Murder At the Drum Tower

People who knew Tang Yongming say they never imagined he could do such a horrible, senseless thing. A few minutes after noon on Aug. 9, just 12 hours after the start of the 2008 Olympics, Tang, 47, savagely knifed a visiting American couple inside Beijing's 13th-century Drum Tower. Then he jumped 130 feet to his death from the ancient landmark's western balcony. Minneapolis businessman Todd Bachman—father-in-law of U.S. men's indoor-volleyball coach Hugh McCutcheon—died of stab wounds. Bachman's wife, Barbara, survived, despite life-threatening injuries. Their guide, a young Chinese woman, was also hurt, although less seriously. Tang remains an enigma. "There was nothing abnormal about him, absolutely nothing," says Wang Yongxian, a prim, businesslike community worker who tried to help Tang find a new job five years ago, after his previous employer let him go. Wang's colleague Xu Guofang agrees: "He wasn't just 'relatively' ordinary. He was simply ordinary. Period."

Back in August, Tang's ordinariness was cause for relief: authorities quickly figured out that he wasn't a terrorist, and the Games went on. But the truth is perhaps more disturbing. The troubles that destroyed Tang—the loss of his job, the collapse of his marriage, heartbreak over his wastrel only child—are all too common across China. The country is the world's most stressful: three decades of reforms have shredded China's safety net and transformed society beyond recognition. That's why, as Chinese leaders prepare to mark the 30th anniversary of Deng Xiaoping's capitalist reforms next month, they're also frantically pumping more than half a trillion dollars into their economy in hopes of staving off a downturn.

They have reason to worry. Economists say China's GDP has to grow between 7.5 and 8 percent a year just to keep up with the need for new jobs. Labor unrest has already broken out across the country: half of China's toymakers have gone bankrupt this year, throwing millions of factory workers into the streets, while cabbies angered by gas prices rioted and burned police vehicles in Chongqing a few weeks ago. Tang shared their sense of frustration. Many who knew him are reluctant to talk about him publicly, fearing trouble with the authorities, and most requested anonymity before agreeing to be interviewed. But his story reveals tensions that seethe just below the surface in China.

Tang was born in a village outside Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province, in 1961. Times were hard, the government domineering, but many poor and disadvantaged Chinese still yearn for those days of the "iron rice bowl"—Mao Zedong's guarantee of a job, a home and basic social services for all. Reforms since then have brought unprecedented prosperity, but also cutthroat competition. China's suicide rate—at least 23 people out of every 100,000 kill themselves per year—is more than double the U.S. figure. The Shanghai Mental Health Center recently reported that the incidence of depression in that city has quadrupled in the past decade. Older Chinese like Tang are especially hard hit. In Mao's day, at least they had some pride even when penniless; now money is everything. "Some are outraged," says psychologist Wei Zhizhong, who runs a consulting center in Guangzhou. "They think they made contributions to the country and should get better treatment."

In the early '80s, though, Tang was on top of his world, proudly employed at the Hangzhou Meter Factory, a machine-gauge maker owned by the government. Factory work had not yet lost its Mao-era prestige. Employers provided everything from steady wages and housing to medical care and pensions; many even offered on-site kindergartens. No one thought much about profit. "In those days people envied Tang," says an acquaintance.

Hangzhou is an old imperial capital, once crisscrossed by clear blue canals and lakes. (Marco Polo called it the most splendid city in the world.) Tang's factory assigned him an apartment in the city's picturesque West Lake District, on Peace and Happiness Street. His kitchen was a closet-size room off the communal hallway, and like other residents he used a public bathroom outside. But he was lucky. His 700-square-foot apartment, the easternmost on the second floor, was "the best in the building," one resident says. "Its windows get sunlight all through the day."

Life was good. Tang soon married a co-worker, Yu Jianqing, and people say the two were happy together. Their son was born in 1987; they named him Wenjun—"gentle and fine." He was their only child, in compliance with the country's strict post-Mao family-planning laws, and his upbringing was much like that of millions of other pampered single children in China. The "one-child policy" has turned centuries of Confucian upbringing on its head: according to consumer surveys by Horizon Research, grandparents have the least power in many families, while kids have the most. The press is filled with horror stories about tyrannically demanding "little emperors" and the slavishly devoted parents who fail to control them. Neighbors say Wenjun was "somewhat disobedient as a child," but they recall no serious incidents—from his early years, anyway.