteen minutes ago. Our translation:

- Something big happened in Beijing.

- What’s the situation?

- Cops, SWAT, riot police, helicopters. All here.

- What happened?

- Across from me a shopping center, Jingwen. An Anhui girl was gang-raped by Jingwen security guards, then leapt from the sixth story.

The nearby cops say it was suicide, there’s no case. Jingwen boss has influence

Right now Anhui people, a few thousand others are preparing to march to Tiananmen.

If indeed a march to Tiananmen was planned, that might explain the above blockade.

We’ll give you updates as we learn more.

(H/T Nick A.)

UPDATE, 6:29 pm: The posts are disappearing fast from Sina Weibo, but here’s a screenshot:

7 pm: There are virtually two PLA soldiers on every block along Dongzhimen Outer Street. Very unusual. Anyone finding increased security in their neighborhoods?

7:25 pm: The first video has appeared, via NewChinaChannel:

8:15 pm: Don’t say authorities don’t know how to handle these type of situations. According to someone on the ground, traffic remains backed up because police have sealed off the area (caveat: though it’s sometimes hard to tell the exact cause of evening Beijing gridlock). “Small mobile clusters” of cops are roving and keeping watch on those approaching Yongdingmen.

8:37 pm: Via the Beijing Public Security Bureau’s Sina Weibo, timestapped 11:17 am (translating errors are mine):

May 8, 2013 at 10 am, approximately a hundred people from outside the city came to Beijing Fengtai District and gathered in front of Jingwen Shopping Center. The Public Security Bureau quickly mobilized with relevant departments and police to handle the situation. According to preliminary understanding, in the early morning on the 3rd of this month, a young woman from Anhui died after falling off the Jingwen building, and a segment of those who gathered today were from her hometown who went to Jingwen’s door to make the issue known. At present, police are maintaining order at the scene.

UPDATE, 5/9, 1:44 am: Another video (also please see the accompanying post), found by China Digital Times:

Also, cleaned up some typos, etc. End of updates.

More on this topic:

• “Woman Is Arrested In Rape Rumor That Ignited Beijing Protest”
• Police Release Edited Security Footage

Yan Yinan, co-host of China Radio International’s daily program China Drive, died in an apparent suicide on Friday when she jumped off her apartment building, sources say. Some of her colleagues were seen crying inside the CRI office on Friday.

A source said CRI management has emailed staffers asking them to keep news of Yan’s death off social media out of respect for her family, and that there is an internal “ongoing discussion” about how to proceed.

Yesterday, however, former CRI employee Tom McGregor broke the story in Dallas Blog, though with factual inaccuracies. His claim that Yan jumped off the “CRI building on Friday afternoon” has been disputed by multiple sources at CRI.

“Yinan was a friend, a mentor at CRI, a consummate professional on air and off the air who impacted her colleagues, her workplace, her friends, and her fans every day that they knew her,” said one of her colleagues, who asked to remain unnamed. “This is a loss for all of them.”

A private memorial is planned at the CRI office this Thursday.

Yan’s China Drive co-host, Mark Griffiths, politely declined to comment when reached by phone. We have reached out to CRI management via email.

(Image CRI)

UPDATE, 8:58 pm: CRI has emailed its staff the following official statement:

China Radio International is sad to announce the tragic passing of Yan Yinan after a struggle with illness. She will be missed as a colleague and friend. Out of respect for her privacy and the wishes of her family, we hope everyone can join us in giving them the ability to grieve in private.

First, let’s make clear that it could be a suicide. It’s certainly possible that someone would go to the riverbank, bind his feet, then hands, then tie a manhole cover onto his body and jump in.

But if you were the police, would you really rush to that conclusion in less than two days?

On Monday, a man surnamed Chen, who turns 30 this year, was found at the bottom of the Xincheng (New Town) River near Wangyue Bridge in Yangzhou, Jiangsu province, according to Yangzhou Daily. His hands and feet were bound, and there was a manhole cover  tied to his body. Police inspected the scene and then sent the body to the forensics lab, where, after a postmortem, they concluded that Chen committed suicide.

“Residents at the scene guessed one after another that foul play was involved,” Yangzhou Daily points out.

Chen is reported from Lianzhou, Guangdong province. Authorities are now currently investigating the “reason for his suicide.”

