Enter Chen Si of Nanjing,
China.
Chen is a fruit seller who
lives near the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge, a place notorious for suicides. In
2003, Chen watched in horror from his stand as a woman prepared to leap from
the bridge to kill herself. Chen intervened and talked the woman off of the
bridge. Then, as the days and months went by, he saved another and another
after that.
He now spends every
weekend (when most suicides from the bridge occur) patrolling the area looking
for people who might be contemplating suicide. When he finds one, Chen
approaches them, respectfully, and talks to them, but mostly he does something
few others have done for these people; he listens to them. He listens to them
talk about their failures, their loss of family or a job, the debt they have,
the problems they can overcome.
Then he helps them find a
solution. Chen has called creditors on behalf of the people he’s saved to try
and work it out. He finds mental health counseling for them. He does what he
can do to keep them alive.
In all, Chen Si had
stopped over 300 suicides at the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge.
