[2] The bridge cost CNY 8.5 billion (US$1.27 billion) to build. China had initially hoped to build Nanjing's bridge with its communist allies, the USSR. They almost become blank, a white sheet.". His cell-phone number was emblazoned everywhere, including little graffitied stamps he'd left on the sidewalk, ones I tried to decipher beneath the blur of so many passing feet. The reason Mr. Chen was in the business of saving lives now was that, as a boy, he'd always gone unanswered. Beneath the hum and blare of traffic came that insidious sucking sound. One second he could feel her breath on him; the next she was gone, and Mr. Chen, tough as he was, claimed to have burst into tears. It gave off a foreboding aura, too, untethered and floating, and yet it couldn't have been more earthboundand massive. The bridge spans 1,700 metres (5,577.4 feet; 1.1 miles) across the Yangtze River. And was he serious with those binoculars, especially with visibility reduced to fifty yards or so in the murk? Even before we'd hit the ground, he'd blurted something in Chinese, and then repeated it as I held him in a tight bear hug, readying for a struggle that never came. The earliest designs for the bridge were modeled after the Forth Bridge, near Edinburgh, which had been completed in 1890. Time came to a very still point in the late afternoon, and I ambled out onto the bridge with Susan, the translator, realizing that whatever vision of Mr. Chen's heroism had brought me here in the first place, it was folly to think I'd actually ever see him save someone. Every once in a while, for whatever reason, someone was chosenbut what I wanted to know was this: Having returned from the river, was she happy now, had she found in the aftermath her true life, solved the thing that had first gone missing in her? By foot, from his job. The government needs proof that he was in the army, but we are a family of soldiers. On the mighty Yangtze with a length of 6,300 kilometers (3,915 miles), there was no bridge for thousands of years. There is a saying in Chinese he used, that he never possessed "mother's shoes." The Hutong Yangtze River Bridge started construction on March 1, 2014; the bridge was closed on September 20, 2019; it was named in June 2020; it was completed and opened to traffic on . 2022 Cond Nast. Hutong Yangtze River Bridge (Chinese:) is located in Jiangsu, China.It is a highway and railway bridge that crosses the Yangtze River and connects Zhangjiagang City and Nantong City. There were Spanish matadors and Congolese pygmies. Picture taken February 27, 2013. I'd chosen it. Afterward, his girlfriend told an inquest that Christian was the happiest person she knew, "cheeky, spontaneous, excitable." As well as sculptures of peasants, workers and soldiers, the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge also features Mao Zedong quotes and a 230-foot statue of the former leader. Li was able to participate in the first year of the planning and building work before he became ill and died in August 1951. Wanzhou, Chongqing, China (607) feet high / (185) meters high 3,445 foot span / 1,050 meter span 2017 The longest span bridge ever built in Chongqing Province, the Wanzhou Fuma Yangtze River Bridge is the 3rd major road bridge across the Yangtze River at Wanzhou city and the second major suspension bridge. Prices and download plans . If your father hadn't been in the army, and if you didn't try to kill yourself just now, I'd punch you. You're not thinkingor are you just shirking your responsibility? The Bridge crosses the Yangtze River, near Dagongqiao in Yichang. "The bridge's form expressed speed, penetration and force-flow -- similar to what was seen in Italian futurism. I couldn't even pretend. They didn't know he'd once been stabbed in the leg; they didn't know the emotional storms he'd weathered on those days when he lost a jumper. Although their work never proceeded past the planning phase, the area identified in the 1913 surveys proved to be an excellent site, and is the location where the bridge was eventually built.[1]. If he sniffed trouble out there, he might lingerin some cases might be gone hoursbut today he reappeared a short time later, stitching deftly through the crowd, then kickstanding his Rocinante and resuming his same exact position, his same exact suspicious disposition, his same exact focused gruffness beneath the bill of his cap. Could it be stopped? You forked one of two ways. "You call yourself a family man A son Chinese? Meanwhile, the student reporter from Shanghai grabbed me, tottering on high heels, and asked if she might conduct an interview. At the end of the bridge, to the south there is a cloverleaf interchange after the toll booth which is and exchange for the road. And its pull was finally felt at the family restaurant by Mr. Chen, who abruptly stood, grunted a little, walked out the front door like a superhero summoned by dog whistle, then fired up his moped and went swerving off, his They spy on you double-bill back on his head, binoculars dangling around his neck. Gavon Laessig is a deputy news director and front page editor for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York. The Wuhan Yangtze Great Bridge (simplified Chinese: ; traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: Whn Chngjing Dqio), commonly known as Wuhan First Yangtze Bridge, is a double-deck road and rail bridge across the Yangtze River in Wuhan, in Central China. He said that he'd been visited on the bridge by a foreign psychiatrist who asked him if he might draw a picture of whatever came to mind. We paid him no mind, really, until he was about twenty steps beyond us, out where the bridge first met water. "Not now," he said gruffly. Contact Gavon Laessig at gavon@buzzfeed.com. "Unless you try to jump off the bridge between now and then," Mr. Chen deadpanned. "I'm working.". Just then a man lurched past us, a flash of green. Sign in Sign up for FREE Prices and download plans "It is not just infrastructure but a piece of