"It is better to die than to live", we have heard this saying many times.
But the other day.
At about 13:30 on April 4, on the glass plank road in the Tianmen Mountain View Area of Zhangjiajie, there were four rural youths from the north of the world, choosing to end their lives together.
Image source @ Zhangjiajie Tianmen Mountain 5A Scenic Area
Three days later, the briefing succinctly stated:
"Three men have jumped off a cliff to their deaths, the woman died after being rushed to the hospital for ineffective treatment due to taking poison before jumping off the cliff, and all four committed suicide, excluding criminal cases and other factors."
Individual events?
Social issues?
A different change is that compared to previous mass suicides, compared to our previous avoidance of talking about it, this time, we have more understanding and tolerance of it.
Why?
Perhaps from a few fleeting fragments, we can hear some buried sounds.
01
"Hello World, Goodbye"
How do you tell this story?
Let's start with that circle of friends.
Before the incident, the youngest of the four sent a farewell message: "Hello World Goodbye", pictured with a water bottle printed in French: Belle journée.
Translated as "good day".
For them, the matter of ending their lives seems not so sad.
Contempt for life?
No.
It's more like having experienced too much and seeing through life, they decided to take a break.
They are resolute.
No matter what happened, the determination to die remained the same - the youngest of the four was only 00 years old, 23 years old, and the oldest was 34 years old.
They were from Fujian, Hebei, Henan, and Sichuan, and the investigation showed that their life trajectories did not intersect, but we later learned that they not only went to Tianmen Mountain, but even mixed water bottles with poison far beyond the lethal amount and took them.
The police said, "3 grams of poison that can endanger life, they used 50 grams." ”
They are quiet at the same time.
Even if you die, you don't want to bring trouble to the world.
They left the same suicide note.
Or a disclaimer: "I am ***, have civil capacity, I am suicidal, and I have nothing to do with other people." ”
Meaning, I don't blame anyone, and you guys, don't go to anyone's trouble.
I came into this world naked.
Now no one is disturbing to leave, "rejecting all weeping and perishing."
It's just that.
Can we, who are still alive, really deceive ourselves when we see such an event, pretend that "this is an exception", and then move on with our lives?
02
"The family situation is not very good"
There was once such a deafening sentence in "I Am Not the God of Medicine":
There is only one disease in the world: poverty
And in these four people, "poverty" is also a word that is often mentioned.
Are they poor?
At least in the Sanlian Life Weekly report, poverty is the key word they share.
Peng, the poorest of the poor in the village, most of the other families have built two-story small buildings, while his family has only one story bungalow, there are few household appliances, not even a refrigerator, and the roof always leaks.
Zhang, who graduated from junior high school and started working, once mentioned that his "family situation is not very good, and he has been working outside all year round." ”
Liu, who read little, went to work at the age of sixteen or seventeen. My father was semi-paralyzed in his thirties, and my grandmother was also old. A reporter visited and learned, "Their family has very poor conditions, and basically belongs to the poorest families in the village." ”
Chen, a 23-year-old girl, dropped out of school in junior high school to go out to work, her brother is still in school, her father works as a security guard, and was diagnosed with cancer some time ago and preparing for surgery.
According to her classmates, the junior high school at the time dissuaded some students with poor grades, including her, in order to "increase" the promotion rate.
Yes.
Poverty also makes them lose their right to continue their education.
In some "positive energy" narratives, this is already a world of "comprehensive poverty alleviation", and they should "stick to the countryside" and create some miracles with a monthly income of more than 10,000 and 100,000.
But the question is, how many people can do miracles?
I have personally seen that most of the poor who remain in the countryside cannot even touch the edge of this "great ideal".
So I had to go out to work.
Escape your predicament.
Such a group of people are called "migrant workers" and also called "migrant workers".
The number is huge.
According to the 2021 migrant worker monitoring survey report, 171.72 million migrant workers went out.
Source: China News Network
Their main industries are basically fixed, manufacturing, services, construction, accommodation and catering.
