Wu Yongning, a famous Chinese stuntman, has died while performing one of his skyscraper stunts for a rooftopping challenge with a stake of 100,000 Yuan ($15,127) which he planned to use for his wedding and treating his ill mother.
Wu Yongning had amassed thousands of followers on the social network Weibo following his dramatic short videos showing him perched atop tall buildings without using any safety equipment.
Concerns, however, grew among his fans when he stopped posting updates in November.
According to Chinese media report, Mr. Wu,26, had died after falling from a 62-storey building in the city of Changsha in November, with his girlfriend confirming his death a month later via Chinese social media.
There have been reports of daredevil stuntmen across the globe, utilizing the advantage of modern technologies to showcase their artistry live to fans. Some Russian youths are not left out in the craze for fame, posting videos of life-threatening stunts on social media.
Investigations have shown that Mr Wu had posted more than 500 short videos and livestreams of his stunts on Huoshan, garnering a million fans and earning at least 550,000 yuan (£62,000; $83,000). Huoshan had prominently promoted his videos since June.
Huoshan is suing Sina News, one of China’s biggest news media for reporting claims from Mr. Wu’s relatives of crowdfunding his deadly climb.
In a statement, Huoshan said while it “always respected extreme sports athletes’ spirit of exploration and their works”, it was also “always cautious, we do not encourage nor have we ever signed agreements” with them.
So since dead men don’t speak, we may never know who paid for that jump.
Some notable names are:
- Angela Nikolau, 24, daughter of a famous trapeze artist, has more than 400,000 followers on Instagram. Her feats are sponsored by fashion brands, camera companies, including travel firms. She and her boyfriend had climbed the world’s tallest crane in Tianji, China, in one of her most extreme videos.
- Alexander Chernikov, 23, another stuntman whose video went viral with more than 10 million views says he isn’t afraid of death.
“What’s the point of being scared? It’s inescapable. It comes to us all, Up there you feel that you’re standing on the line between life and death – your life is hanging by a thread – that if something goes wrong you may die”.
- Kirill Vselensky, 24, one of Moscow’s most famous “roofers”, has climbed almost every tall building in the city – except, perhaps understandably, the Kremlin and the Foreign Ministry. He explains that the laws are mild on roofers in Russia, unlike in Europe, Canada, and America. In one of his many escapades, at the top of a Stalin skyscraper near the American embassy, Kirill came across a secret floor.
“The lift doesn’t go up there but there’s a boiler room with a cage and a table and a lamp to carry out interrogations – it’s all derelict now, but it was incredibly interesting because in the most scary films about the Soviet KGB they have that same boiler room, cage, table, and lamp for interrogations”
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