architecture," he said. His final note, which no one claimed to understand, read: "To mum and anybody who cares. The second category was the emotionally fragile, the wilted flower, the person who had lost someonea husband, a child, a wife, a parentor suffered from some sort of abuse and saw no way to go on. International Institute of Social History. I'd come as if there were some message for me here, some fragment to justify, or obliterate, that slow bloom of doubt. Some in the back were laughing, unsure of what indeed was transpiring, or just made nervous by it. And yet standing sentry among the hordes, Mr. Chen seemed a bit comical, or his mission seemed the ultimate act of absurdity. A crowd began to gather, an airless huddle. Mr. Chen asked how he'd gotten to the bridge. But such events didn't just belong to the pastor to some mythic country, either. So I contact Mr. Chen. Then he made a grand show of getting on his moped, kicking it to life, and put-putting off on patrol, John Wayne again on his Shetland pony. A person climbs on the railing before jumping off the Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge in Hubei (Image: Reuters) By. The mere glimmer seemed almost too dangerous to consider. "My father is 90 and very sick. Re: Viking River Cruise and water levels. "I promise you that there's nothing we can't fix," he said, "but first we have to get you off this bridge." And yet he withstood the urge of self-annihilation, never again contemplating suicide. Now the rain galloped harder; a sea of umbrellas popped open, moving south to north and north to south. They don't want to hurt anyone, so the only way they can vent is by hurting themselves. "I don't want them worrying.") "We all have our troubles.". But the structure will be getting a facelift too. "Later," barked Mr. Chen. Loss led to despair, which, in turn, led to Mr. Chen. Even in suburbia, suicide had seemed like its own opaque parable, the never-happened, glossed-over secret. ("I want to give them a clean piece of land," he said, using a turn of phrase. But some do not meet their maker. He was talking to me earnestly, though I didn't understand a word. Nanjing was now just another one of your typical 6-million-person Chinese metropolises, one of the famous "Three Furnaces" of China because of its unremitting summer heat. In this born-again world, no one was older than 6. The overall length of the bridge is 4.134 kilometres (2.57 miles). Her beliefs were pilloried and belittled. Mr. Chen made a show of studying it, then derisively handed it backwas this a diversion, part of a new therapeutic method?and in the same brusque tone asked what in the world was he thinking, coming up here like this? Fan Ping started his story againarmysick fatherdead mothergas stationso sorry to try to kill selfand Mr. Chen asked me to let go of the man, something I wasn't at all inclined to do. The crowd of onlookers registered their concern and curiosity. And I floated from my body, watching Mr. Chen and Fan Ping walk ahead, watchedfrom some high, hovering angleas Mr. Chen placed the man on a bus and Fan Ping squished down the aisle in his disintegrating shoes and took his place by the window, looking straight ahead. His own mother had always been an erratic presence, but after his parents split when he was 8, she disappeared for the better part of a decadeand so, too, did his "mother's love," as he put it. The bridge formally opened to public traffic on 15 October 1957. But then it slowly dawned on me: I'd tried to stop Fan Ping merely so I wouldn't have to live with the memory of having watched him fall. The green man's body rose, and now he was hooking his ankle on the top bar, then levering himself from vertical to horizontal until he lay on top of the railing. he said. WARNING: Disturbing images. After all the humiliation one suffered, all the monotonies and losses, the erasures and disintegrations, after being constantly consumed by society, was it a small reclamation of the self? Umbrellas unfurled, poked, and were ripped from their rigging, leaving sharp spiders dangling overhead. And a lot of them miss the water.". While working on the Wuchang railroad station, Jeme incorporated plans for connection of the Beijing and Guangzhou lines into the railroad's construction. All rights reserved. And remained that way, all these months later. In his dishevelment, Fan Ping didn't seem capable of movement, as perhaps he hadn't entirely given up on the idea that had brought him here in the first place. "In so much pain," he would tell me, "they jump the second they think they're over the mother river. One recent case highlighted just how the Chinese bureaucracy tended to deal with prevention. In July 1954, the State Council of the People's Republic of China gave approval for a 28-person delegation of Soviet engineers, led by Konstantin Sergeyevich Silin (19131996), to travel to China and assist the Chinese with the bridge's design and construction. He had a paunch, blackened teeth, and the raspy cough of an avid smoker, and he never stopped watching, even when he allowed himself a cigarette, smoking a cheap brand named after the city itself. Nor were we kindred spirits: Simply showing up did not confer membership to the club. Mr. Chen would later describe a recurring nightmare that went like this: Someone was up on the railing, and he was sprinting as fast as he could to save the jumper. One wondered if there'd ever been blue sky in Nanjing. That is, if I'd ever imagined saving someone from a bridge, it probably would have been a fantasy bathed in altruistic light, in which ISAVEDAHUMANLIFE! Mr. Chen had said that people become innocent again on the bridge. With those words, he threw back an oversize shot of a potent grain alcohol. But now I could feel the pressure under the soles of my feet: The bridge ran under me, too. In this moment of sheepish intimacyMr. The conversation went on like this for some time while slowly Mr. Chen's tone shifted from outrage and aggression to a more familiar, fraternal concern, even sweetness. Were they marked somehow, glowing only for him? Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. In a way, Mr. Shi was human pathos writ large; in another, he was the smidgen of hope that caused the caesura before jumping. There was the honorable seppuku of samurai, and the cowardly cyanide of Nazis. However, for Nanjing's residents, it is best known for transforming life in the city. Each bore the moniker "Close Your Eyes and Say Goodbye. Susan was telling me about a family acquaintance who, years back, had jumped from the bridge in winter (most suicides here occurred in the fall and spring). According to local media, police said the couple was still missing and has a low chance of surviving. He whisked her to Paris for her birthday, wrapped her in "fairy lights" and took her portrait. They meet someone else. Below, the waters eddied and swirled, etching a secret language on the surface. The shoes and socks were a declaration of individual love in a country obsessed with the self-effacing collective. Mostly they came peaceably, but sometimes it was a donnybrook. Yangtze River Bridge, Wuhan Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge is the first highway-railway bridge over the Yangtze River. When I looked down, my shoes were his, two terribly dirty, scuffed sheaths of cheap, disintegrating leather. Officials recovered a body on June 25 . There'd been the husband and wife who'd jumped hand in hand. The bridge loomed. We both stood watching him go, the young woman and I, until he disappeared behind tatters of sky-fog that had come loose. In the southern city of Guangzhou, workers had been ordered to smear butter over a steel bridge popular with jumpers, in order to make it too slippery to climb. But more often they were a subdued, pointillistic chronicle of the day's dark news: middle-aged man jumped off bridge where the body fell to the flower bed: died on the spot. Speaking in northern accent, man gave me a cigarette, said: Alas! Schisms formed. The sentries looked like kids, while Mr. Chen, who stood out front on the sidewalk, among the people, looked every bit of his forty years. The Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge opened in 1968. Search from Yangtze River Bridge stock photos, pictures and royalty-free images from iStock. Of those he saved, some small number met near the bridge every year around Christmas to celebrate their new lives and ostensibly to offer their thanks. Before the bridge was built, people and goods could only cross the river by ferry. Skimming the river's brown, roiling surface came a steady, dirgelike stream of barges loaded with lumber, coal, containers, and sand. But then the young student reporter turned to me, beaming with bright eyes, and blurted in broken English, "What angel is he!". Man Survives 70-Metre Jump from Bridge After Suicide Attempt By Frank Hossack 8th February 2021 An officer from the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge Emergency Rescue Garrison provides initial medical treatment for the man who attempted suicide last week by joining the many who have jumped from the bridge. A young couple jumped into the Yangtze River from the bridge one after another in the haze on Wednesday. He'd given Mr. Shi hope and friendship (though details of the repayment plan were murky), and Mr. Shi had found a way to begin life anew. Picture taken February 27, 2013. Reaching him, I reflexively planted a foot against the concrete base of the railing, latched an arm up and over, then wrenched his body as hard as I could while I pushed back from the railing. The "banners" represented ideologies that called for the construction of a socialist state in China. Mr. Chen then pointed to Mr. Shi and said, "He was one of those.". From my own suburban hometown, I remembered a sweet, shy kid, roughly my age, who seemed incapable of any sort of demonstrativeness, who drove himself to the Adirondacks in winter, purchased a coil of rope along the way, found a sturdy tree, and hanged himself. "It reduced the river crossing time and served as the main artery for north-south transportation.". He caught me gazing at the thick, black, spiky forest matting his head. Part of it had to do with the effect of the grain alcohol. He punched the digits of Fan Ping's cell-phone number into his own. He wore a baseball cap with a brim that poked out like an oversize duck's bill, like the Cyrano of duck bills, the crown of which read "They spy on you". And part of it was fatiguethe result of all those time zones to get here. No one could believe it. Mr. Chen wasn't a caricature but a bearer of so much imminent grief. In 1913, Peking University professor of engineering George Miller brought Xia Changchi (Chinese: ), Li Wenji (Chinese: ), and 13 other Chinese engineering students to Wuhan to do surveying for a possible bridge location. This 19th-century bridge has a Parisian style architecture, make it a perfect stop for a romantic walk. I was one, too.". He laughed when I did, a disparaging laugh, wondering aloud at what kind of American I was. The Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge is one of the most frequented suicide sites in the world. One's reasons for being on the bridge belonged to the mysterious underworld in all of us, but to choose to die so publicly, so dramaticallyturning languid flips or dropping straight as a pinwas something I couldn't quite understand. In February 1953, Mao Zedong traveled to Wuhan to receive reports on the project's progress, and was taken to the Yellow Crane Tower to view the proposed bridge site. Chen would charge them like a dangerous man himself, wrestling, punching, kicking, doing whatever was necessary. Rain slithered from the sky. Wang Shiqing is pictured with railway tickets featuring illustrations of the bridge, part of his vast collection. Search from Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge stock photos, pictures and royalty-free images from iStock.