Such jobs often have little welfare. (I remember that the recruitment of the restaurant downstairs in my house said: Welfare is four days off a month)
Today, the group of migrant workers has expanded.
The "2020 Beijing Monitoring Report on the New Generation of Migrant Workers" defines the "new generation of migrant workers" as follows: the agricultural household registration population born after the 80s, aged 16 and above, who is mainly employed in non-agricultural employment in Beijing.
Count it up.
It may be that most of them can't get an urban hukou.
This is probably the reason.
In this incident, you will find that the bystander is finally no longer a cold-eyed "outsider".
They empathize and understand.
After all, the reformed gold mining dream has long been shattered in the hands of this generation, and there is not much left.
Most people who lose at the starting line are looking at the unattainable wealth and its corresponding comfort.
They can understand a kind of loneliness and hardship called uprooting.
03
Hard work, can you change your life?
But the question is, can going to the city to work can achieve a counterattack from the bottom?
We still watch too many movies.
Calm despair.
Small goals in childhood, because of the disparity in education, from the moment you enter society, lead to the fact that you need to put in ten times more effort to stand with others.
Wan repeatedly makes bad decisions, and in the end can only make life worse.
Peng originally worked at a construction site, "with a salary of eight or nine thousand a month", but later quit his job and chose a "bright" barbershop, with a salary of only about 3,000; Chen worked in a beauty salon, originally had a basic salary + commission, but then the boss did not give a guarantee, just half a month ago she quit her job...
Changing one's life against the heavens is just an ideal to look forward to.
It's like Passing Through the Future.
Yaoting (played by Yang Zishan) in the movie also has ideals.
But the reality is that in childhood, the family of four could only squeeze into a rental house next to the train tracks, and when she grew up, she began to work part-time, becoming a female worker on the assembly line of an electronics factory, in order to take root in Shenzhen, she worked several jobs, distributing leaflets and working as a pharmacist, just to make up enough for the down payment of the house, while treating her father's overworked body.
Doesn't she work hard?
The footprints of her struggle remain in every corner of the city.
But one day, her health went wrong and she needed a liver transplant.
There was nothing she could do.
The truth that hard work pays off seems to be no longer working.
Therefore, it is very understandable that very interesting phenomenon - "young people do not go to work and do not improve, only incense".
According to data from a platform, since 2023, the ticket sales rate of temple scenic spots has increased by 310% year-on-year, of which the post-90s and post-00s account for nearly 50%.
Netizens laughed at themselves: "Between work and school, I chose to go to incense; Between seeking people and seeking oneself, he chose to seek Buddha. ”
Why?
This is actually anxiety about social involvement, and uncertainty that hard work will be rewarded.
According to the data of the "2022 National Health Insight Report", living in a fast-paced, high-pressure and high-competition social environment, 91% of the interviewed young people said that they have psychological problems, are uncertain about reality, and are confused about the future.
Young people "flock" to the temple for a brief escape and inner solace.
Not out of ignorance, but out of sober powerlessness.
Just like in "Hidden in the Dust", you will sigh to Guiying:
Blown by the wind, what can wheat say?
Pecked by flying sparrows, what can wheat say?
Gnawed by his own donkey, what can the wheat say?
Cut off by the sickle of summer, what can the wheat say?
It's about wheat, and it's about yourself.
04
"They don't look anything out of the ordinary"
Is it just because of social issues?
Not necessarily.
I am reminded of the movie "Made in Hong Kong" 26 years ago, which also said this confusion about the future.
The young people of that era, when they were about to enter the adult world, lost their way in this "unworthy" society, and lost their lives.
But then and then, not here and now.
Wu Fei, a professor at Peking University, has analyzed the causes of social suicide in China.
His view is that most of the suicide population in the mainland is distributed in rural areas, concentrated in women, because they cannot "live a good life" and cannot "be good people", which has led to a loss of confidence in the world and uses suicide to "ask for an explanation".
Now, it seems that we can add one more reason: depression.
This is an emotion that many people see clearly, but it is so common that it is not taken seriously by everyone.
One of the most painful details for me – repeated in interviews that they didn't look unusual before they chose to end their lives.
