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It was an unusually silent meeting. The township leaders proposed that in order to reduce extreme incidents among students, protective nets should be installed in the corridors and windows of the school in the future. Six years later, Yang Damiao, the principal of the village primary school, still remembers that all the colleagues who attended the meeting had serious expressions.

Yang Damiao was worried, "This is not a fundamental solution to the problem." But he couldn't say, "Human life is at stake, how can I raise any objections?" His village primary school is in the central region. Although such safety accidents have never occurred, aluminum alloy steel windows were installed in the school not long after.

That was 2018, the year when the number of campus protective nets suddenly increased. In the eyes of some teachers, students and protective net installers, this was a physical way to prevent students from falling from buildings on campus.

Six years after installing aluminum alloy steel windows, the same problem once again troubled Yang Damiao. Due to a number of serious fire accidents in educational institutions and schools at the beginning of the year, in March this year, the General Office of the Ministry of Education and the General Office of the National Fire and Rescue Administration jointly issued a notice, clearly stating that it is strictly forbidden to set up obstacles on doors and windows in primary and secondary school teaching buildings, libraries, canteens, dormitories and kindergartens that affect escape and fire fighting and rescue.

A campaign of "removing windows and breaking nets" has been launched across the country. According to incomplete statistics from The Paper, as of press time, 193 schools in 43 regions across the country have carried out the campaign. This campaign, like the initial installation of protective nets, is being promoted on the official accounts of many schools.

The protective nets were installed and removed in order to protect "life" - the "bottom-line net" at that time became an "escape obstacle" at this time. But for the real problem in the "life" subject, educators like Yang Damiao are puzzled: how to weave a soft and resilient inner net to support the falling child?

Network Construction

During class, there was a noise coming from the corridor outside the classroom. Wang Chen saw the workers pulling the wires one by one from downstairs to upstairs, followed by a loud welding sound.

Barbed wire installed in the corridor of the teaching building of Wangchen School. Unless otherwise specified, all pictures in this article are provided by the interviewees

It was September 2022. Shortly after the start of the new semester, Wang Chen's school began to install protective nets in the corridors. About a week later, all the corridors above the second floor of the three teaching buildings were installed. He was a student at an ordinary high school in Tianmen City, Hubei Province. When he was in the first year of high school, he witnessed a student committing suicide.

Liang Ruixue remembers the dull sound of the landing very clearly. In 2022, she was a student at a key high school in Guangdong Province. Just after the morning reading class that day, she clearly heard a loud noise and thought it was the sound of a door closing. A student who came back from the toilet looked terrified. Liang Ruixue learned that the person who left was a senior high school student who was about to take the first mock exam.

After a while, she saw that the school had installed wire mesh protection in the corridor.

Barbed wire installed in the corridor of the teaching building of Liang Ruixue School.

The junior high school that Xu Nuo attended tried to prevent the problem before it happened. Not long after the second mock high school entrance exam, a large high-altitude anti-fall net was laid in the air above the teaching building, like a rigid, inelastic trampoline. The class teacher explained that the reason for the installation was that a student tragedy had occurred at a local vocational school.

A high-altitude anti-fall net that looks like a trampoline.

When interviewed, Xu Nuo had already graduated from junior high school and was a freshman in a key middle school in Sichuan Province, which was listed among the top "super middle schools" in the province. The corridors of this "super middle school" were equipped with barbed wire a year before he enrolled.

Some schools have even stricter "protection". A student from a general high school in Mianyang City told reporters that his school not only installed invisible protective nets with iron wires as thick as pen refills in the corridors, but also hung a layer of anti-fall nets on the top of the second floor. The windows were also equipped with limiters, which could only be opened to the width of about two palms. In the summer, the classroom was as stuffy as a steamer, so he and his classmates secretly unscrewed the limiters, but they were unexpectedly installed again the next week.

A high school in the eastern region installed limiters on all windows, so that the windows can only be opened about 19 cm. Many high schools will adopt this approach. Photo by Chen Yuanyuan, reporter of The Paper

The most extreme are metal partitions that completely block light and air. A primary school teacher in Hebei Province told reporters that in 2022, a sixth-grade student in the school attempted suicide after being criticized by a teacher. Afterwards, the school installed metal partitions in the corridor, and she "often felt suffocated" when passing by.

