The most-read Weibo post of this week concerns a police notice regarding an incident in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, in which a 55-year-old female resident fell to her death from the 12th floor of her building.
The police notice, republished by China Newsweek Magazine (@中国新闻周刊), received over 1,6 million ‘likes’ and nearly 80,000 comments and over 68,000 shares. It was the number one Weibo post of the week in the Sina Weibo official top trending posts overview.
The incident happened on November 4 at Beiyuan road’s Xingguang A9 community (兴光A9小区) in the Xincheng District of Hohhot (呼和浩特市新城区). The police reportedly received a call at 18:10 that a woman had fallen from the window. They arrived at the scene at 18:15, and the emergency medical workers pronounced the woman dead shortly after.
The police urged netizens to stop sharing any videos related to the incident that circulated online.
The woman, Mrs Wang, lived together with her 29-year-old daughter at the Unit 2 building of the community. She allegedly suffered from an anxiety disorder and took prescription drugs for her condition since 2019.
Since 26 October, the community had become a ‘high-risk area’ due to two positive Covid cases, and an ‘isolation barrier’ was placed around the Unit 2 building to prevent residents from leaving the compound.

Locked-down unit with a barrier around it, photo via Lifeweek.
One reason why this particular incident has caused so much commotion on Chinese social media is that the residential building where Wang and her daughter resided was completely shut down; the gates were locked from the outside, and residents were also unable to open them from the inside. This led to a terrible situation in which Wang’s daughter was unable to rush out to get help at a critical moment, despite her banging at the doors of the gates.
News of this incident also comes at a time when several stories like this have gone trending on Chinese social media, including the incident in Ruzhou where a girl died due to a lack of medical care at a local quarantine center; and the recent case of a 3-year-old boy who suffered from carbon monoxide poisoning inside a ‘high-risk area’ with insufficient medical emergency response channels.
TIMELINE OF EVENTS
On Sunday, Hohhot’s Xincheng District authorities released a timeline detailing how the events exactly occurred on Friday, based on Wechat records and the emergency line records.
On November 4, at 10:13 in the morning, Wang’s daughter contacted the property manager Zhang X. via WeChat to report that her mother was having a mental breakdown.
She contacted Zhang at 17:13 again to report that her mother’s condition had worsened and that she was showing suicidal behavior. When asking if Zhang could call the emergency hotline, she was reportedly told “call them yourself, I’m busy.”
At 17:23, the eldest daughter of Wang, a 35-year-old resident of Hainan, contacted the emergency hotline on behalf of her sister, because the sisters allegedly were afraid that their mother’s condition would further deteriorate if the hotline was contacted in their mother’s presence. The dispatcher team, however, decided that the case was a non-emergency one and the case was temporarily put on hold.
At 17:31, as the situation was not improving at all, Wang’s second daughter called for an ambulance and notified the property management to arrange for community workers to get ready to meet the ambulance staff at the community gate.
Zhang X. arranged for property management staff member Wu X. to meet the ambulance and the main community gate, and then allegedly also reported the case to the residential complex staff member in charge, who seemingly failed to forward the message to the relevant workers at the scene. Not a single member of staff came to check on Wang and her daughter at their apartment.
At 18:04, Mrs Wang fell from the bedroom window of her apartment on the 12th floor of the building. Just moments before, her daughter had gone into the living room to charge her phone.
Several calls came in at the emergency hotlines in the following minutes about the woman falling from the window.
At 18:10, a local staff member could hear someone – Wang’s daughter – shouting and banging from the other side of the isolation barrier. When the gate of the barrier was opened, they found the person had gone back inside.
At 18:14, Wang’s daughter contacted the property manager and asked them to open up the barrier gates.
By 18:15, first responders had arrived at the scene and were let into the community gates, finding the daughter sitting by her deceased mother’s body.
Mrs Wang was officially pronounced dead at 18:39. Her remains were transported to the morgue at 20:22.
The Hohhot Xincheng District extended their condolences to the Wang family and admitted that their local emergency response system was lagging behind and that the situation was poorly handled by the property management and residential area staff.
The district authorities stated they would strengthen their emergency response system and would hold those who mismanaged the situation accountable in accordance with the law.
INSIDE THE LOCKED-DOWN UNITS
Over the weekend, flowers piled up outside the gate of the Xingguang A9 community.
Chinese media outlet Lifeweek (三联生活周刊) published a story and several interviews on 6 November, using the hashtag “Life Behind the Doors of the Locked-down Units” (#封闭在单元门背后的生活#).
Lifeweek reporters spoke to neighbors living in Unit 2 of Xingguang A9 as well as other people in the neighbourhood.
They confirmed that virtually all buildings that were deemed ‘high risk’ – and sometimes some labeled as lower risk – had been shut off from the outside world, leaving residents unable to leave. The gates were locked from both the outside and the inside, as was the case with Xingguang A9.

Example of a local unit being locked, leaving residents unable to leave (this is not Unit 2).
“This just makes my blood run cold,” some commenters said on Weibo, where many people expressed anger about the incident and also about how it was presented by several state media outlets: they focused on the woman falling from the window rather than the fact that the building was locked down.

Flowers outside the community, photo originally published by Lifeweek.
In light of the incident, Hohhot’s local epidemic prevention authorities released an official statement regarding Covid-19 lockdown measures. Locking residents inside their building is not allowed, authorities said, emphasizing that emergency and escape routes should always be kept clear of all obstructions and that community gates should never be locked.
Although it is still allowed to close the doors of a building and to set up isolation fences, they can only be closed with a seal that can be broken in case of an emergency. Closing the door with locks, pins, bars, etc is not allowed.
Despite the promises of improvement, some commenters online are pessimistic about what this winter will bring: “Looking at Xinjiang, Hohhot, this virus is being mismanaged and all that we’re facing this winter is the fight against the epidemic. Otherwise they’ll have to change the policies. The consequences are unthinkable.”
On Douyin (TikTok), various unverified videos show unethical lockdown measures, with doors being locked with chains and bars, in light of what happened in Hohhot.
The censorship that comes with topics such as these is also not reassuring to many: “They’ve put on comment filtering again. The comments on display are monotone and actually reveal what they want to hide.”
“I beg you, give us a way out,” one Weibo user wrote.
Many commenters expressed that they do not necessarily oppose China’s fight against Covid, but that they just oppose “excessive anti-epidemic measures.”
One popular Douyin comment said: “How many more sacrifices do we need to bring before you wake up?”
By Manya Koetse, with contributions by Miranda Barnes
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