Hong Kong High-Rises a Tragic Lure

One hot day last summer an Italian tourist went to a futuristic Hong Kong building, clambered over a guard rail and dived eight stories through a glass atrium canopy, dying on the sidewalk before hundreds of onlookers.

Whether he knew it or not, this traveler left the world as many residents of Hong Kong do, hurtling by choice or by chance from a tall building.

In recent years, more than 36% of the suicides in this densely populated British colony have chosen death by jumping, the most common method after hanging.

That is an unusual pattern. In the United States, for example, nearly 60% of suicides use firearms. Death by jumping amounts to less than 3%.

“Guns aren’t available here. A drug overdose may not be effective, but jumping is a sure way,” says psychiatrist Bernard Lau. “Tall buildings are so available, so convenient.”

In a city where living space seems to shrink daily, there may be a more practical reason why jumps are on the increase, according to Lau. “We had more hangings in the past, but nowadays the ceilings (in Hong Kong apartments) are so low you can’t really hang yourself.”

Last year, three people a week jumped or accidentally fell to their deaths in Hong Kong. That doesn’t include murders, where the killer’s weapon was the nearest high window.

In one week in February, a 12-year-old girl fell from a 21st-floor bathroom window and a student--reported to have failed a university entrance exam--plunged 30 floors.

In the week’s most publicized fall, a promising 24-year-old university student leaped from a high floor a day after she was convicted of shoplifting $20 worth of goods from a supermarket. Friends complained bitterly that press coverage given to her case humiliated her and helped lead to her death.

A sampling of police reports shows that her tragedy was far from unique.

Last September, a young actress jumped from a 15th-story apartment. In August, a man jumped from a deserted school after his mother and sister tried in vain to lure him from a seventh-floor perch.

Also in August, a man jumped 15 floors after a fight with his wife, and a few weeks earlier a 31-year-old man set fire to himself and then jumped 10 floors.

Apart from suicides, there are accidents. A maid from the Philippines recently tumbled to her death as she cleaned the windows of the Hong Kong apartment of her employer, and a woman in her seventh month of pregnancy died in an eight-story fall.

Falls usually bring quick death, but not always. In 1986, a young woman fell 13 floors and was taken to a mortuary. There, a worker noticed her leg trembling and found a heartbeat. Despite efforts to save her, she later died.

On rare occasions, there is a happy ending. In January, a 2-year-old fell from a third-floor window but was caught by an off-duty police officer and suffered only scratches.

Lau blames cultural views in part. “In the Chinese culture this is an acceptable way to commit suicide. This takes great courage and carries more meaning. People hear about this method from childhood,” he says.

Psychiatrists say jumping is used by those who really want to die, not those merely crying out for help.

“Someone who chooses to go off a high building is serious about succeeding compared with people who take a drug overdose or cut a wrist,” says psychiatrist Eddie Li.

The shocked crowds that watched as the Italian traveler crashed to the pavement beneath the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank building last summer told police that it was a miracle that no one else was hurt. Passers-by aren’t always so lucky.

A few years ago, a man and his young daughter were hit and injured in another spectacular suicide, through the glass roof at a luxury shopping mall here.

A Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank spokeswoman says the danger of jumpers and fallers was noted when the bank’s building was planned: “Any architect takes that sort of thing into account. But how do you stop somebody who’s set on jumping?”