An Yilong did not hesitate.
When he saw neighbors holding a blanket in the street, he looked up and understood why: a 5-year-old boy was hanging with his head trapped between the bars of a sixth-floor window in a building in Shuozhou, China. He had been like that for more than ten minutes, kicking and trying to pull himself up without success.
An knocked on the apartment door, but no one answered. There was no time to force it open. He climbed out through the seventh-floor window and lowered himself toward the boy, holding him firmly while testing whether the bars would support his weight. Less than 30 seconds later, the firefighters arrived, and together they managed to pull him back up to safety. The boy suffered only minor bruises.
His mother had gone out with his older brother for a school meeting. “At that moment I wasn’t thinking about anything else; I just wanted to save the child”, An said afterward. Sometimes heroism isn’t a plan; it’s a reflex.