(H/T Johan)

For all the topics that Chinese TV news won’t touch for fear of upsetting the wrong censors, one subject they don’t shy away from is death, either on the road or, as is the case here, from a rooftop.

Last Thursday at a residential compound in Harbin, Heilongjiang province, someone took out a camera and filmed a 20-something-year-old man jumping to his death from a rooftop. Let that sentence sink in for moment.

The police officer interviewed in this video says the man was very agitated and told the woman next to him, “Get away from me.” Spectators shouted up at him, “Don’t do anything stupid!” which seemed to agitate him more. The woman, apparently his girlfriend, is said to have gotten on her knees to beg him to reconsider. He turned his back to the camera, to the street, the rest of the world, and facing her said the words, Wo zou le – “I’m leaving now.”

Youku video for those in China after the jump.

UPDATE, 11/5, 10:11 am: Redditors have uncovered high-def pictures. Several more here.

(H/T Alicia)

By RFH

We wanted to highlight our school suicide story earlier this week because we felt many of the elements surrounding the official reaction – subterfuge, censorship, a lack of respect for both the living and dead – were unfortunately far too common. Now comes another bleak story of teenage suicide – and the disgraceful reactions to them.

Earlier this week, People’s Daily reported on two girls who “jumped into a pool and drowned” last Thursday after “leaving notes saying the suicides could help them travel back to ancient times.” The note stated that Xiao Hua was upset after losing a remote control and Xiao Mei apparently “planned to travel back to the Qing Dynasty… and wanted to visit outer space.” Only the most exploitative or foolish of people would see this tragedy and extrapolate that the girls killed themselves because of something on TV – and not for the myriad inarticulate reasons that might make someone take their own life.

Enter foolish people:

None of the members from the two families has any clue why the tragedy happened. According to Mei’s mom, her daughter was a girl of her words and that is probably why when Mei said to commit suicide together with Hua, she kept her promise. And according to Hua’s sister, Hua was a perfectly normal girl, well-behaviored and having good relationships with family members. There was no reason to think of death only for a missing remote control.

To other people in the village, however, the back story was simple – they watched too much time cross-over TV dramas.

[Sina, March 4, via Offbeat China]

Up until last year, time-traveling shows, featuring women who have a close brush with death and wake up to find themselves in feudal times (and quickly caught in courtly intrigues and royal romance, rather than perishing horribly), were officially big in China; until, that was, it was decided they weren’t.

Both People’s Daily and China Daily brandished the recent double suicide as sorrowful vindication of a 2010 government edict to “ban” time-travel shows (a better word might be discourage, since the series are still actually available on satellite reruns. It’s just like anything that’s popular – you can’t view it on state TV). The State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television decided these shows “casually make up myths, have monstrous and weird plots, use absurd tactics, and even promote feudalism, superstition, fatalism and reincarnation.” It gets even more shocking: “the producers and writers [were] treating the serious history in a frivolous way, which should by no means be encouraged anymore.”

Yeah, it’s called fiction – but the CCP wants to maintain its monopoly on historical distortions and absurd fantasies. As mentioned, these shows don’t appear on state networks, which enjoy the ever-marvelous, un-ironic mnemonic of CCTV; most, like the highly popular Palace, are made and broadcast by Hunan satellite TV, which specializes in making tacky programs such as dating shows and Pop Idol-type stuff that are hugely popular with the masses but less so with the ageing stiffs who run this joint.

In a country with few competing narratives or open debate about historical events, and where frank discussion of even long-ago data is marginalized as a threat to stability, banning your aunt’s beloved time-travel shows is but a logical conclusion to the stranglehold on history – even dating back thousands of years (Ghenghis Khan was a fine dictator – one of ours!).

Another theory reasonably suggests that all this yearning for bygone dynasties and wanting to live in some kind of alternative golden age somewhat undermines the Party’s notion that this is the Golden Age of China.

But the reality of this Golden Age bears little relationship to what you’ll see outside your window. One show that did attempt to depict reality, Snail House, dramatized the pressures of the housing market. It was popular. It was critically acclaimed. It was spiked after eight episodes.

