Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge Suicide Intervention Program 3 Favorite 

Practitioner: 

Date: 

Jul 8 2008

Location: 

Najing；Shanghai；Beijing；Berlin；Singapore

The Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge, completed in 1968, is one of China’s most iconic infrastructural projects and a potent symbol of national pride. Spanning over 6,700 meters across the Yangtze River, it was the first double-decked road-rail truss bridge designed and built entirely by Chinese engineers, without foreign assistance, during a time of intense geopolitical isolation.

Politically, the bridge became a landmark of Maoist self-reliance and socialist industrial achievement. It has appeared in countless propaganda materials, textbooks, and documentaries as an emblem of China’s technological independence and collective will.

However, the bridge also carries a darker, more complicated legacy. It has long been a site associated with suicide, earning the grim nickname “the suicide bridge of China.” This dual identity—triumph of the collective vs. despair of the individual—renders the bridge a deeply symbolic structure in China’s cultural psyche. Artists and activists, such as Qiu Zhijie and Chen Si, have re-engaged the bridge through interventions and rescue projects, transforming it into a space where personal suffering and national narrative collide.

In this sense, the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge is not merely a feat of engineering, but a stage for the tensions between state symbolism, urban trauma, and the haunting visibility of those who feel left behind.

External sources: 

https://www.cafa.com.cn/en/news/details/8323199
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/78022
Posted by Katherine on May 14 2025

Staff rating: 

0

Effectiveness

How does this project help?

Activates (people)Energizes and organizes people into action. Can include emotion work
Amplifies (issue or campaign)Brings public and political attention to an issue or campaign.  Can include prefigurative action, making the invisible visible.
Shifts (culture)Shifts the cultural landscape in order to imagine and enable change.

Timeframe For change

This project seems to be part of a campaign with a clear short-term goal. Short-term goals tend to be things like: create or repeal a law; get a President impeached; make the city administration repair a sidewalk. A campaign with a short-term goal needs a clear theory of change, complete with targets that can be cajoled or pressured into effecting the goal.
Let people who want to die to change their decision.
This project seems to be part of a campaign with a clear long-term goal. Long-term goals tend to be things like: end racism; end homophobia; make the sun stand still in the sky. A campaign with a long-term goal also needs to have some kind of theory of change.
To cultivate a new generation of socially conscious artists and thinkers through integrative, cross-disciplinary art education. Qiu Zhijie’s long-term goal goes beyond individual artistic production: it is to transform art into a method of thinking, a tool for social intervention, and a mode of historical reflection. As an educator and former dean of the School of Experimental Art at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, he envisions an art pedagogy that emphasizes critical inquiry, intellectual autonomy, and ethical responsibility—shaping artists not just as creators, but as cultural agents capable of responding to the complexities of contemporary China and the world.

Notes

Qiu Zhijie’s long-term vision of transforming art education into a critical, socially engaged practice has proven effective in multiple dimensions. As a curator, educator, and conceptual artist, he has shaped a generation of artists who view creation not as isolated expression, but as a form of intervention—into history, politics, technology, and the self. His tenure as dean of the School of Experimental Art at CAFA institutionalized many of these ideals, creating space for experimental, interdisciplinary pedagogy within China’s traditionally rigid art education system. Through projects like the “Total Art Studio” and his extensive mapping works, Qiu has demonstrated that art can function as both cognitive tool and social force. His teaching method—often described as equal parts Confucian mentorship and anarchic experimentation—has inspired students to develop critical thinking skills, engage with social issues, and deconstruct established narratives. The recursive relationship between his personal practice and pedagogical model makes the impact of his educational vision both visible and replicable. However, the reach of his model is still constrained by broader structural limitations in China’s cultural and academic institutions, where censorship, bureaucratization, and market pressures can dilute criticality. Nonetheless, Qiu’s ability to embed a form of “slow resistance” within institutional structures—through language, symbolism, and mentorship—suggests that his vision is not only aspirational, but materially generative.