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Gansu Female Student Commits Suicide after School Ignores Sexual Abuse Claims

Shockingly, some people applauded as the girl jumped to her death.

Manya Koetse

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A tragic story about a 19-year-old girl whose abuse story was not believed by her school or local authorities is making its rounds on Chinese social media – together with a video that shows the girl’s horrifying suicide. (Updated.)

The horrific suicide of a 19-year-old female student from Qingyang in Gansu province was live-streamed on Chinese social media on June 21st when she jumped from a high building in the prefecture-level city.

According to various Weibo sources and some media (e.g. EBC), the young woman named Li suffered from severe depression after her school and local authorities did not believe her when she reported that her high school teacher had sexually assaulted her.

According to Li’s reports, which leaked online, the assault happened during school time in 2016 after a visit to the school nurse. Li, who had a stomach ache, was recovering in the school’s resting area where a teacher named Wu Yonghou (吴永厚) was in charge.

When Wu sat by Li to check on her, he allegedly held her and kissed her on the mouth, face, and ears. He also attempted to take off her clothes, but when another teacher entered the area, the assault stopped.

China Times reports that the incident weighed very heavy on Li, who went to the school counsellor the following day. Against Li’s will, however, they settled the case by making teacher Wu apologize to the girl. They summoned her to go back to class afterward – with Wu as her teacher.

The young student proceeded to report the case to local authorities. But since Wu claimed he had only touched Li as a way of ‘physical examination’ to ‘check if she had a fever,’ he was released without charge and continued to work at Li’s school as her teacher. Li consequently gave up to undertake further legal steps against Wu.

An official report about Li’s claims leaked online.

Following this ordeal, Li allegedly suffered from depression, which led to her suicide on the 21st of this month.

According to one influential Weibo blogging media account (5.7 million followers), some hundred people had gathered at the building where Li was trying to jump, where they allegedly cheered, applauded, and screamed “jump already” (not confirmed in official media).

A shocking video (warning: death, viewer discretion advised) shows how the young woman is hanging from a window in a high building, with a rescue worker trying to pull her back inside.

When Li pulls herself away and falls down the high building, the rescue worker loudly cries out in agony and weeps while bystanders can be heard gasping, screaming, and some, shockingly, clapping. Li did not survive her fall.

 

“Girl, I hope you’re off to a better world, where people are not so cold and detached.”

 

By June 24, the post about Li’s story and video showing her fall was shared on Weibo more than 30.000 times, with over 35.000 people leaving comments. The story also received much attention in hundreds of other posts across Weibo.

Many netizens show their sympathy for both the woman and the rescue worker: “A girl’s despair, a rescue worker’s despair – one because she doesn’t want to continue living, the other because he wasn’t able to rescue her in the final moments. I don’t understand how bystanders can laugh.”

“That sound of weeping hits me in the heart. It’s not your fault, you did what you could to save her. Girl, I hope you’re off to a better world, where people are not so cold and detached.”

“It is the people who clapped who really made her kill herself. Even her last bit of spirit was crushed in those final moments,” others say.

Rumors also make their rounds, such as that some individuals claim the rescue worker in question previously already saved the girl from a suicide attempt in 2017 and was familiar with her. These rumors remain unconfirmed.

There are also people in the comment section who allege there was a time period of four hours while rescue workers talked to the girl and tried to help her before that fatal jump. They ask: “Why didn’t the authorities prepare for an air cushion on the ground?”

A lot of comments condemn the bystanders who were clapping at the time of Li’s suicide. “They are animals,” a typical comment said.

Many also condemn the teacher, asking: “How can people like this even become a teacher?”

Over the past few months, various stories about abusive teacher-student relations have become trending topics on Chinese social media.

The story of female student Gao Yan, who committed suicide in 1998 after suffering abuse by her professor, surfaced again in April of this year when an old classmate of Gao Yan came forward in the media. But there were also other stories of (male) students committing suicide due to the maltreatment they faced by their teachers.

“I hope this story becomes even bigger,” one Weibo user writes: “I want everyone to see the injustice that is at the heart of this story.”

