Yan died last Friday. She committed suicide at 8AM on Nov. 7 by
jumping off the 18th floor balcony of her apartment in Nanshan near
Coastal City.
So who is Yan? I did not know her well. She was the colleague of my
close girl friend. She was a young Chinese girl in her early
twenties. She was slight of figure, with glasses and soft-spoken. She
was diligently trying to improve her working skills. The company
Executive Director recently put her to work doing small tasks since
she had no office or work skills. The Director is a compassionate man
and is acquainted with the boy friend of Yan.
I have met Yan's boy friend who is a Taiwan Chinese. He is in his mid-
twenties and does business traveling every month or two between
Shenzhen and California. It seems he will be returning to the USA soon
and apparently Yan felt, or had cause to believe her boy friend was
going to "Dump her". As my friend said, Yan had no workplace skills
and was apparently concerned for her future. This is why her boss gave
her a small job and the boy's mother rented Yan the 18th floor
apartment (their office is on the 17th floor) so she would feel
secure. Apparently this was not enough. Yan took the last dive of her
life in the morning of last Friday.
My friend saw Yan at office around 8pm at Thursday night and she
seemed happy and not upset. So what happened 12 hours later to compel
her to make this drastic decision to kill herself? We will never
know.
My friend told me Yan's death this morning on MSN. She felt sorry for
Yan and for herself. Her thoughts are: here was a young girl in her
office and she did not even know she was having these suicidal
thoughts. If someone you know is going through troubles, you take the
time to talk and listen to them and be a friend; probably such
tragedy can be simply avoided.
Other than expressing our sadness over the tragic loss of a young
life, there are some points to be made and lessons to be learned from
this tragedy.
1. No man, woman, thing or event is worth killing yourself over. Life
goes on, or it should.
2. Do not make any person or job your whole life. Be independent and
self-supporting.
Could anyone done more for her? I will never know.
In China, or even the world, Yan is just another statistic, a small
grain of sand on the beach. She was not a powerful government
official, a CEO, famous author or entertainer. Almost nobody but her
family or few friends will miss her or give her more than a fleeting
thought. Her premature death will probably not even be back-page news
in the SZ Daily. Yan was nobody, yet somebody. So sad.
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