On New Year’s Eve, Yang Lin, 26, stayed in Beijing alone for New Year’s Eve. When she took a shower in the early morning, the bathroom door lock broke and she was trapped inside. For thirty long hours, she struggled with hunger, banged on the pipes for help, and survived on running water. However, no one reached out for help except her cat. Eventually, a young stranger, who was also stranded in Beijing, saved her.
The room was tucked away in the deepest part of the hallway, hardly noticeable.
Behind the red-brown security door was a 50-square-meter hut. One room, one bathroom, old-fashioned yellow wooden furniture, typical of the 1990s style of decoration. The bathroom is small, the kitchen is cluttered, and cat climbing frames, litter boxes, and cat mats fill up the living room. A skinny girl often sits at the corner table to eat, a Sphinx hairless cat firmly occupying another stool.
This is 26-year-old Yang Lin’s first place to live in Beijing. It is less than two kilometers from the flat. With one person and one cat, she enjoys the ease and comfort of living alone in this small, slightly cluttered space. The only drawback is the poor soundproofing. The loud sound of closing doors often comes from afar, and the sound of flushing toilets upstairs late at night can be heard clearly.
In accordance with the requirements of Epidemic prevention, this year, Yang Lin stayed in Beijing for New Year’s Eve. For her, there was nothing special about New Year’s Eve, and even work didn’t stop. After work, scribbling a hot pot meal with friends, she hurried Home. On the last day of the old calendar year, she wanted to be alone and video chat with her distant friends and Family.
The TV show was on by itself, and the Sphinx hunkered down comfortably at her feet. Stoned on potato chips, she told her mom on the phone that she was going to the temple to offer incense every other day. It was about 1:00 a.m. when she hung up the phone. Yang Lin picked up her clothes, walked into the bathroom, and closed the door.
In that small space of less than two square meters, she spent the longest 30 hours of her Life.
The first to find her was a cat
After the shower, Yanglin turned the old ball lock with her hand, the ball was turned, but the door did not move. She found the scraper again, along the door gap scraping the lock tongue, or no response.
The bathroom is less than two square meters, the louvered hole on the wooden door is the only ventilation, the indoor heat is dense, suffocating. Yang Lin is a little anxious. She removed the shower and slammed the door. The glass embedded in the center shattered and a small hole appeared. Yang Lin stretched out her slender arm and twisted the key inserted in the lock hole on the other side, but the key only moved a little and the door still did not respond.
The phone is in the bedroom and there is no way to contact the outside world. She tried to call on the Apple smartphone system siri, the distance is too far, no response. Then, she thought of the smart speaker in the bedroom Tmall Genie. She shouted outside “Tmall Genie, alarm”, but the speaker did not have this function. It will only silently announce the Time: it is now 3 o’clock in the morning. One word at a time, the voice is still so playful.
That was the first time she knew the time. At least an hour or so had passed since she was trapped.
Yang Lin’s neighborhood is located in Beijing’s core business district, the East Third Ring Road, with 14 buildings and more than 2,500 homes. It’s a typical tower block of the 1990s, and most of the residents are elderly. The building is surrounded by winding hallways. Each floor has an elevator room as the center point, and there is a main hallway on each side of the north and south, and along with the main hallway, there are also derivative hallways. Yang Lin guesses that there are at least 10 families on each floor.
Yang Lin lives on the 15th floor, the innermost part of the south side of the building, two neighbors, one is renovating, and one is an old couple in their 80s. As a foreign tenant, Yang Lin has less interaction with her neighbors. The most interactions is the old lady next door, out and about will say hello to each other.
It was late at night, and it was quiet inside and outside the house. Yang Lin was a little tired and hungry. She decided to sleep to save energy, through the voice settings, to the smart speaker on the 7:00 alarm clock, “at that time, many people get up to buy Food, sports”, she can ask for help The alarm is set to 7:00. Sitting on the toilet seat, leaning against the heater, Yang Lin fell asleep.