Update June 25 (18:30 Beijing time): State media outlet Global Times reports that multiple onlookers who were “disrespectful to life” by cheering on Li’s suicide have been taken into custody. Local authorities said investigations will continue.

If you or someone you know needs help, there are international suicide hotlines for you to contact. For China, see this information. The US national suicide hotline: 1-800-273-TALK, or please see this list of international helplines.

By Manya Koetse


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©2018 Whatsonweibo. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce our content without permission – you can contact us at info@whatsonweibo.com.

Manya is the founder and editor-in-chief of What's on Weibo, offering independent analysis of social trends, online media, and digital culture in China for over a decade. Subscribe to gain access to content, including the Weibo Watch newsletter, which provides deeper insights into the China trends that matter. More about Manya at manyakoetse.com or follow on X.

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3 Comments

3 Comments

  1. youstinkofwhitepoop

    June 25, 2018 at 10:53 am

    all he did was kiss her face n mouth n ears, he didn’t even touch her other bits, I mean Jesus these virgin frigid girls never been touched in their lives committing suicide over something as trivial as that,,sad. no girl in the West would commit suicide over something as trivial as that.

    • fuck_youstickofwhitepoop

      June 25, 2018 at 7:38 pm

      i hope you get raped

  2. M.S. Ashwin

    October 2, 2018 at 6:30 pm

    It is a heartbreaking story. The level f understanding is very important among us. We need to support the victims instead of blaming them. May her soul rest in peace.

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China Media

Revisiting China’s Most Viral Resignation Letter: “The World Is So Big, I Want to Go and See It”

The woman behind the famous resignation note, ‘I want to see the world,’ ended up traveling in China before going back home.

Manya Koetse

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🇨🇳 CHINA TRENDING WEEK 12
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“The world is so big, I want to go out and see it” (Shìjiè nàme dà, wǒ xiǎng qù kànkan “世界那么大,我想去看看”).

This ten-character sentence became part of China’s collective social media memory after a teacher’s resignation note went viral in 2015. Now, a decade later, the phrase has gone viral once again.

In April 2015, the phrase caused a huge buzz on China’s social media when the female teacher Gu Shaoqiang (顾少强) at Zhengzhou’s Henan Experimental High School resigned from her job.

Working as a psychology teacher for 11 years, she gave a class in which she made students write a letter to their future self. The exercise made her realize that she, too, wanted more from life. Despite having little savings, she submitted a simple resignation note that read: “The world is so big, I want to go out and see it.”

The resignation letter was approved, and she posted it to social media.

The resignation note that went viral, saying: “The world is so big, I want to go out and see it.”

The letter resonated with millions of Chinese who felt they also wanted to do something different with their life, like go and travel, see the world, and escape the pressures and routines of their daily life.

The phrase became so popular that it was adapted in all kinds of ways and manners, by meme creators, in books, by brands, and even by Xi Jinping, who said: “China’s market is so big, we welcome everyone to come and see it” (“中国市场这么大,欢迎大家都来看看”).

This week, Lěngshān Record (冷杉Record), the Wechat account under Chinese media outlet Phoenix Weekly (凤凰周刊), revisited the phrase and published a short documentary about Gu’s life after the resignation and the hype surrounding it.

An earlier news article about Gu’s life post-resignation already disclosed that Gu, despite receiving many sponsorship deals, never actually extensively traveled the world.

Gu and the viral resignation letter.

In the short documentary, Gu explains that she chose to “return home after seeing the world.” By this, she doesn’t mean traveling extensively abroad, but rather gaining life experience in a broader sense. While she did travel, it was within China, including in Tibet and Qinghai.

What truly changed was her life path. She left Zhengzhou and relocated to Chengdu to be near Yu Fu (于夫), a man she had met just weeks earlier by chance during a trip to Yunnan.

Six months after the resignation letter, she married him. Together, they ended up opening a hostel near Chengdu, married, and had a daughter.

Gu, now 45 years old, has been back in her hometown of Zhengzhou for the past years, caring for her aging mother and 9-year-old daughter. She is living separately from her husband, who manages their business in Chengdu. She also runs her own livestreaming and online parenting consultancy business.