The girl's family said that they did not find anything abnormal in her usual days, and before the incident, she called her mother to report that she was safe, saying that she was in Chengdu and planned to rent a house with friends and work in the factory together. Zhang's family said he also told his mother on the phone that he was going on a trip. Liu's father was also puzzled by his son's choice to leave in this way, saying that he usually looked quite lively and cheerful, which was quite normal.
That's right, the mask we are familiar with, for adults.
Who doesn't have a mask to disguise normal?
It's like a crazy meme:
Everyone is living with such a skin as "I".
And put the real "me" into some late-night alcohol that no one knows.
Compressed into a pain condition called "depression".
It's like "My Liberation Journal" that broke a large wave of people last year.
The man who came to seek liberation said that he wanted to be liberated from the "fake smile":
"I can't be expressionless, as long as someone is in front of me I will automatically put on this expression, but I am obviously not happy at all."
Maybe.
Under the discipline of society, we can only show others our "happiness".
It's just that no one wants to think about it.
A wind-up doll looks good, but under extreme depression, it will burst into irrepressible emotions at any time.
05
Understanding, far more than reproach
But fortunately, the prevailing view on this is understanding.
In the early years, people were quite critical of suicides, such as weakness, such as bad influence, such as sorry parents, etc., and some people even thought that reducing the reporting of suicides could reduce the number of suicides.
Can this really be the case?
Durkheim once said to the effect that banning reporting on suicide and crime does not change the problem of suicide rates in society, because the moral state of the group has not changed.
So you look at the Tianmen Mountain incident again.
Elephant News reported that after only 4 days, the scenic area had returned to normal.
The bodies of the deceased were also brought back to their hometowns for burial.
Everything seems to have passed.
But can this really be lightly turned?
Or come to "The Next So-hee".
The film shows the hidden events behind the suicide of the girl Sohee, which has been overlooked:
Work pressure, frustration in self-esteem, lack of understanding from parents.
Advise the irritable person to calm down, let the indifferent person change his mind, and say that he loves you to the person who curses you.
The film calmly and restrained the plight of the Suxi and shouted for the Suxi.
After the screening, the theater audience stood up and applauded for seven minutes.
In the Tianmen Mountain incident, we saw many familiar aspects of society that are closely related to us.
Pension, illness, marriage and childbirth, employment.
Every word is suffocating enough.
So we understand the dying because we understand why.
Lonely.
How long has it been since you spoke to your family on the phone?
It's not that you don't want to get in touch, it's that it's difficult to communicate, and you have to hang up the phone in less than two minutes.
Anxiety.
In the office building late at night, you look out the window and think about when to change jobs.
Doing a job that I don't like very much, with a barely survivable salary, facing uncertain leaders, returning to a dozen square meters of cottage and swiping mobile phones, childhood dreams have long dried up in reality.
I don't even know what I like anymore.
And these emotions can only be digested by ourselves.
Social phobia is getting stronger and stronger, talking less and less, and more often, listening to a song will cry.
The lyrics say, the sentence is heartfelt.
What to do?
Sorry, in such an environment, I don't want to fill a bowl of thick chicken soup, pretend that "there must be a rainbow after the storm", pretend that "love to fight will win".
irresponsibly, impose an answer called "strong."
But I think.
Many times we actually know the right answer.
Back to basics.
In fact, just one word, "people".
Human affection, interpersonal relationships, human hearts, human nature, humanities, humanity... It is the mutual understanding and care between people, the listening and helping in difficult times.
It's like the end of "Journey of the Mind".
Soul No. 22 has never been able to find its "spark" and has been constantly denied and self-denial.
"You are not capable enough to adapt to the world."
"It's not a goal in life, stupid, it's just living mediocrely."
"I'm just a trash."
……
But at this time, he suddenly recalled the feeling of a maple seed slowly falling in his palm.
That's when he understood.
Illuminating life is far more than ideals and goals.
It's a real feeling again and again.
And, a pair of outstretched hands, and the sunlight shining through the darkness on the body.
Today's workers: Bad noodles, saury flavor