There was a photo that circulated on the Internet: In the courtyard-style teaching building structure, on the corridors on three sides of the teaching building, iron fences and banners outside the walls were stacked like sandwiches, and the banners with yellow characters on a red background read: "Success in the college entrance examination comes from success every day, every class, and every question"...

The iron fence and banner of Hengshui No. 2 Middle School in 2015. From the Internet

When she saw the photo, Lu Xiaoxiao recognized it at a glance. It was the Zhisheng Building of Hengshui No. 2 Middle School where she had studied hard for two years. According to the Beijing News, in early April 2015, Hengshui No. 2 Middle School installed iron fences in the teaching building and dormitory corridors. "The original half-person-high guardrails were raised and sealed to the top." When the school was interviewed, it only said that this was done for the safety of students. Public information shows that before the installation of the iron fences, at least two senior high school students fell from the building in the school within half a year.

The installation of protective nets in schools sends an important signal: extreme incidents involving students need urgent attention.

In May 2023, a study on suicide mortality in China published in the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention Weekly showed that the suicide mortality rate of urban and rural children aged 5-14 years old showed an upward trend between 2010 and 2021. The suicide mortality rate of adolescents aged 15-24 years old also increased between 2017 and 2021. At the end of the paper, the authors recommend targeted prevention work for high-risk groups such as children and adolescents.

As part of their prevention strategy, fence installers have long been aware of this phenomenon.

Yang Qi has been engaged in the installation of protective nets for 18 years. He said that the core demand for primary and secondary schools to install invisible protective nets is that schools are worried that students will "be unhappy". He remembers that the demand for schools to install protective nets has been increasing since 2018.

Due to the lack of unified regulations, in reality, the appearance of protective nets varies greatly, including aluminum alloy steel windows, iron fences, high-altitude anti-fall nets, and metal partitions. Among them, the "invisible protective net" is the most common and is frequently promoted by protective net installers and schools.

This is confirmed by the bidding announcements for invisible protective nets in various primary and secondary schools. Public data shows that around 2022, the demand for the installation of invisible protective nets in primary and secondary schools has increased again. Primary and secondary schools in Sichuan, Guizhou, Fujian, Guangdong, Jiangsu and other places have issued bidding announcements for procurement and installation.

Lin Dapeng undertakes the business of installing protective nets across the country. He once installed one for a primary school in Maotanchang Town, Lu'an City, Anhui Province.

He introduced that the price of installing an invisible protective net is calculated on a square basis, which is about 100 yuan per square meter. For example, the installation area of ​​a primary school in Maotanchang is 6,000 to 7,000 square meters. The corridors and balconies of the classrooms and dormitories are all installed to the ceiling, and the final total cost is about 600,000 yuan.

According to incomplete statistics from The Paper, as of press time, at least 104 schools across the country had installed protective nets in the corridors of teaching buildings or dormitories, including 57 high schools, 16 junior high schools, 10 elementary schools, 1 technical secondary school and 2 undergraduate colleges.

Among the remaining 18 schools, there are 3 nine-year schools, 5 twelve-year schools and 9 comprehensive secondary schools. These schools have installed barbed wire in the campuses of at least one of the four educational stages: kindergarten, primary school, junior high school and high school.

"Grades are dignity, and classroom is face"

Why do students commit suicide? Behind the installation of the protective net is a mystery of campus suicide that teachers and students have been talking about but have not been solved. "Having their phone stolen" and "being scolded" are often the most talked about reasons.

"The public has misunderstandings about the causes of suicide," said Suo Peng, a psychological crisis intervention expert. "Suicide is a complex result of multiple factors, but the public often only sees the triggering factors, such as teachers snatching students' phones, students having conflicts with others, etc."

Suo Peng is the deputy director of the Psychological Supervision Committee of the China Smart Engineering Research Association and the founder of the Safe Island Youth Suicide Hotline. In her work, she often faces young people with suicidal thoughts.

Among the cases she handled, half of the teenagers committed suicide due to social and psychological factors, such as academic pressure, school bullying, family and peer relationships, etc., and half of the teenagers committed suicide due to mental illnesses such as bipolar disorder and depression.

