A student jumped to his death from the 15th floor of his dorm building in the small hours of Monday, and a 19 year-old jumped to her death on Guangzhou University’s campus at around 6 a.m. Tuesday (yesterday). Police have ruled out foul play in both cases.

Police arrive at the scene in this image snapped on the camera phone of another student, via Shenzhen Evening News

Mr. Zhuang, a senior (year 4) finance major at Shenzhen University, died instantly after landing on the concrete below his dorm building, Shenzhen Evening News reported yesterday. Police said there were no other wounds on his body that gave grounds for suspicion. The university pledged to introduce the necessary measures to prevent a repeat of the incident, such as psychological counselling.

A cleaner said she saw a young man take an elevator up from the 12th floor of the fenghuai （风槐） dorm building where Zhuang lived around the time he is said to have jumped, but she didn’t think anything of it at the time.

Thousands of these, the accepted image of bereavement on Sina Weibo, were posted in reaction to the deaths.

He did not share a dorm with anybody from his course, so both his classmates and his roommates claimed not to have known him well enough to have seen it coming. However, many took to Sina Weibo to post candles in tribute to Zhuang.

Then yesterday, just over 24 hours after the incident, a witness dialled 120 after a female student was found to have jumped off a building at Guangzhou University’s campus. She was dead when paramedics arrived. After forensic examination, police ruled that the death of the 19 year-old Dongguan girl was a suicide, Guangzhou Daily reported on its microblog.

The cause is being investigated.

Suicide is one of the leading causes of death among China’s youth as they face the prospect of graduating into an unprecedentedly competitive job market, a deeply inhospitable housing market and limited marriage prospects.

The scene at which the Guangzhou University student was found dead, image courtesy of Nandu Daily

In September, City College of Dongguan University of Technology had 5,000 freshmen sign contracts stipulating that the university would not be held responsible in the event of suicide or injury.