Shanghai New Years Stampede

1-01-15, 00:01, Shanghai: 35 Killed, 45 injured in Stampede. Millions Disappointed by Curious Lack of Fireworks in this New Year’s Celebration.

Last night the New Years Celebration in Shanghai got out of control. Endless waves of people flowed down Nanjing East towards the already packed riverfront thirty minutes before midnight. I was a part of that crowd.

A collective cry sounded as we drew closer and people began to run. It was a sort of battle cry, ecstasy mixed with fear--- I wondered later who could have started it, but it was impossible to tell. It came from nowhere and everywhere and maybe inside your own head all at once--- it was easy to get excited and start running along. I tried to stick to the sidewalks, but as in a flash flood, I fell in from the banks.

View from The Bund Riverfront in afternoon of 12-31-14

We rushed ahead euphoric, totally drawn in, pulled by the sight of the beautiful Pearl Tower looming ahead between the buildings, pulsing with red, purple, yellow and green lights, calling us onwards and upwards, the thing itself a 100% genuine deity (whose nature we would soon discover) that drew us in like lint to a magnet, powder up a straw.

Though it felt like we were going towards some indescribable joy or pleasure, I thought that this was surely a sign of some malignant crowd mentality and that this infectious excitement could turn deadly.

At a music festival in Michigan in 2008, thousands protested on the final night when the operators closed down the gated stage area and began pushing people out. Many stayed behind dancing, singing and drumming on one of the many metal sculptures installed near the entrance/exit of the stage area. Obviously anticipating this, a dozen or so mounted policemen formed a line and began slowly pushing them back. The crowd, torn against fighting the police and running, were soon tripping over one another and falling down under the approaching hooves of the horses, some of which began rearing.

A conscientious, heroic shirtless man with dreadlocks began pushing everyone back violently, yelling that it wasn’t worth it and to get out.  Everyone left and nobody seemed injured.

That was at a music festival of a few hundred thousand- Shanghai is the most populated city in the world, a city of over 25 million, and on New Years, many people came from Nanjing, Hangzhou, and Hefei to see the legendary fireworks display, which, as I’ve said, never occurred.

So there we were, perhaps a million or more near the water-front, infected by the excitement, eyes wide open and mouths set into the lock-jaw smiles of adrenaline, rushing towards the Pearl Tower up ahead. We were running closer and closer together, and soon there was pressure from behind and we began pushing those in front of us just to keep standing. When you are caught in a mob situation such as this, there really is no way out- you become the mob, whether you want to or not, merely by being pushed, and so, falling upon the person in front of you and becoming a pusher yourself. Domino effect, and all that. 

Soon we hit a brick wall of people. We could see the Oriental Pearl Tower up ahead clearly, and the mega-tall Shanghai Tower rose up on the buildings to our right like the coolest vinyl siding of all time, pulsing at the corner of our vision and if you moved the person in front of you a little to the right you could see the whole damn thing, third tallest building in the world pulsing lights up and down like it was god’s yo-yo or something. 

We looked up and over the heads of the crowd, thousands of arms up, camera phones out. The pressure from behind mounted and I pushed forward to stay standing; everyone began pushing or pulling on everyone else.

The countdown on the tower started at thirty. It looked like the digits on the digital watch I wore in sixth grade. A great cry rippled throughout the crowd; the famous fireworks display would soon come. At ten, the cry rose and became intermittent- Chinese and English mixed together so that you couldn’t tell the crowd was saying “Ten” or “Shi”. At "three" the cry peaked and plateaued across "two" and "one" and at “Happy New Year!” (which was in English, up on the Oriental Tower), we issued forth the obligatory statement or greeting or slogan or whatever it is, and braced ourselves for the legendary firework spectacle to answer us with its dazzling lights, endless thunder and heat.

We waited.

And waited.

It still hadn't sunk in when a police man began gently shoving us back, blowing a whistle and yelling “Meo la!” (negative of “have"). Even when a sort of eddy of people flowed back and out, we still refused to believe that the fireworks would not come. 