Although the woman who wanted to “see the world” ended up back home, she has zero regrets about what she did, suggesting her courage to step out of the life she found limiting ultimately transformed her in a meaningful way.

On Chinese social media, the topic went trending on March 19. Most people cannot believe it’s already been ten years since the sentence went trending (“What? How could time fly like that?”).

Others, however, wonder about the hopes and dreams behind the original message—and how it all turned out.

“Seeing the world? She just escaped her old life, got married, and had a baby. How is that ‘seeing the world’?” one commenter wondered (@-NANA酱- ).

“The world is so big—what did she end up seeing?” others questioned. “She went from Zhengzhou to Chengdu.”

“Seeing the world takes money,” some pointed out.

But others came to her defense, saying that “seeing the world” also means stepping out of your comfort zone and exploring a different life. In the end, Gu certainly did just that.

“She was quite courageous,” another commenter wrote: “She gave up a stable job to go and see the world. Perhaps her life didn’t end up so rich, but the experiences she gained are priceless.”

The world is still big, though, and there’s plenty left for Gu Shaoqiang to see.

Read what we wrote about this in 2015: In The Digital Age, ‘Handwritten Weibo’ Have Become All The Rage

By Manya Koetse

(follow on X, LinkedIn, or Instagram)

 

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China Media

12-Year-Old Girl from Shandong Gets Infected with HPV: Viral Case Exposes Failures in Protecting Minors

A doctor in Tai’an faced resistance when she tried to report a 12-year-old girl’s HPV case. She then turned to social media instead.

Manya Koetse

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A 12-year-old girl from Shandong was diagnosed with HPV at a local hospital. When a doctor attempted to report the case, she faced resistance. Weibo users are now criticizing how the incident was handled.

Over the past week, there has been significant uproar on Chinese social media regarding how authorities, official channels, and state media in China have handled cases of sexual abuse and rape involving female victims and male perpetrators, often portraying the perpetrators in a way that appears to diminish their culpability.

One earlier case, which we covered here, involved a mentally ill female MA graduate from Shanxi who had been missing for over 13 years. She was eventually found living in the home of a man who had been sexually exploiting her, resulting in at least two children. The initial police report described the situation as the woman being “taken in” or “sheltered” by the man, a phrasing that outraged many netizens for seemingly portraying the man as benevolent, despite his actions potentially constituting rape.

Adding to the outrage, it was later revealed that local authorities and villagers had been aware of the situation for years but failed to intervene or help the woman escape her circumstances.

Currently, another case trending online involves a 12-year-old girl from Tai’an, Shandong, who was admitted to the hospital in Xintai on December 12 after testing positive for HPV.

HPV stands for Human Papillomavirus, a common sexually transmitted infection that can infect both men and women. Over 80% of women experience HPV infection at least once in their lifetime. While most HPV infections clear naturally within two years, some high-risk HPV types can cause serious illness including cancer.

 
“How can you be sure she was sexually assaulted?”
 

The 12-year-old girl in question had initially sought treatment for pelvic inflammatory disease, but upon review, her doctor discovered that she had been previously treated for vaginitis six months earlier. During further discussions with the girl, the doctor learned she had been sexually active with a boy five years her senior and was no longer attending school.

Given that the age of consent in China is 14 years old, the doctor sought to report the case to authorities. However, this effort was reportedly met with resistance from the hospital’s medical department, where she was allegedly questioned: “How can you be sure she was sexually assaulted?”

When attempts to escalate the case to the women’s federation and health commission went unanswered, the doctor turned to a blogger she knew (@反射弧超长星人影九) for help in raising awareness.

The blogger shared the story on Weibo but failed to receive a response through private messages from the Tai’an Police. They then contacted a police-affiliated Weibo channel they were familiar with, which eventually succeeded in alerting the Shandong police, prompting the formation of an investigation team.

As a result, on December 16, the 17-year-old boy was arrested and is now facing legal criminal measures.

According to Morning News (@新闻晨报), the boy in question is the 17-year-old Li (李某某), who had been in contact with the girl through the internet since May of 2024 after which they reportedly “developed a romantic relationship” and had “sexual relations.”

