But this kind of risk is better left to suicide-prevention experts armed with professional skills in handling such touchy situations. Given the recent trickle of online-abetted suicides, I wonder why no professional teams became involved. An expert responding to Zeng's tweets would have had many times the success rate of warding off the tragedy than a person with no preparation other than good intentions.

China's suicide rate is dropping dramatically as rapid urbanization removes the personal dynamics that existed in rural areas that induced impulse suicides and the easy availability of insecticides. However, Zeng's case is not typical of rural women who got into trivial family feuds and tossed a bottle of poison down their own throats. On the contrary, he might have been saved had he lived on a farm. In a rural community, one has little privacy but easy access to people one can talk to and let off steam or cry over thwarted love as in this case. Zeng was living in an apartment, and his family members were unaware of what was going on until police contacted them.

In China, most suicides are forestalled because the living environment is closely knit and family and friends act as psychologists who hear out your grievances or emotional frustrations. We have not reached the stage when one would turn to a psychiatrist or a charity hotline for help.

So, the first question that popped into my mind was: Did Zeng have any friends he could confide in? He did tell his grandmother he was seeing someone online, but she treated it as a laughing matter partly because he was still a teenager and partly because it was a virtual fling with little probability of fruition.