At 7 a.m. on the first day of the New Year, she was woken up by the smart speaker and started calling for help. The bathroom is not far from the entrance door, there are indeed people around the sound. Yang Lin anxiously explained the situation. A middle-aged woman’s alert voice rang out, “Why did a person take a bath and lock the door? Another voice said, “Why don’t you bring your cell phone in the shower? “Repeat the answer several times. Yang Lin became more and more anxious, and the volume rose accordingly. The person outside the door asked, “You said you were trapped, why are you still so loud? “
Based on the vague sounds she heard, Yang Lin judged that there were at least two people surrounding the door. She begged the other side, “Please help call the police.” No one paid any attention to her plea. I don’t know how long it took, but the door was quiet. Yang Lin became anxious and shouted at the top of her lungs, “Is anyone there? Anyone? “
There was no response.
At that moment, tears swirled in her eyes and were wiped away before they could flow down. Yang Lin drank two sips of tap water to moisten her throat, and patted her face with cold water.
After calming down, she remembered the courier again. Yang Lin is usually very nerdy, living supplies are purchased online, the door of the room is always piled with various paper boxes. She asked the Tmall Genie when the latest delivery would arrive. The answer was this afternoon (the first day of the year). She pinned her hopes on the courier boy.
That afternoon, she stretched her ears to listen to the sound of the elevator. The sound of metal scraping came, the elevator door opened, she shouted at the top of her voice “help”. No one responded. The elevator door opened and closed several times, but the call for help failed. Finally, even the elevator quieted down.
She decided to make some noise. After all, people are self-interested, “only when their lives are disturbed, they will realize to come up to see. “
Yang Lin is a native of Sichuan, and after the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, every Friday in nature class, she, as class president, would go up and read relevant knowledge to her classmates. Now, all this knowledge of earthquake prevention and mitigation is in use. She cranks up the volume of the Tmall Genie and has it remind her once an hour: Master, it’s time to shout for help. When the time comes, she swings the shower and hammers the water pipe, shouting “help” before briefly explaining the situation.
The landlord didn’t do soundproofing for the bathroom plumbing, so the “buzzing” of the pounding echoed for a while and made her ears tingle. Not to hear. Sometimes it feels like an hour has passed, ask the Tmall Genie, only to know that it is only 10 minutes.
I don’t know how long it took, but the smell of rice wafted in, “I don’t know if it was an illusion of hunger”. Maybe it was time for dinner. She tried to block out these distractions and continued tapping on the water pipe, when she had only one thought, “I want to get out”.
After staying in that cramped space for a long time, Yang Lin’s chest became tight and she began to panic. After showering that night, her hair could not be blown out, relying on the heater in the bathroom to dry it, and now her scalp is oily and dry. Because of the lack of clothing, at night and cold extremities.
The cat seems to be the only one in the world who still cares about her. The first one to notice the difference was the sphinx, who was “meowing” and restless in the living room. Seemingly sensing Yang Lin’s plight, he kept banging his body against the door and scratching the wooden door of the bathroom with his paws. Yang Lin crouched behind the door and gently called out the Sphinx’s name, and reached out her fingers through the crack under the door to comfort him. Sphinx licked her finger and quieted down.
Across the bathroom door, one person and one cat, just sitting there. Later, the automatic feeder in the house, each time a clatter, pouring out cat food, the cat is indifferent, only to guard her. The feeder stored cat food can eat 15 days, “the cat may live longer than me”. Thinking about it, she was a little desperate, if she missed work on the seventh day, the unit only found her missing, she “may have died”.
The stranger downstairs
At about seven o’clock on the morning of the second day of the Lunar New Year, Lin Jian, who lives on the 14th floor, was awakened by a “buzzing” sound.
Lin Jian’s first reaction was anger, “which someone is knocking on the pipe early in the morning”. He vaguely heard a female voice coming from upstairs, “Help”, the voice sounded a bit distant. Lin Jian lying on the wall, heard a girl is telling their situation: 15xx residents, New Year’s Eve night bath, was locked in the bathroom can not get out.
“Is it a prank, or domestic violence? ” he felt it was unlikely to encounter such a situation in real life.
Lin Jian, 30, came to Beijing to work for six years and bought this 50-square-meter house. He works in an Internet-related job and goes to work at 10 a.m. and leaves at 7 p.m. every day. At home alone, he nibbles on an apple, watches TV, plays games and sometimes teases his brown dog Yorkshire, and the day passes quickly. He is not a person who particularly needs company, “a person is also living quite well”.
