Thirteen students killed themselves last year - five more than in 2010 and seven more than in 2009, the Shanghai Education Commission said in the annual Primary and Secondary School Students Safety Report. more ›

Foxconn is back in the news with a vengeance these past few weeks after workers protested and even threatened mass suicide. Watch Jon Stewart's take on the factory, which he struggles to differentiate from an actual prison. more ›

Our favourite newspaper Shanghai Daily reports:

HANGZHOU city government is to give Maria Fernanda, a Uruguayan woman who rescued a would-be suicide at the city's West Lake, a "righteous award" to recognize her courage and benevolence, officials said yesterday. more ›

This morning, a man attempted to commit suicide by laying himself on the subway track at the Songhong Road station. Quickthinking passengers informed metro staff who then activated the emergency brake. Everyone was on tenterhooks as they watched the train coming in, but heaved a sigh of relief as it came to a complete halt just before the man. Crisis averted. more ›

Another day, another student suicide: "A schoolgirl jumped to her death from a residential high-rise building in the Pudong New Area early yesterday morning, just minutes before she was supposed to fetch her textbooks for the new school year starting the next day. The student, 15, jumped from the top of an 18-story apartment building on Zhangyang Road about 7:50am... She was wearing a school uniform when she jumped and left her schoolbag and cellphone on top of the building, security guards said." [Shanghai Daily] more ›

Here's what's going on around Shanghai: more ›

Shanghai Daily reports: "The man is said to have hanged himself on Sunday afternoon in a student dormitory at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, school officials and police officers said." No other details about the young man's death are available, but his family members are on his way to Shanghai. more ›

A massive ceremony was conducted at Fudan University this morning to mourn the loss of Anhui policeman Zhang Ninghai, who died while rescuing a team of 18 mountain climbers, mostly from the university's mountain climbing association, who had earlier wandered into a restricted zone at the Yellow Mountain. more ›

Perhaps the promises of higher pay and better conditions at Foxconn haven't been much solace to its workers or someone just had an unfortunately timed accident: either way, another worker - this time a summer intern - has fallen out of a Foxconn dormitory and died. more ›

From RTHK via Xinhua: The twelfth employee to jump from Foxconn's Shenzhen plant this year became the tenth person to plunge to his death at the factory just now around 11pm. Earlier in the day, Foxconn CEO Terry Gou arrived in Shenzhen to bring the media for a tour around the factory's recreational facilities said to be available to employees, such as the swimming pool you see on the right. He bowed multiple times for the "unstoppable tragedies", adding that he was willing to stop making Foxconn employees sign the non-suicide pact. He also added that those who jumped did so because of boy-girl relationships, and that he was in no position to stop that from happening. Families of the suicide victims were seen outside the factory wailing, demanding for an investigation. more ›

Just when we thought we wouldn't be hearing anymore of that hellhole-of-a-workplace otherwise known as Foxconn, yet another scandal has erupted. This time, several security guards at Foxconn's Beijing plant have been filmed getting physical with factory workers. In a clip that has been circulating around on Chinese interwebs, two guards are first seen pulling a Foxconn employee by his shirt and shoving him around. Meanwhile, three other guards outside have pinned another employee to the ground, and they are joined by another ten or so guards who then jointly beat the living daylights out of that guy. more ›

It's not looking too great for Foxconn, Apple's Chinese supplier who once again is having to explain and help uncover why yet another member of the Foxconn team committed suicide yesterday. more ›

• 50 year old Shen Zhengjuan, director of the state-owned assets administration, or SASAC, jumped to her death from her apartment in Shanghai’s Huangpu District on the last day of 2008. Caijing Online speculates her suicide may have to do with the corruption scandal of former mayor Chen Liangyu. More here and here. (Update: The Huangpu District has issued a statement to state that Shen was not corrupt and was "a person of decency" and "an official who showed true conviction to her job.")
• Approximately 80% of college students in Shanghai are willing to lower salary expectations for their first jobs, with 2% saying they would even consider a job that paid a monthly salary of under RMB1,000.
• Intestinal washes are now becoming increasingly popular in Shanghai as a result of the all the recent food scandals. One hospital reports as many as 200 customers a month.

The Shanghai Daily reports yesterday that a senior at the Shanghai University of Engineering Science who was accused by his teacher of cheating in an English proficiency test was so distraught he jumped from the fifth floor of his school building. As a result:

The student, Zhang Meng, is now lying in an intensive care unit at No. 1 People's Hospital in Songjiang District, the news Website, eastday.com, reported today. more ›

• Even your eggs aren't safe now, people. After Hong Kong found Select's "extra-large fresh brown eggs" to contain close to twice the legal limit of melamine, Walmart has pulled all eggs from the brand off the shelves of all its China stores. Select (咯咯哒 or "Gegeda" in Chinese) is a big brand and is one of those "China Famous Brands" (中国驰名商标). Refer to the packaging of the affected eggs in the video, and if you have them at home, dump them.
• A 37 year old woman from the Zhejiang province has come to Shanghai to seek medical treatment for her incontrollable shaking after spending RMB100,000 on medical care in Hangzhou, but even the best doctors at Huashan Hospital are baffled by her condition.
• An Anhui man has been sentenced to death for the cruel murder of the ex-husband of his lover. After suffocating his victim with a plastic bag, he dismembered him with a kitchen knife and then boiled and steamed all his body parts before dumping them in a creek in Pudong.

As we mentioned earlier, the start of school term has been followed by suicide attempts among the city's middle and high school students. Only yesterday, another two high school students attempted to end their lives but were saved. more ›

Shanghai Daily reports a man killed 3 members of his family in a grocery store on Tongzhan Road, in Jiading's Fengbang Town. It appears he killed his wife and in-laws as a result of a domestic dispute and has since turned himself in. Meanwhile, ChinaSmack informs us that within a few days of the start of the new semester, four middle school students in Shanghai have committed suicide. more ›

A 19 year old woman who owed over 500RMB in a bill to a beauty salon in Minhang District stabbed one of the salon's worker 11 times with a kitchen knife before fleeing and committing suicide by jumping into a river. Fortunately, the beautician who was sent to follow the woman home to take payment, has survived to tell the story. The dead woman's siblings have since arrived in Shanghai from Shandong, and said their sister must have been lured to the salon with the promise of free treatments as she earned only 1,200RMB every month and would not have been able to afford such an expensive treatment. more ›