Foreigner detained after parachuting from Beijing's tallest building
A foreigner was detained for 10 days after he parachuted from a skyscraper under construction in Beijing's Chaoyang District on April 1, local police said.
The man was caught on April 2 and was detained for disturbing public order, Chaoyang police announced on their official Weibo account.
According to Beijing Youth Daily, the parachuter was a Russian national named Alex Pykhov. The skyscraper he jumped from was China Zun, now the tallest building in Beijing, which is still under construction.
The Russian posted a photo on his social media account on April 1 in which China Zun can be seen in the background. He also said in the post that he had just jumped from the 528-meter tower.
Earlier on March 30, the man had posted a photo of Beijing's CBD area and said he would perform a jump there.
His social media account features many videos of him parachuting from high buildings around the world.
In his latest posts he can be seen pulling off jumps across China, including Guangxi's Nanning. In the video, he jumps from a building under construction, nearly hitting two pedestrians as he lands.
A parachuting trainer, surnamed Chen, said jumping from high buildings in urban areas is a very dangerous behavior, not only for the jumper but also people in the vicinity, as the environment there is different from that in the wild.
Wind speed and direction in urban areas can change easily, making parachuting there unpredictable and more likely to lead to an accident, he explained.