This year’s Spring Festival, Lin Jian also did not return home. In the afternoon of New Year’s Eve, the family sent New Year’s greetings in advance, the evening ate take-out, played the game, the “unforgettable night” as soon as the song was finished, the clock passed zero, he laid down on the bed. But that night, Lin Jian did not sleep peacefully. In retrospect, it may have been vaguely heard the noise.
After living here for three years, the relationship with the neighbors is not salty. When you go out, you will greet a “work”, paper boxes left to neighbors to collect, they occasionally help pick up a courier. “If it’s not particularly serious, people nowadays don’t care much about the situation in other people’s homes. “He said.
The cries for help coming from the water pipe did not stop and lasted for 20 minutes or so. Lin Jian listened carefully again, the girl was letting the smart speaker alarm, the robot talked to itself, ignoring the request, he felt, “there may really be a problem.
Lin Jian decided to go upstairs to take a look. He circled the hallway on the 15th floor several times before finding the door to Yang Lin’s room at the far end of the hallway.
“What’s wrong with you, are you knocking on the pipes? ” Jian Lin asked.
This voice outside the door sounded a little cold, Yang Lin was both excited and a little worried, it wouldn’t be like those aunts last time. To prove the authenticity, Yang Lin urgently told the other party about her trapped passage.
Lin Jian reassured her, “Do not rush, let me think about what to do? “
Yang Lin asked for help to call the police, and Lin Jian readily agreed. The police suggested finding a locksmith and provided several certified locksmith companies to call. Because it was a holiday, Lin Jian called three or four consecutive calls before finding someone.
Worried that Jian Lin was losing his patience, Yang Lin wanted to let him in and wait. Although a little worried, she still directly told this stranger room door password. She was too afraid that the other party would just walk away again.
Lin Jian recalls, into the house inside, Yang Lin spoke the first words is, “What time is it? “By then, it had been close to 28 hours since she was trapped.
Lin Jian sat in the crowded living room. Upstairs and downstairs, two young people who had never seen each other before, chatted idly across a wall of doors. Among the 92 million people who live alone in the country, they had a brief encounter because of an accident. Fearing that he would walk away, Yang Lin took the initiative to open up the conversation about his work and his experience in the north, “trying to win his trust”. Lin Jian asks about the Sphinx’s weight. Yang Lin took the opportunity to ask him to clear the glass fragments from the bathroom door to the garbage can, fearing that it might be accidentally injured. In between, Lin Jian made four more calls to the locksmith to ask if he was almost there.
Yang Lin was finally reassured that he was about to be rescued, “to this point, he could not have left me alone”.
Locksmith Master Wang soon arrived, less than 10 minutes, opened the door to the bathroom. Worried about the girl’s inconvenience, Master Wang and Lin Jian exit the room outside the door.
For Master Wang, most locks can be done in 10 minutes, the difficult, no more than half an hour. But for ordinary people, once the latch is stuck in the door frame, the door basically can not open. Yang Lin’s door open towards the inside, the distance to the wall is very narrow, the middle also put a washing machine, more impossible to kick open.
Doing this business for less than a year, in Beijing, Master Wang is used to seeing such situations. A girl, was locked in the kitchen, himself demolished three or four hours before calling for help; an 80-year-old man, was locked in the bathroom, six hours later, the family found after work; New Year’s Eve, a 30-year-old woman living alone, went out to paste the Spring Festival, was locked out; there are young people, went out and found no key, in advance to make an appointment with him to unlock the door after work. Not long after Yang Lin’s incident, another girl was locked in the bathroom in East Sanlitun. Every day, Master Wang receives about ten orders. He said, “living alone, there is no way to avoid this situation even more”.
Yang Lin was the worst, trapped for 30 hours. However, Master Wang remembered that after coming out of the bathroom, Yang Lin was in pretty good shape and her voice was loud. He was impressed by the cat in gray. When the lock was removed, it was motionless and curled up under the table, looking around vigilantly.
After the lock was removed, a black hole was left in the white door. Thinking that Yang Lin has not eaten or drunk for 30 hours, Master Wang wanted to buy a dumpling for her. He turned around downstairs but could not find a dumpling store, and finally brought a bag of bread and milk to send up.