China Daily, meanwhile, quotes comedian (and CPPCC member – the two are far from mutually exclusive) Huang Hong opining that Chinese TV should not indulge in “absurdity and exaggeration” when it comes to factual elements. Go on, then – let’s see some realistic programming. A drama set among a rural farming community, threatened by developers in cahoots with local officials (The Archers finally meets The Wire); an unsympathetic portrait of Chongqing’s much-beleaguered mafia families (The Sopranos with added numbing spice); or a sitcom about a group of wisecracking neighbors in a down-at-heel Beijing hutong who routinely wander into each others’ homes (Peng You!). Just stop co-opting teen suicides for your misguided agenda.

Via Jinghua Times (link below)

By RFH

On February 28, students of Yuying High School were gathering on the playground at 9:30 am for their daily morning exercise when a girl appeared on the 4th floor of a north building. “She was standing at the window of a Grade 11 classroom, naked, holding her clothes,” a student recalled. “We were all petrified and didn’t know what to do. Within three seconds, she dropped the clothes next to her and jumped off the windowsill.”

Screams ripped across the playground. Twenty minutes later, an ambulance arrived to take the girl, Shen He – still alive – to the hospital. Authorities later confirmed that she died there. Around noon, police showed up for an “investigation.”

What’s with the quote marks, you wonder?

Because the school’s first priority was damage control. Forget counselling; the kids needed to have their story straight. And the school needed to make sure one thing was absolutely clear from the outset: it was an accident.

The local Jinghua Times reported “several students admitted that the school repeatedly told them not to disclose information to the outside world, especially the media; no online photos, and any online messages were to be deleted. If not deleted, they would be traced. The school said those who repeatedly make microblog posts would be expelled.”

Meanwhile, journalists and onlookers gathered around the entrance, not allowed in, while people attempting to take pictures were stopped by campus security. Institutional cover-ups are unfortunately universal – see last year’s disturbing Penn State saga – and they all have something in common: the inability of authority figures to acknowledge an ugly reality. But this case happened in China, and so it sheds light on an ugly side of this society: that school suicides are not uncommon, relatively speaking, but they are routinely dealt like this, as Sinostand’s Eric Fish has observed firsthand.

Though this incident occurred a week ago, students are still defiantly blogging against the express orders of heartless school administrators. These kids aren’t stupid: they want to know why they should tell others this was an accident when everyone saw the girl, naked, jump. The inept faculty can’t even be bothered to get their shoddy story straight.

Bungling, lazy cover-ups like these happen all the time in China, which is why last year’s Wenzhou high-speed train crash was such a flashpoint. People are fed up with the open contempt shown for them and their lives, hence among these online tributes, students are trying to figure out why Shen jumped, revealing she was close friends with another female student in Shanghai, Yu Jing Hai, with whom she shared interests and personality traits, and had gone to visit.

Following Shen’s death, Yu poignantly wrote on her blog: “I really miss you. I’m so tired, I feel like being surrounded by a dream, maybe you’re still alive when I wake up. I feel I’m in water, I can’t breathe. I feel so heavy and I need to float. I have so much to say to you. There are so many cold-hearted watchers, I can’t deal with them. I’m so tired. Everything’s so unreal. I so wish everything’s just a dream when I wake up. I want to find you now, I’ll make spaghetti for you and buy chicken feet for you. Are you still praying every Sunday evening? Maybe you’re by God’s side now already. I miss you, we all miss you. Maybe you just fell asleep. Maybe we’re all just a dream of ours.”

Perhaps I’m out on a limb here, but the possible romantic undercurrent to their relationship might be the most interesting aspect of this story. A number of similar stories of “forbidden love” passed my desk when I worked in state media – often involving suicide pacts, and even the odd murder – featuring high-strung female (and the odd male) students letting a teenage knock-back get out of hand. It was rarely made explicit, but it was clear that many of these were gay relationships. Reasons for breakups varied, but the religious angle – “Are you still praying every Sunday evening?” – may have some bearing here as well. Quite a few Chinese Christians have wholeheartedly embraced Catholic-style homophobia, like these celebrity fools.

But of course, thanks to Beijing Yuying Secondary School (hard at work, as we speak, hammering out a deal to buy the silence of the girl’s family and defuse any fallout), we’ll never know what really drove Shen He to such a terrible “accident” yesterday morning.

H/T Jingqing Luo for the story. RFH can be reached at RFH@beijingcream.com.

The above video came to my attention two days ago and is now beginning to make the rounds, namely British media and Huffington Post, though it’s also found on southeast Asian newscasts and has been reported on in China. The officer who saves the woman is Qiao Jinhai. I’m sure we’ll be hearing more about him.