Suopeng said that the current social atmosphere is not friendly to the mental health development of young people. "It implies to young people that if you don't study well and can't find a good job, you are not an excellent person."

The content of those banners was imprinted in Lu Xiaoxiao's mind for a long time. In fact, in the photos searched online, most of the campus protection nets were hung with long inspirational banners, which complemented each other.

In a middle school in Yuechi County, Sichuan Province, on one side of the protective net, a striking red slogan is posted on the outer wall of the teaching building: "Grade is dignity, classroom is face." It implies the connection between the "barbed wire" that protects students in the school and another invisible "net" - the promotion of academic competition and discipline and order.

Slogans in a middle school in Yuechi County, Sichuan Province.

Academic competition is reflected in class rankings. Xu Nuo is studying in a "super high school" in Sichuan Province. The whole school knows the class rankings very well - Tsinghua and Peking University classes, quasi-Tsinghua and Peking University classes, top-ranked classes, less popular classes, most popular classes, parallel classes, and sports and art classes. He is a student in the top Tsinghua and Peking University classes, but he ranks at the bottom.

As a student in the Tsinghua and Peking University class who was given the most hope by the school, Xu Nuo clearly felt that the exams from the third year of junior high school to the first year of high school were getting more and more frequent, and he had almost no complete rest time. He had regular classes from Monday to Thursday, competition classes on Friday and Saturday, and one day off every Sunday. The only day left was sometimes used for exams - the biweekly exams were arranged on weekends, which had little impact on the normal teaching order.

In this competitive learning environment, corporal punishment is also justified. Zhou Hao, who studied at Hengshui No. 2 Middle School, remembers that his biology teacher would directly use the blackboard eraser to put into the mouths of students who could not answer questions.

Zhou Hao often saw his classmates being punished, and when it was his turn, he found himself acquiescing to such rules, "I guess this can be considered a kind of group pressure."

Wu Bin, a high school teacher in a county town in Henan, has been teaching for 24 years. His school installed protective nets in the corridors two years ago. He agrees with the school's strict management system, "Only by changing bad habits can we study with all our strength."

Wu Bin told reporters that in their school, any behavior not related to study is considered a violation of discipline. In addition to routine behaviors such as being late and carrying mobile phones, there are also reading novels, playing with electronic watches, and eating in the teaching building. As for close relationships between men and women, it is a serious violation of discipline.

If a student violates discipline, not only will the student be criticized by the entire school, but the class teacher's quantitative management points and performance will also be deducted.

In Lu Xiaoxiao's opinion, in Hengshui, getting into a good university seems to be the most important and only path in life. "If I want to drop out, my family will say, 'Why can't you stand it?'"

In the second semester of senior year, Lu Xiaoxiao had a classmate from Dezhou, Shandong, who dropped out. He couldn't sleep for several days and couldn't stand the pressure, so he transferred back to his hometown. Hengshui No. 2 Middle School has no shortage of excellent students. If you drop out with average grades, no teacher will try to keep you.

After the wire mesh was installed in the corridor, Liang Ruixue, a student from Guangdong, could no longer put her books on the fence. She used to lean against the corridor to study. Now, the mesh is very dense, with gaps as small as a palm. She can't stick her head out, and even wants to say hello to students in the opposite building. "It really makes people feel very closed."

Liang Ruixue is a freshman in college. When she recalls her study life in high school, she still feels that "there is pressure from all directions." Every time the pressure reaches a critical point, she talks to her mother to release it a little bit, and then releases it a little bit more next time when it is about to overflow.

But more students interviewed said that faced with inescapable academic pressure, it is difficult for families to provide effective psychological support, and they may even become the party exerting pressure.

When Xu Nuo's grades dropped, his parents would be angry. He was born in Qinghai. When he was six years old, his parents took him back to Sichuan because of the limited local educational resources. In order to support his education, his father worked outside the province and his mother quit her job and stayed with him full-time since elementary school. When he was admitted to this top-notch local high school, his family was happy because it meant he had one foot in a key university.

Although his parents' lives revolved around him and they provided him with a lot of material support, they would occasionally quarrel over his declining academic performance.

On the surface, Xu Nuo's academic pressure comes from his parents, classmates and teachers, but he believes that these people are not the main cause of the pressure. "(Pressure) will be transmitted to you through the people around you."

