It opened in 1968 and entered the Book of Records; At present it would break a less enviable record: that of the number of suicides, after having surpassed the balance of Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco a few years ago.
On a gray, rainy morning, Chen Si patrols the Nanjing Bridge that crosses the Yangtze, to keep desperate people from jumping into the turbulent waters of this river, China’s longest.
This bridge is a pride of China, but it records the sad world record for suicides.
Chen Si has been touring it every weekend for 18 years.
Its mission: to convince people who want to commit suicide not to do so. He has saved hundreds of them, which has earned the local press the nickname “Angel of Nanjing”, the name of the great city in the east of the country.
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Photo: AFP
With a cigarette in one hand and a water bottle with green tea in the other, the fifties don’t think so. “I’m not an angel. I’m just trying to shed some light on those in the dark,” he told AFP.
Chen’s life changed when at the age of 22 he saw a crying young woman going to be thrown into the void. Chen Si started talking to her and convinced her not to.
She was a migrant worker, like him, who as she was born into a poor family has no difficulty identifying with those who were marginalized from the Chinese economic boom.
“I explain to them that I am also an ordinary person. That we all have problems and that they can overcome them,” explains this man, who likes to read Freud.
“We don’t count them anymore”
Since his first rescue, the man estimates he has delivered 412 people from the abyss, almost one every two weeks.
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Among them, a burly man who was put on the bridge between several and another riddled with debts worth millions of yuan.
Difficult experiences. Although he has learned to armor, he often goes to temples to relieve the soul. “Before I had nightmares with which I couldn’t save,” he says.
When it opened in 1968, the giant bridge was presented as a feat of Chinese engineering during the great Maoist era. It entered the Book of Records as the longest two-story bridge (one for trains and one for cars) in the world.
At present it would break a less enviable record: that of the number of suicides, after having surpassed the balance of Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco a few years ago.
“Sometimes when we inspected the bridge in the morning, we found a high-heeled shoe or a cell phone with a handwritten note,” explains Zhang Chun, a member of a local association.
“We don’t count them anymore, but we know they have lost at least 3,000 lives” on the Nanjing Bridge, according to Zhang. An underestimated figure due to the number of people disappearing without a trace.
“Unable to save all”
According to official figures, the suicide rate fell in 2019 to 5.29 per 100,000 population (compared to 13.56 in 2000), half of that recorded by the United States.
But psychological problems have increased in China in recent decades, according to a study in the British medical journal The Lancet published two years ago.
The authors mentioned the rapid changes in Chinese society, which cause stress to those who fail to adapt.
The country also suffers from a shortage of psychologists, according to other studies.
Chen Si finds no fewer suicides on the Nanjing Bridge. How it helps to recruit volunteers, particularly psychology students to whom I advise how to deal with desperate people.
“The only thing we can tell them is that there are people who can’t live without them,” he explains.
In the city, Chen Si transformed a small office into a bedroom, where he can accommodate up to four people who don’t know where to spend the night.
He acknowledges that he had to sacrifice his family life for his mission, which fulfills more of his daily work.
And it won’t stop until the day you no longer have the strength to bring people to the right side of the railing.
“I can’t save them all. When it’s beyond my strength, I leave them in the hands of the gods.”