Meanwhile, fearing for her job, the doctor reportedly convinced the blogger to delete or privatize the posts. The blogger was also contacted by the hospital, which had somehow obtained the blogger’s phone number, asking for the post to be taken down. Despite this, the case had already gone viral.

The blogger, meanwhile, expressed frustration after the case gained widespread media traction, accusing others of sharing it simply to generate traffic. They argued that once the police had intervened, their goal had been achieved.

But the case goes beyond this specific story alone, and sparked broader criticisms on Chinese social media. Netizens have pointed out systemic failures that did not protect the girl, including the child’s parents, her school, and the hospital’s medical department, all of whom appeared to have ignored or silenced the issue. As WeChat blogging account Xinwenge wrote: “They all tacitly colluded.”

Xinwenge also referenced another case from 2020 involving a minor in Dongguang, Liaoning, who was raped and subsequently underwent an abortion. After the girl’s mother reported the incident to the police, the procuratorate discovered that a hospital outpatient department had performed the abortion but failed to report it as required by law. The procuratorate notified the health bureau, which fined the hospital 20,000 yuan ($2745) and revoked the department’s license.

Didn’t the hospital in Tai’an also violate mandatory reporting requirements? Additionally, why did the school allow a 12-year-old girl to drop out of the compulsory education programme?

 
“This is not a “boyfriend” or a “romantic relationship.””
 

The media reporting surrounding this case also triggered anger, as it failed to accurately phrase the incident as involving a raped minor, instead describing it as a girl having ‘sexual relations’ with a much older ‘boyfriend.’

Under Chinese law, engaging in sexual activity with someone under 14, regardless of their perceived willingness, is considered statutory rape. A 12-year-old is legally unable to give consent to sexual activity.

“The [Weibo] hashtag should not be “12-Year-Old Infected with HPV, 17-Year-Old Boyfriend Arrested” (#12岁女孩感染HPV其17岁男友被抓#); it should instead be “17-Year-Old Boy Sexually Assaulted 12-Year-Old, Causing Her to Become Infected” (#17岁男孩性侵12岁女孩致其感染#).”​

Another blogger wrote: “First, we had the MA graduate from Shanxi who was forced into marriage and having kids, and it was called “being sheltered.” Now, we have a little girl from Shandong being raped and contracting HPV, and it was called “having a boyfriend.” A twelve-year-old is just a child, a sixth-grader in elementary school, who had been sexually active for over six months. This is not a “boyfriend” or a “romantic relationship.” The proper way to say it is that a 17-year-old male lured and raped a 12-year-old girl, infecting her with HPV.”

By now, the case has garnered widespread attention. The hashtag “12-Year-Old Infected with HPV, 17-Year-Old Boyfriend Arrested” (#12岁女孩感染HPV其17岁男友被抓#) has been viewed over 160 million times on Weibo, while the hashtag “Official Notification on 12-Year-Old Infected with HPV” (#官方通报12岁女孩感染hpv#) has received over 90 million clicks.

Besides the outrage over the individuals and institutions that tried to suppress the story, this incident has also sparked a broader discussion about the lack of adequate and timely sexual education for minors in Chinese schools. Liu Wenli (刘文利), an expert in children’s sexual education, argued on Weibo that both parents and schools play critical roles in teaching children about sex, their bodies, personal boundaries, and the risks of engaging with strangers online.

“Protecting children goes beyond shielding them from HPV infection,” Liu writes. “It means safeguarding them from all forms of harm. Sexual education is an essential part of this process, ensuring every child’s healthy and safe development.”

Many netizens discussing this case have expressed hope that the female doctor who brought the issue to light will not face repercussions or lose her job. They have praised her for exposing the incident and pursuing justice for the girl, alongside the efforts of those on Weibo who helped amplify the story.

The blogger who played a key role in exposing the story recently wrote: “I sure hope the authorities will give an award to the female doctor for reported this case in accordance with the law.” For some, the doctor is nothing short of a hero: “This doctor truly is my role model.”

By Manya Koetse, with contributions by Miranda Barnes
(follow on X, LinkedIn, or Instagram)

Spotted a mistake or want to add something? Please let us know in comments below or email us. First-time commenters, please be patient – we will have to manually approve your comment before it appears.

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