The aforementioned study on suicide mortality rates stated that currently, in the educational concept of quite a number of Chinese parents and teachers, "academic performance is more important than anything else", which brings tremendous pressure to young people. Improper stress management may lead to serious mental disorders and increased suicide risks.

Wang Yingguang, director of the psychology center of a key middle school in Shenzhen, told reporters that during the psychological survey, she found that students had great peer pressure and academic pressure, and their indicators of depression, anxiety and compulsion were relatively high.

According to incomplete statistics from The Paper, of the 104 schools that installed protective nets, 41 were rated as model schools, key schools, first-class schools or star schools. These schools are mainly concentrated in Hubei, Henan and Hebei provinces.

Comparison pictures before and after the installation of protective nets in a middle school in Yongcheng City, Henan Province.

During her three years at Hengshui No. 2 Middle School, Lu Xiaoxiao concentrated on her studies and never thought of looking up at the sky, let alone the barbed wire. Her desire to get into a good school overwhelmed her negative emotions.

Lu Xiaoxiao said that she had mixed feelings about Hengshui No. 2 Middle School. After entering university, she realized that such an education model deprived individuals of their learning ability and subjectivity, and she needed to learn how to eat and play from scratch. But there were also benefits. She got a good grade from it, and now she is studying for a master's degree at a 211 university in Beijing. She found that she was trained to be particularly adaptable to high pressure.

After graduating from Hengshui Middle School in 2019, Zheng Qi was successfully admitted to a university in Beijing and now stays in Beijing to work.

During his three years of high school, he ranked low in the experimental class. Afraid that others would look down on him, he became withdrawn and didn't want to talk to anyone.

Zheng Qi chose Hengshui No.5 Middle School for junior high school and Hengshui Middle School for high school. He valued the high admission rate. He was born in a rural area of ​​Hebei Province. When he was in elementary school, his father fell ill and could no longer work. The main source of income for the family was cut off, and his mother worked as a cook for the employer to support the family. His goal in high school was very realistic, which was to get into a good university.

The classroom of Zhengqi High School.

Looking back on his experience of studying at Hengshui Middle School, he asked himself, "Do you think this is lucky or unlucky?" He answered himself during the interview, "You also have to consider the range of choices available to the person who chooses this system, what he wants and what resources he has, and what his own situation is like. You can't judge the choices of Hengshui Middle School students from the perspective of someone in Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou. This is unfair."

Campus mental health: a powerless pressure relief valve

For students, schools and families that place excessive emphasis on academic performance and neglect other aspects are like the "body" and "lid" that make up a "pressure cooker". The air pressure inside the pressure cooker is getting higher and higher, so where is the air outlet?

Lu Xiaoxiao is a 2019 graduate of Hengshui No. 2 Middle School. During her time at school, she had never heard of the school having a psychological counseling room or a psychological teacher. She only remembered the "heart-to-heart talk" session. During the evening self-study class, if a student did not do well on the test, the teacher would call him to the corridor to talk and ask him why he did not do well on the test and why he did not get the question right. In Lu Xiaoxiao's impression, no teacher would care, "Are you feeling too stressed recently?"

Almost all teachers and students interviewed in schools that have installed barbed wire mentioned a common problem: the lack of mental health education.

The government has paid attention to campus mental health issues for a long time. In 1999, the Ministry of Education issued the "Several Opinions on Strengthening Mental Health Education in Primary and Secondary Schools", requiring that the training of mental health education teachers be included in local and school teacher training plans. By 2021, the Ministry of Education issued the "Notice on Strengthening Student Mental Health Management", requiring each primary and secondary school to have at least one full-time mental health education teacher.

During the interview, a student said that there are classmates who go to the psychological counseling room every day in the school, and her classmates have given it very good reviews.

However, it is more common that mental health education is ineffective. A student from a middle school in Hubei Province said that the door of the school's psychological counseling room is often closed; a student from a middle school in Guangdong Province said that the psychology teacher only gives a lecture once a semester, and it is difficult to see the psychology teacher during normal times, as online consultations can only be arranged; a student from a middle school in Sichuan Province said that the psychological lecture is held once a semester, and the class teacher only selects one or two students in the class to attend.

