On the same day it was reported that the average age of patients with high blood pressure was decreasing in Shenzhen, the news came out of a 17 year-old in the city who announced he would commit suicide on Tianya but was rescued by police.

After publishing photos of his own slit wrists, he drank several beers and prepared to jump off a balcony in Xili Subdistrict before police got to him on time.

Are the lives of young people in Shenzhen so miserable?

Last year, suicide was descibed as a “cultural problem” in China by the Freakonomics blog. A person attempts to commit suicide in the country every two minutes, according to Guangzhou Daily, and the number of suicides has risen sharply along with overall prosperity during the Reform & Opening Up Period.

The demographics of suicide in China are unique. As well as being the only country in which the female suicide rate is higher than the male (what does that tell you about being the wife of a Chinese man?); suicide victims are on average much younger than in most countries.

The disease control centre said suicide is the biggest killer among Chinese aged 15 to 34, suggesting that now is a particularly bad time to be young in China.

Perhaps the reasons the Shenzhen man cited for killing himself were even more disturbing than the attempt itself. The man, identified as Shi Dong, wrote online over the weekend that he was planning to attempt suicide because he had lost 4,000 yuan (US$635), all of his savings, while gambling and his girlfriend had decided to break up with him, according to Shenzhen Daily.

Does being broke make life lose its meaning, even at 17?

Considering that young people these days are nothing if not tech-savvy, quite a few suicides have been announced online, this disturbing new trend that was observed by techinasia last year has ended in both rescues and tragedies.

The most recent case of this happening in Shenzhen ended in a resuce, just like a similar incident that happened in Jinan in 2010. But similar cases have ended in tragedy, such as one in Shenzhen earlier this month.

It seems that losing the will to live doesn’t always go hand in hand with losing hunger for the spotlight.