Unsung
The Yangtze River Bridge in Nanjing, China, otherwise known as the stomping grounds of the “Nanjing Angel” and possible site of the world’s greatest amount of suicides.
Photo: AFP
The following is part fiction and part fact, but more importantly, it’s an ode to a man unlike many you’ll meet.
It’s also a thought exercise in both valuing life and respecting death. This is the incredible story of Chen Si, China’s “Angel of Nanjing” and suicide thwarter extraordinaire. Since 2003, Mr. Si (a courier driver) has spent every weekend patrolling China’s infamous Yangtze River Bridge in Nanjing for people who might jump; More than 2,000 tormented souls have thrown themselves from that three-kilometre bridge since it’s completion in 1968, making it the one that’s seen the most suicides in China to date.
Yet, Mr. Si has saved well over 400 more lives who could’ve joined that watery grave. The word “hero” gets thrown around, but Mr. Si’s more than earned that title. Here’s a special look at how he did it.
P.s. We’re well aware Mr. Si can’t speak English, but the point here isn’t linguistic authenticity, it’s sharing hope in a time of despair.
Clench up and enjoy.
Hello.
This may sound random, but, have I told you about the time I met him?
He should have been fuming, but he wasn’t.
After 19 years of stopping them from jumping, only recently have I met him.
I’ve seen him before. And I’m sure he’s seen me.
No, he’s not clad in black. No, he doesn’t clutch a sickle.
Mr. Wang is, however, quite shy. And he’s sarcastic, a little too sarcastic if you ask me.
I wonder if he’s suffered trauma.
And since I must be honest, he smells odd. It’s neither a good odour nor a bad one, but… an odd one. “Gasoline” is the closest thing if I had to compare it to something terrestrial, only the kind that’ll make your eyes water if it’s close enough. Fresh chopped onion effect. You know, I make one hell of an onion pancake.
Maybe I’ll fix you one if you make it to the end of my story.
I know, gasoline doesn’t technically smell. You know what I mean.
Oh yes, I’ve gotten that close to Death.
But then again, I deliver parcels across one of the most populous countries in the world, and since I must be honest, I think I’ve run into worse doing that.
My real job is here, on this bridge. This cemetery. This womb.
I don’t know when I’ll retire, and I don’t know when I’ll stop delivering crap that’ll wind up in a dump.
I don’t mean to be rude — Call me “Chen.”
But please don’t call me “angel.” The news people call me that. The tourists call me that. Those boys who made that movie about me, they call me that, too.
I don’t like it. I know angels are nice, but I don’t like it. Besides, I’ve never seen one. Maybe that’s because they’re scared of Mr. Wang.
I hope they’re not.
I’m not.
I fear the phone bill. I fear the ocean. I fear weddings. Too much small talk.
Actually, I fear too much small talk. Makes me sweat.
When you grow up watching everyone die, you get used to Death.
Mr. Wang, he’s not scary. Sad, yes. Nice clothes, yep. Black eyes, too. Shiny hair. 10 yards.
But not scary.
“She will be number 300, human. They should pay you for this.”
He’s funny, too.
How can Death be scary if he’s funny?
“300” was the 300th person I talked out of plungeing themselves into an inescapable whirpool.
The year was 2019, and the month I would rather not say.
She was a nurse then. I hope she still is. I would tell you her name but that would be rude.
Like the first one — and surely the next one — I found her with a cold look in her eyes and her hands affixed to the bridge’s railing. That’s how you know they went there to jump. If they were just sad, they’d bury their faces in their palms while they weep. The sad ones do that.
But with them, the body’s always one step ahead of the mind.
I know this because I know the mind.
Just because I grew up on a beet farm doesn’t mean I don’t know psychology, you know. I’ve read 11 books on the matter, in fact. Eleven. I can read fast.
But this woman, she took her time.
“How do you that?,” beckoned Mr. Wang on 300 day.
“How do I know what?,” I replied, my eyes locked on the woman.
She looked thirty-something. Maybe a mother with little ones waiting.
Once I was within a hundred metres of her I could tell. You get chicken skin when it happens.
“How can you tell which ones will do it?”
If you’re wondering it, yes, passersby didn’t know what to make of me speaking to nothing. How would you react to someone speaking to nothing on a bridge on a Tuesday morning?
That is, they saw nothing. They’re better off, too.
“I don’t know how to explain it… I just know.”
“Right, Mr. Si, and I am God. Please, tell me.”
“It is the inverse of what people expect; they show it through their hands. Their hands either clasp the railing or they shake at their sides, while at the same time, their faces show a heavy calm,” I explained while keeping an eye on the woman, who now stood peering over the edge.
“And?”
“And that’s it. I let my intuition do the rest. If I feel they will jump, I act.”
“Wrong,” retorted Mr. Wang as he flicked his spent cigarette butt over the edge.
“Excuse me?”
“Anyone can play Mr. Jung, my friend. Don’t let your earnestness blind you. I’ve roamed this realm for so long your mind couldn’t possibly compute it, and even then, ones like you are so rare to find you’d think you were all extinct.”
Mr. Wang walked next to me in near lockstep, his brogues clicking the concrete below. He tucked his hands behind his back as he spoke. He always did.
“I am sorry, but I don’t understand...”
“You can see me,” he said. “No one can see me. That’s how you do it.”
She made her move and placed her right foot on atop the railing.
That meant I had to move like the wind.
“You son of a bitch, it’s because you can see me. And you never figured it o - -."
I had maybe seven seconds, but I had to try.
“Hey… HEY! No you don’t!!!,” I screamed as I launched into mid-air at her torso from a dead sprint, in essence tackling her off the edge upon which she was now sitting.
She didn’t even see me coming. Better that way.
My back crashed landed on the walkway with her wrapped in my arms, and I felt my right collarbone snap in two. I know this because I broke the same one in elementary school while playing soccer.
I was goalkeeper that day. I stopped that penalty, you know. Big game, too.
We won.
This was like that but worse. The pain should’ve made me faint, but all that mattered to me was number 300, who’d managed to introduce her elbow to my gut during the fall.
Many don’t like being saved. Many kick, slap, punch and scream.
But most come to with time.
Some return to finish what they started after I stop them, but only some.
I do my best to let those ones go.
I am not god.
That’s why I hate when they call me “angel.”
A sudden flurry of siren wails filled the air as four ambulances swarmed us.
I remember thinking, Good, they called them, “they” being my comrades.
It’s not just me, you know. But that’s for another time.
“Do you ever feel like you’re… interfering with something bigger than you?,” said Mr. Wang as he stood on the very spot from which she almost jumped.
I paused as two responders rushed my way, one unfolding a stretcher.
“Now that you mention it, yes, I do.”
Through all her tears and shock, I could still feel her quizzical look on my face like a sun ray. She stopped struggling as she listened to me speak to the air. “Wait, who are you speaking to?,” she asked, every breath less heavy than the last. “Oh my god, you’re not okay!”
Then she asked again, Iike I knew she would. They always do.
As I looked back, I saw Mr. Wang light a cigarette, smirk, then fade into the river’s mist.
“No one,” I said. “It’s no one.”
~ Fin ~
Mr. Chen Si, the “Angel of Nanjng”
Photo: South China Morning Post