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Bungee Jumping in China
Sunday, March 20, 2005-10:31 PM
(The video of my jump is a quicktime movie. It's 10 megabytes and a couple minutes long and is called "Bungee Cord Jumping or How I Cheated Death and Got Away With It".)
Bungee jumping is not for people who don't like to jump off of elevated platforms tethered to safety by an elastic cord. This morning, I found out I could count myself among those people, but I had told too many people I'd jump to back out.
In order to make myself feel more comfortable, I asked the lady who sold me the 150 renminbi ($18) ticket if anyone had ever been injured there before.
"No. If anyone had been injured here, do you think we'd still be operating this?"
In fact, I could imagine that happening but didn't say anything to her. The second step I took to gain peace of mind was asking everyone who helped me how many years they worked there. One girl ignored my question twice. I think she just started.
Two guys helped me put on the harness. After they finished it felt a little loose around the shoulders. I wasn't sure how to say, "Is this tight enough?" in Chinese and was too self-conscious about my Chinese to ask. I figured they knew what they were doing and just let it go at that.
When they were satisfied with their work, they told me to walk out to the jumping point where two more guys were waiting to attach the bungee cord to me.
As I walked out to meet them, I could look down and see the ground below me. Even though I had anticipated making a higher jump than 42 meters (137 feet), it still seemed pretty high, and I was having seconds thoughts.
I didn't feel any better when they told me I was the first person to jump that day. The two men then instructed me to take off my shoes (in hindsight, I should have taken off my socks as well), attached the bungee cord to me, and explained how I would be lifted back up after the jump. Then they motioned me over to the ledge.
They told me to let go off the wooden beam and before I knew it they were counting down from three.
This isn't how I'd imagined myself jumping. I thought it'd be a little more dramatic, like maybe I'd be standing on the edge for fifteen or twenty seconds debating whether to job or not.
When they hit one, I thought I'd better just jump. I didn't want to muck anything up with impromptu ideas. I've heard that's how accidents happened.
The dive wasn't the eagle soar I wanted to do. It was just a feet first rapid decent, and it was only the first second or so that had me worried.
I bounced around for a bit then looked up at the gallery of Chinese faces observing my jump.
They pulled me up, gave me a bravery certificate, made me bump noses with someone that worked there (apparently simulating some African bravery ritual) and a woman with a microphone tried to use my jump to encourage other people to jump by saying things like, "If a foreigner can jump, a Chinese should jump, too."
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