- Every year many thousands of people visit the mighty Nanjing Yangtze Bridge.Every year dozens of them have no intention of leaving the bridge alive. But there is one person determined not to see them plummet to their deaths: Chen Si. For some 13 years now he has sacrificed every free weekend to patrol back and forth across the bridge on his motorcycle. Today, having pulled more than 200 desperate souls back from the brink, Chen Si has become a national hero and saving lives his profession.This documentary delves into the hearts and minds of three people who were saved by Chen Si at various stages in his career. In doing so it sheds light on a people squeezed between post-communist dreams and the harsh laws of unmitigated capitalism. In the midst of all this we find Chen Si, trying to cope with his role but struggling with life just like all the others around him. Why live? Why die? What's the meaning of it all? And Chen Si has his own personal story to tell...—Lola Jia Liu
- The central section of the Nanjing Yangtze Bridge is a milelong twostorey steel monster, on which for almost 50 years millions of trains, buses, cars, cyclists and pedestrians have crossed China's greatest river. Once, under Mao Zedong, it was the pride of Chinese architecture. Today it is best known for the large number of suicides who hurl themselves from it into the torrents of the Yangtze. In the midst of stinking exhaust fumes and deafening traffic Chen Si, dressed in his bright red uniform, keeps a lookout for potential suicides. For over ten years he has spent every weekend riding his electric scooter to and for over the bridge to save those intents upon killing themselves. Where others avert their eyes or hurry away he looks and strides into action sometimes with words of sympathy, sometimes with brute force. Lacking psychological training, he can only follow his instincts. The illiterate Xue Fang, who saw no future for herself after the accidental death of her husband, was dragged back into life by Chen Si. In a flat converted intotemporary refuge he coaxed her worries out of her and dealt pragmatically with her personal affairs. Then he left her again to her fate. What has become of this woman and her two student sons and what does she think of her rescue today? These are two of the questions - no longer of interest to Chen Si - which the film pursues. By contrast, Lao Shi, one of the first people saved by Chen Si, is still a friend today. From the first, the two of them had a common ally: alcohol. Lao Shi uses it to fight his depressions, always hoping for Chen Si's support, but all the latter can offer him is company. Lao Shi constantly vacillates between powerless rage and resignation on the one hand, and almost touchingly naive visions of a utopian future on the other. And then there is Lao Zhang, an itinerant worker cheated by a construction gang, full of worldweariness and selfcontempt. At first Chens Si peps him up with alcohol, too; then he buys him a ticket back to his native village. But what awaits Lao Zhang there is truly no idyll of rural family life - With time Chen Si has matured into a media star. Outwardly he plays a sort of Chinese John Wayne, is courted by TV shows and honoured by volunteer associations. But inside him a fight rages between the desire for fame, recognition and money from donations, on the one hand, and the heavy burden of despair and hopelessness with which he is constantly confronted on the other. His own family life also suffers under the traces left in him by this conflict.—Lola Jia Liu
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