Mental health is not at the top of the school's value list. When asked if he had the opportunity to seek help from a psychologist, Zheng Qi's first reaction was a bit confused. "If I go, I probably have to ask for leave from my class teacher. Otherwise, how can I get psychological counseling during class or other time?" He explained, "My study schedule is very tight, and I have a teacher watching me."

On social platforms, many students have reflected that the psychology teacher’s attitude towards privacy protection is the primary factor that determines whether they are willing to seek psychological assistance.

In one exam, Xu Nuo's score dropped to 500th in the grade, so he decided to go to the school's psychological counseling room. The room was converted from an office, but a relatively private space was designed with partitions, with two sofas and a table. In that reassuring environment, Xu Nuo confided to the psychological counselor that he was in a bad mood due to the pressure of studying.

Soon, the situation took a subtle turn. A few days later, Xu Nuo's class teacher called him out of the classroom and comforted him that he could be recommended for high school and that the high school entrance examination was just a formality for him. Although the class teacher's words were encouraging, Xu Nuo still felt uncomfortable, "Why did the psychological counseling office notify my class teacher without my consent?"

This little incident destroyed Xu Nuo's trust in his psychology teacher. Later, due to too much study pressure, he chose to talk to his friends or "play hard" for a while.

"Whether in school or outside, students' privacy must be respected." Wang Yingguang said that in her middle school, once a student shows high-risk signs, the psychological teacher will definitely ask for consent and clearly tell the student that this part is confidential and needs to be communicated with parents or class teachers. If it is not a high-risk situation, the student will consult the psychological teacher and will not disclose it to the class teacher.

Insufficient psychological teachers are also one of the reasons why students cannot get help in time. The school where Long Lifei teaches has a total of 3,000 students, but only one full-time and one part-time psychological teacher. Looking at the entire county, she found that this problem is common, and the best school has only two full-time psychological health teachers. During the conversation, Huang Ling, a primary school psychological teacher in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, also joked that she was the only one.

However, the work energy of psychology teachers is greatly occupied, and they are required to do many part-time jobs. Fang Wenjing is a psychology teacher at a nine-year school in Hunan. In addition to psychology work, she also has part-time jobs in the main subjects and administration positions in the school. "I am as busy as an octopus every day."

Fang Wenjing's main job is to prepare materials for inspections. Huang Ling has the same dilemma. She said that it is not important to teach well or not, but to write news about activities, stand guard for the week, prepare materials for inspections, and do other chores assigned by the school.

Huang Ling said that the principal had clearly stated at the meeting that teachers would not be protected if problems arose. She was very clear that these traces were to protect the school and teachers from being held accountable, or in other words, to protect herself.

Under the issue of safety protection, the role of psychology teachers in primary and secondary schools has become increasingly awkward. After just one year of work, Fang Wenjing felt that her enthusiasm had been greatly worn away. Feeling powerless from time to time, she could only comfort herself, "Make the materials beautiful, and then go to bed."

"But I really want to do something," Fang Wenjing added.

Suopeng also noticed that school teachers are under a lot of pressure and that “suicide prevention should not be the school’s job alone.” Suopeng believes that psychological problems originate from society and that these front-end problems are difficult for school psychologists to solve and require support from family, medical care, school and society.

How to reduce the suicide rate among teenagers? Suopeng believes that the most important thing is to create an environment with humanistic care.

The core of Suopeng's work is to help young people re-understand the value of life. "No matter what I eat, what I wear, what I do, or how well I study, I have the right to live, to enjoy the sun, air, love and warmth, and to pursue happiness in various ways."

“Mending the fold after the sheep have been stolen”

When the invisible protective net woven at the psychological level still cannot stop the falling students, the tangible protective net at the physical level comes into being.

In 2023, psychology teacher Long Lifei's high school also installed protective nets in the corridors. She also noticed that many high schools in her county had installed such nets.

A school plaque in the eastern region reads "Safety first, prevention first." Photo by Chen Yuanyuan, a reporter at The Paper

The school did not explain why the protective net was installed. She guessed that this was a "helpless move" by the school - the school had sought many solutions at the level of mental health, such as psychological lectures and psychological group counseling, but extreme incidents continued to occur, and in the end they did not know how to prevent them, so they adopted such a "relatively simple" and "easy to control" method.