The Crowd Turns Back

It began to finally dawn on us when a policeman, who looked like he had been at it for well over an hour, began pushing and screaming at people like he was about to smash in everyone’s map if they didn’t move out of the way and let the ambulance through. 

Some other policemen approached and began pushing the crowd back and out. The crowd turned back and shuffled away. No fireworks this year.

Some stayed, ourselves included: I wanted to let the crowd thin out a little before we left, but I underestimated how thick the crowd was, because we waited about a half hour before it seemed the crowd was less a big fleshy object and more of a collection of individuals.

The ambulance returned, driving slowly behind the people, blaring its siren. It passed by us and I could see that in the back of it, which was lit up for all to see, a paramedic was giving some aggressive-type CPR to someone. He pumped at his chest so hard it looked like he would break his ribs.

Behind the ambulance a group of people ran with their camera phones out Princess-Diana-style, filming the paramedic trying to keep the vital organs of someone who was clinically dead from shutting down entirely. Many of them still had their extreme-sport-euphoria faces on. I lost what was left of my excitement, it was literally just sucked out of me at the sight- I looked at my friend, Jerry, and informed him of what was happening:

“That guy in the ambulance was dead. He was getting CPR. Did you see the people running behind with the camera phones? Do people suck, or what?”

And then someone tossed up a huge inflated ball and the crowd bounced that around for a while.

The Shanghai Oriental Pearl Tower, the Moloch of Towers

We stayed a while longer and then left. We found ourselves further up the street in the same situation as an hour before, packed in, pushing and pulling--- this time, not towards some exciting thing, but away from something dreadful, which is a totally different feeling. Like being trapped, and all that.

A woman shrieked from somewhere in the crowd.  Cars like little islands with people stranded inside. A man on a gas-powered scooter got his accelerator stuck and he yelled (whoa, whoa-oh, Whoa-ohh! WHOA-OHHH!!!!) as he crashed into the crowd to our left. He regained control and it seemed like no-one was hurt. A European looking guy (French, maybe) without a shirt and what looked like a speedo was dancing out the sun-roof of one of the stalled vehicles to our cheers.

We shuffled on for another twenty minutes before we could actually walk. We reached a road which had vehicle traffic and Jerry tried to hail a cab. I said there was no hope and that we would be walking home that night. We ended up walking many miles before we reached our hotel. Jerry dashed across the road to hail a cab and nearly caused a three-car pile-up; I peed in a dark alley. We finally returned at three in the morning, still buzzed from the excitement and the cappuccinos we drank earlier in the night which is my idea, these days, of a real crazy time.

A "No Fireworks" Sign in Nanjing. These signs
went up everywhere about a week before New Years.

I found several pimp’s business cards for 24/7 sex services on the floor of my room which someone, or several people, must have slipped under the door. I smoked two cigarettes and got into bed, but didn’t fall asleep for at least another hour.

When I awoke, I saw that my mother had tried to call me from the states and that she had sent me a text message telling me that 35 people were killed and 45 were injured in a stampede in Shanghai last night. It was on the USA’s national news headlines, and I guess it was known internationally as well. The whole world knows what happened by now.

Apparently someone had started throwing US dollars down from a building off the Bund, which started a sort of fatal stampede. People rushed for the money and met their death. A profound metaphor for something, probably.


(This article was written from my own perspective without consulting any outside media sources. Whether the Stampede was started by a flurry of money/ coupons, which the government denied, or by the incoming rush of people running to the already packed river front is, as far as I can tell, still a matter of opinion. A friend told me tonight, however, that the fireworks and light show were cancelled once the stampede started--- I thought that may have been the case but was not sure at the time, for fireworks were banned in Nanjing this New Years, supposedly because of the pollution they cause, and many are saying that they were banned in Shanghai, as well. I am not sure what to believe and nobody seems to have any clear answers. It is a fact that fireworks were banned in Nanjing for the New Year celebration- I think that the excuse of pollution is a poor, careless lie.)