Young Chinese woman falls to her death during temple ‘blind meditation’ exercise
A young woman who joined a “blind meditation” activity at a temple in Beijing fell to her death while she and other participants were asked to climb stairs with their eyes covered, local media reported.
Li Yuanchen, 27, and other members were blindfolded and walking hand-in-hand on the stairs on top of a five-storey building at the Longquan Temple, west of the city, the The Beijing News reported.
However, the handrail on the rooftop was only 14cm high and Li stumbled over it and fell to the ground.
The blind meditation was organised by a group of volunteers in the temple.
A temple spokesman said the grounds were open to public and they had no idea about the meditation activity that Li joined.
But the temple would pay some compensation to the girl’s family, the spokesman said.
Li graduated from the Academy of Arts and Design at Tsinghua University two years ago and worked at a magazine in Beijing. She was also a volunteer at the temple.
Longquan temple is popular in Beijing for various meditation activities.
The Buddhist abbot of the temple said previously in on his Weibo account that blind meditation would enable people have the feeling of “mounting the clouds and riding the mist”.