When asked if she had seen protective nets installed in school corridors, Suo Peng replied, "I've seen it too many times." She believes that schools are crowded places, and if students jumping off buildings frequently occur, it is natural to have good protection.

She remembers that the problem of youth suicide became serious around 2021. Suo Peng said that in the management of the venue, the installation of protective nets can play a certain restraining role. "At least, they can't jump down, but this can only prevent the last step."

What is more complicated is the protection against suicide causes. In this regard, Suopeng believes that the protection net will not play any role, and may even have side effects, reminding students that there have been suicides. This may reversely reinforce the idea of ​​suicide, especially for those students who already have the idea but not strongly.

Ever since the installation of the high-altitude anti-fall net, Xu Nuo felt uneasy. His classroom is on the first floor, and when he goes out, he can clearly see a layer of net covering his head. The holes in the mesh are not dense, almost the size of a human head, just enough to hold up a life.

Xu Nuo would be angry if he saw this, thinking that installing the protective net was a strategy for the school to avoid responsibility. At the same time, he would also "feel sorry that those students did not get help, because I also have times when I feel depressed, so I understand the dilemma they are unable to get out of."

Later, when he entered high school, protective nets were installed in the corridors above the second floor of the school. Although his classroom was on the first floor, every time he left the teaching building, he could see the gray-toned gold threads wrapping the building, and a feeling of uneasiness followed him like a shadow.

A high school teaching building in Hunan Province installed barbed wire in the corridor to block out the sunset.

"(Installing barbed wire) is essentially a way to fix the problem after the sheep have been stolen." Suo Peng told The Paper that what needs more attention is that "the work done at the front end is far from enough."

Usually, Suopeng will go to various parts of the country to do psychological crisis intervention. Psychological crisis intervention is to help people who are affected by crisis events and have physical and mental disorders to recover. From another perspective, psychological crisis intervention, especially in the early stages, is also to make people who are in desperate situations feel temporary warmth and security in this atmosphere, so that they can regain the power of self-healing.

The front-end work includes life education, parent education, discovering students' psychological crisis warning signs, timely assessing risk levels, taking different measures according to risk situations, etc. After visiting some primary and secondary schools, Suopeng found that most schools actually have plans for these tasks. However, since psychological crisis intervention is a highly practical job, only the processes hanging on the wall will not work, and daily training and drills are required, "like emergency fire drills."

That day, after the senior high school student jumped off the building, the head teachers of each class in Liang Ruixue's school stood at the door and did not let the students go out. By the time Liang Ruixue left, the scene had been cleaned up. That night, the head teacher held a class meeting to warn everyone to cherish life. This incident passed very calmly, as if it had never happened, but it left a mark in Liang Ruixue's heart.

Suo Peng often encounters that after a student suicide, the school's first reaction is to block the news as much as possible because they are afraid that other students will be affected psychologically and avoid causing a public opinion crisis. She explained that this is related to human instinct. When a crisis comes, people instinctively deny, retreat and defend themselves, like ostriches. "They (the school) may think that if they do this, others will not notice it, and telling others about it will only irritate everyone."

She believes that the core reason is that people know too little about suicide, which leads to some prevention work being delayed, ineffective, and even a little ridiculous.

Life education is often misunderstood. Suo Peng said that in safety education such as drowning prevention, some schools will warn students that they cannot do this. "This is called life warning, which is terror education."

This spring, Suopeng received an invitation to manage a case of attempted suicide. This was the first time that the middle school took the initiative to invite crisis intervention workers to the campus. Within a week, Suopeng rushed to the school and learned that the student, who was highly suspected of schizophrenia, committed suicide under the control of delusional hallucinations.

Afterwards, Suopeng held a life education class meeting for the class of the student in the accident, conducted group crisis counseling for the student's roommates, and provided individual counseling to the teachers and school leaders who handled the incident, summarizing the shortcomings of the prior crisis intervention work.

After contacting all parties, Suopeng discovered a problem. Like other attempted suicide cases she had encountered in the past, the student in this incident once expressed that "nothing I do is useful." People around him just advised him not to think like that, but none of them realized that this was a very dangerous signal.

