Ling's death: an ethnography of a Chinese woman's suicide

Abstract

Over the past decade, great concern has been expressed about the high suicide rates in China, especially among women and young women in particular. However, most of the information that has been presented has considered macro-level data and speculated on why women are so vulnerable to self-harm. This article presents the detailed story of one village woman who killed herself and suggests that motives and behavior are more complex than the cultural script and statistics suggest. Although depression is said to be commonly present in people who kill themselves in Western countries, this may not be the case in China.