“Why do you live alone? “
Master Wang and Lin Jian were gone, and it was just her and the Sphinx in the room again. Yang Lin sat at the dining table, her back arched and her eyes lax. With a milk straw in her mouth and a strawberry-flavored bread in her hand, tears began to fall silently. The past thirty hours, loneliness, indifference, despair, death, the taste of warmth, she has tasted.
She thought there would be many people thinking of her. After coming out of the bathroom, the first thing she did was run to her phone, “there should be a lot of messages”. When she tapped into WeChat, the screen was full of little red dots, but except for perhaps a group New Year’s message and a subscribed public article, and a message from Toyosu, she couldn’t find a single message that really belonged to her.
She felt lost. In an era where technology pursues 5G, where everything is interconnected, and where socializing is about distance and boundaries, the human connection is so fragile. “We are already in a very atomized society and are so used to this that it’s not surprising when a friend sends a message and doesn’t return it for two days.”
Without the heart to eat lunch, the afternoon of the second day of the Lunar New Year, Yang Lin ordered a cup of milk tea, body like “big”, paralyzed on the bed, let the tears flow.
Later in the day, she received a WeChat message that a friend had asked her to go see “Chinatown Detective 3”. She also called her mother to ask how the first day at the temple went. It was in that moment that Yang Lin felt that she was finally back in the real world. Yang Lin didn’t mention that she was trapped, she couldn’t talk about it anymore and didn’t feel the need to talk about it. The movie was so fragmented that it set off bursts of laughter all around. She was in a bit of a trance. Looking back on those 30 hours, she felt both close and far from the world.
To show her gratitude, Yang Lin later invited Lin Jian to a meal. Jian Lin gave her a pair of walkie-talkies. They talked about the Korean TV series “Home Sweet Home”, a group of people living alone, how to cope when they encounter an incoming zombie attack? Jian Lin teased, “In case a zombie comes one day, we can use the walkie-talkie to call for help.
The day returned to the previous uneventful. Now, the “door” has become her biggest shadow. The bathroom will be particularly cautious, afraid to close the door. Once the elevator door closed, her eyes were glued to the jumping floor numbers, afraid of being shut again.
She recorded this experience in her circle of friends to remind people around her to take precautions. Seven or eight years did not have much contact with high school classmates, called to ask; one time her phone was turned off without power, can not be reached, colleagues around looking for people to ask; Alibaba’s business team also contacted her, said to add alarm function to the smart speaker.
Noon of the second day of official work. A friend sent a message that she was on the hot search. Someone spread the content of her circle of friends. That day after work, in the crowded elevator, she shouted “15th floor”. The other people in the elevator shot their eyes at her in unison. At that moment, I knew that they all knew. “
Yang Lin can’t help but guess that maybe during those 30 hours, her cry for help had spread throughout the building, but no one reached out for help. However, she can understand. People often have a great deal of distrust of unfamiliar help. Of course, it may be that the news on the Internet spread and reporters came to the door one after another to ask for help, which attracted the attention of neighbors.
What she couldn’t understand was that a netizen questioned her, “What bathroom door do you lock when you live alone?” “Why don’t you kick the door in” “Why don’t you bring your phone in the shower “. There were also comments saying that Yang Lin was speculating. Some even asked her, “Why don’t you have a boyfriend?” “Why do you live alone”?
She was helpless. How much more malice does a girl who lives alone have to endure.
As a way of life, living alone has also become a hot topic of discussion in the media. Many people have shared their experiences of living alone and being trapped, while others have fainted and woken up in their rooms with no one noticing the whole process. It’s not that Lynn Yang hasn’t considered the risks of living alone. For example, what would you do if you suddenly fell ill? But the thought just flashed by. She did take precautions, installing two cameras in her house for safety. But life has a way of catching people off guard.
Fortunately, her mother reassured her, “Don’t go blindly looking for a boyfriend because of this. Even if you don’t get married later, it’s okay. “
Late at night on February 26, Yang Lin received an unknown courier. The note read, “I’m watching you.” She closed the curtains, calmly took pictures and called the police.
She has decided to move away from the place. Previously, she wanted to be clean, but now she wants the house to be closer to the elevator and not near the corner. In case of further danger, at least the call for help will be easy to hear.
(To protect the privacy of the parties involved, Yang Lin and Lin Jian are pseudonyms)
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