"All suicide signals are requests for help," Suo Peng said. These suicide signals are clearly stated in professional work guidelines, and everyone can learn them, just like cardiopulmonary resuscitation. She has a suggestion. When you recognize suicide signals, you can patiently listen to the other person's troubles if you trust them, and tell them that when the suicidal thoughts are strong and difficult to control, they must seek help.

This is also the focus of Suopeng’s crisis intervention work for teenagers, to teach teachers and parents professional methods of suicide prevention and to “educate teenagers about life and seeking help.” The causes of suicide are difficult to understand, and this is something that individuals can do.

Suopeng seeks help in popular science education.

Suopeng found that some teenagers have a lot of confusion about life. She does not shy away from talking about death with teenagers, and regards every crisis intervention opportunity as a life education. "Life education is a big topic," Suopeng said, it uses a variety of entertaining and fun ways to make people feel the power and warmth of life, such as writing an epitaph for a dead pet, writing a letter to a relative in heaven, or cultivating seeds by hand. "In short, it is to observe the world, let people feel the loveliness of life, and love the world."

Dismantle the net

In April this year, Yang Damiao received a notice from his superiors that the aluminum alloy steel windows that had been installed for six years must be removed for fire safety reasons.

The cause of the incident was a fire in a shop in Xinyu, Jiangxi Province on January 24, 2024, caused by construction workers illegally starting fires, resulting in 39 deaths and 9 injuries. The victims were students participating in the junior college to undergraduate training and guests staying in the hotel. In addition, the relevant person in charge of the National Fire Rescue Administration stated that there were obstacles such as anti-theft nets and billboards in this accident that affected the safe escape of personnel and fire fighting and rescue.

A week ago, on January 19, a fire broke out in a dormitory of a rural boarding school in Fangcheng County, Henan Province, killing 13 people and injuring 4. The official cause of the accident has not yet been announced, but according to Sanlian Life Weekly, after the incident, a student said that the dormitory had windows, but the school considered it unsafe for students to go in and out through the windows, so a protective net was installed outside. The dormitory has two doors, front and back, but one door is blocked by the bed, and only one door leads to the corridor.

In addition, since the start of the spring semester this year, the National Fire Rescue Administration has counted that a total of 516 fires occurred in schools across the country between March 1 and May 27, an increase of 2% year-on-year.

Today, these major school fire accidents have attracted the attention of local education and fire departments. The fire inspection storm has spread to other areas. The protective nets previously installed to protect students' safety have once again become the focus of the problem.

After receiving the notice to "remove windows and break nets", Yang Damiao had a headache because he was the one who wanted to keep the protective net.

Six years ago, Yang Damiao’s school was asked by superiors to install wire mesh in the corridors and windows. He negotiated for a long time and later used the reason that “primary school students are relatively small and the walls of the corridors are relatively high” to convince his superiors to agree not to install wire mesh in the corridors and only install aluminum alloy steel windows on the windows.

This time, the aluminum alloy steel windows were required to be removed. Yang Damiao was worried again, "If we remove all the wire mesh now, will there be a situation where children will accidentally fall through it while playing?"

Yang Damiao communicated with his superiors many times, and finally, they agreed to saw off a piece for escape, thus saving the aluminum alloy steel window.

The iron railings on the windows of Yang Damiao School were finally removed. Photo by Chen Yuanyuan, a reporter from The Paper

Yang Damiao's worries are over for now. As for the mental health of students, his village primary school is surrounded by mountains. The sound of roosters crowing and water flowing can be heard on the campus. The mountains protect the children to some extent. They have no academic pressure and can run carefree during breaks. There is also a remote mental health class every month. On the other side of the screen, teachers in Shanghai will teach them.

At present, there are still a large number of schools that have not removed their protective nets, and Xu Nuo's school is one of them. However, the barbed wire has also unexpectedly brought fun to vent. Xu Nuo's class was briefly moved to the third floor where a high-altitude anti-fall net was installed. During the break, a few birds occasionally played on the anti-fall net, and he and several classmates lay on the guardrail to watch.

Suddenly, Xu Nuo and his classmates burst into laughter.

Poster design: Bailang

(Except Suopeng, all other names are pseudonyms)