NANJING, CHINA — The woman was still wearing her kitchen apron when Chen Si spotted her on the other side of the Nanjing Bridge.
By the time Chen raced across four lanes of screaming traffic that recent Sunday morning, the woman had already started climbing the narrow railing separating her from the surging waters below.
"After I yanked her back, all she did was cry," said Chen, who is all too familiar with such scenes: The burly 39-year-old has spent practically every weekend of the last four years patrolling this stretch of roadway above the mighty Yangtze River, looking for signs of human despair.
Chen is a self-appointed lifeguard on the so-called Chinese bridge of death. His record so far, he says: 144 lives saved.
Not bad for a one-man crusade. But it hardly makes a dent in the suicide epidemic sweeping this land of mind-numbing change, where the social safety net of the early communist era has given way to the stress of a market-driven economy. By official estimates, as many as 280,000 Chinese kill themselves each year, twice the rate in the United States.
"The actual number is probably much more shocking," said Zhu Wenbo, who runs a counseling center in central China's Sichuan province, citing inadequate resources to track the problem and an unwillingness among victims' families to face the stigma. "A lot of people suffer in silence and never seek help."
Here in this ancient capital, everyone knows the Nanjing Bridge and why it is more than just a scenic spot.
Since it opened nearly 40 years ago as a symbol of Chinese communist might, an estimated 1,000 people have killed themselves by leaping from the span. These days, the vintage crossing, with its flag-topped towers and statues of proletariat heroes, is viewed by many as more of a monumental tombstone than the engineering marvel it once was.
"I look for people filled with a sense of gloom and doom," Chen said as he scanned the blur of cars and trucks humming over the bridge, squinting through his binoculars for people apparently preparing to commit suicide.
He remembers the day suicide became more than just a statistic for him.
It was 2003. Chen, originally from the countryside, was barely scraping by hawking farm vegetables in a city with few friendly faces. Whenever he was down, an elderly neighbor would give him the pat on the back he needed. Then the seemingly upbeat grandfather starved himself to death, apparently because he was tired of a nasty family squabble over who should care for him.
