Shen Han Says | Xi’an Well Death

“The only lesson humanity learns from history is that we never learn any lessons from history.” Tragedies are always repeating themselves in a cycle.

1

May 12, 2022, evening, Xi’an City.

In Huixi Village, Weiyang District, a 3-year-old boy was swept away and went missing after falling into a sewer pipe due to a missing manhole cover while passing an overpass with his father.

The incident occurred under a highway bridge, which is a main road for Huixi Village residents. At the time of the incident, Mr. Yang was holding his son’s hand and passing through normally, when he accidentally fell into the manhole and was swept away by the sewer network.

After more than 65 hours of searching, the child was still not found…

2

October 8, 2022, Xi’an City.

Xi’an Qujiang Fifth Primary School, on the first day of school after the National Day holiday, during an outdoor labor practice of picking pomegranates, a student unfortunately fell into a well and was sent to the Aerospace Campus of the Fourth People’s Hospital of Xi’an, and eventually died after resuscitation efforts failed.

It is understood that the pomegranate trees were planted within the campus lawn, but a septic tank opening was hidden within the lawn. The septic tank opening was covered with wooden boards, which were originally only covered with green rags for concealment, without any isolation or protective measures.

Due to the continuous rain during the National Day holiday, the wooden boards were softened by the rain, and the student unfortunately fell after stepping on them.

And on September 21st, before the holiday, the official WeChat account of Qujiang Education released an article showing that the eighth supervision team of the Ministry of Education’s national system campus safety work came to Shaanxi for supervision.

That morning, the inspection team had conducted a field inspection at the Qujiang Fifth Primary School where the incident occurred, but did not detect any safety hazards…

3

September 21, 2024, Xi’an City.

A tragic incident occurred in the high-end residential area Tiandiyuan Longhu Chunjiang Tianjing, where an 8-year-old girl fell into a well and drowned.

That afternoon, the 8-year-old girl and her friends were playing hide-and-seek under the building when she accidentally fell into the fire water storage well of the community.

A well that is eight meters deep, with a mouth that is a whole meter wide, was only covered with two pieces of plywood that were only 1.2 centimeters thick, and there were no ladders or anti-fall nets in the well.

From the well opening to the water surface is about four meters, and the water depth is more than two meters. The child fell directly in after stepping on it.

During the entire rescue process, the property management only had three people on the scene, without ropes or ladders, and just stood by the well opening. So, in an emergency, three owners risked their lives to jump down to save people…

The child’s mother at the scene cried bitterly: “I spent 4 million to buy a house, such a high-end community, why isn’t there a manhole cover here! Only such a thin piece of paper.”

4

September 20, 2025, Xi’an City.

An accident occurred in the Tianhao Shangyuan Jun Phase II community, where an 11-year-old boy fell into a ventilation well and unfortunately died.

This well is more than ten meters deep and leads vertically to the underground garage.

After the incident, the community property and other units set up barricades around the well opening overnight, but when the boy fell into the well, there were no barricades, and the simple wooden boards and foam blocks on the ground did not cover the well opening tightly.

5

All in Xi’an, all missing manhole covers, all tragedies that devour people. In the community, in the school, on the road, the manhole covers have “disappeared”, and the children have fallen in and unfortunately died.

Safety education meetings are held every day, and on-site inspections are conducted every day. The same tragedies are repeated again and again.

This is just Xi’an. The missing manhole covers in one city have taken four lives. How many manhole covers have disappeared in so many cities across the country, and how many manholes are going to “eat people”?

Adding a little-known fact, according to statistics from the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, in 2019 alone, there were 155 cases of injury or death caused by improper construction, management, and maintenance of manholes across the country, resulting in 16 deaths.

March 22, 2013, Changsha, a female college student accidentally fell into an uncovered sewer in Changsha city, and was immediately swept away by the rapid water flow. Two months later, her body was found in the Xiangyin County section of the Xiangjiang River downstream of Changsha;

December 2018, Zhejiang, a pregnant woman fell into a manhole with a loose cover and unfortunately died;

April 2021, Shenyang, Liaoning, a 3-year-old child fell into a sewer, and eventually died after resuscitation efforts failed;

October 21, 2024, Hengyang City, Hunan Province, a student fell into a well and died at a construction site in the Zhengxiang District. The well was an abandoned drinking water well that had been sealed with a manhole cover for many years. According to the family, the well was only covered with thin paper at the time of the incident;

October 28, 2024, Sanya City, Hainan Province, near a bus stop, a boy accidentally fell into a drainage well and went missing. The next afternoon, the victim’s body was found in the river channel;

July 1, 2025, evening, Qijiang District, Chongqing City, a 12-year-old boy accidentally fell into a manhole in the Shanyu City community and unfortunately died;

…

One after another, incidents of people being devoured happen every year.

Technology and harsh ingredients are all added to the pre-made dishes, and the pre-made dishes that are like pig food that dogs don’t eat are served on the tables of Shanghai primary and middle school students. They say that these are pre-made dishes uniformly distributed by the central kitchen, for the “children’s health”.

Looking back, “technology and harsh ingredients” can’t even solve the problem of a manhole cover.

Individual rights and collective interests have never been equal.

It’s not just a child who fell, but the entire family’s hope; the report in the news is not just a cold number, but vivid lives.

Substituting the “catastrophic disaster” of a family, empathizing with a mother’s immense pain, this is the “accidental tragedy” that the public is particularly concerned about.

“What if this low-probability, occasional tragedy happens to me?”

6

When it comes to making money, they all open their eyes wide; when it comes to solving problems, they are as silent and cold as corpses.

Before the collapse of the Qiqihar Sports Hall, the sports hall had been built for 26 years, and the old building was in disrepair and dangerous. The perlite had been piled on top last year, and someone had reported it before, “This has safety hazards”.

The barbaric and stupid construction company ignored it, but was able to continue to win bids for multiple campus projects and government projects in the area.

Only three months have passed since the Qiqihar Sports Hall collapse, and the sports hall in Jiamusi collapsed again…

“They think the cold numbers reported in the news information, but they don’t know that those are vivid lives.”

Liang Yi’s “She Lun” volume eight records: “The land where one dwells is free from the five turbidities, like the glass and the like, which is called the pure land.”

Where should we go to find a pure land?