The death of a 13-year-old girl at a Chongqing amusement park has sparked another round of talks concerning China's ever-blooming love affair for amusement parks. In a country of more than 2,000 amusement parks, safety concerns are becoming more paramount than ever.
Much to the horror of onlookers, the poor little body of Gan Tian was thrown away from the seat of a rapid 360-degree-spinning ride called "Travel Through Space" and onto metal railings, leading her to become injured severely as she fails to survive the trip to the hospital.
Despite reports that the ride cleared its last routine inspection in December last year, further accounts refuted that claim, saying that it has yet to undergo inspection since November 2013. But whatever the case may be, the fact of the matter is that another life was lost due to negligence in safety standards.
More appalling is the ease to which Zhaohua Amusement Park readily issued money to compensate the victim's parents - even to the tune of 870,000 yuan, the fact remains that every life is priceless; such amount, while granted in good faith, would have been better spent on ensuring their rides' safety.
Incidents akin to the one in Chongqing have not been uncommon in recent times, reflecting that the country's numerous amusement parks are no strangers to life-threatening disasters involving otherwise-enjoyable rides, the Global Times reported.
With more amusement parks than the U.S., which only has around 400, China has a relatively poor safety record for rides. One would only take at least three years back to discover some appalling cases that took place in any of the country's theme parks.
On September 2013, three merrymakers sustained injuries after being thrown from a ride in Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, due to erring amusement park employees. A more fatal incident led to the shutdown of an amusement park in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, where a malfunctioning ride killed two people.