Pressure-and-Release: Writing Shanghai’s Rooftoppers
It made headlines around the world: The young man was doing pull-ups at the top of a skyscraper and let go. “Let go” might not be the right word: it implies intention. “Fell,” however, implies total accident. His arms gave out. He’d reached his limit. I don’t know, because I watched the video until that moment neared, and then couldn’t go on. It was snuff, I thought. To witness that moment would be to witness something horrible and real. His name was Wu Yongning. The tower was a 62-floor building in Changsha. He was performing stunts for a live-streaming challenge, reportedly to pay for his wedding and his mother’s medical bills. He was a rooftopper and he wasn’t the first to die.
Rooftopping footage began surfacing on the Chinese internet in the early to mid-2000s, the first wave coming mostly from Russia. I remember clicking on these videos as a middle schooler, drawn in by the sheer height conveyed by the nearly aerial vantage points, made uneasy by the danger implied in those hovering feet in the foreground, often standing on the narrowest of ledges or the rusty rings of TV towers while the city sprawled in architectural miniature below. Soon the trend caught on in Chinese cities. I could recognize the tubular, futuristic towers of Lujiazui financial district in Shanghai
