Despite his pleas for her to stop shopping, Tao Hsiao's girlfriend refused to pass up a killer sale. For her overburdened boyfriend, that decision proved to be fatal. He really had fallen for the wrong girl.

On Dec. 7, Tao Hsiao and his girlfriend were at a mall in Xuzhou, a large city in China's Jiangsu province. According to multiple reports, after five hours of continuous shopping, Mr. Hsiao was ready to go home. Witnesses claim that he and his girlfriend began yelling at each other after Hsiao's girlfriend insisted that they visit one last shoe-sale -- he claiming that his girlfriend had more than enough shoes to last a lifetime and she accusing him of cheapness and a lack of holiday spirit. Eventually Hsiao threw down his shopping bags and leapt over a seventh floor balcony, crashing to his death below.

Thankfully, Hsiao's leap did not injure any other shoppers. He landed on the roof of a ground floor store, causing some property damage but happily avoiding any innocent bystanders. He is said to have died on impact. Reports do not state what kind of store Hsiao fell on. For his sake, one hopes it sold shoes.

This shocking shopping mall suicide comes at a time when the much celebrated rise of the Chinese middle class has made a consumer lifestyle available for the first time to an ever-increasing number of ordinary Chinese citizens. Forbes Magazine has called the phenomenon "the biggest story of our time," and the impact of increasing access to wealth and consumer goods has tremendous consequences both within China and internationally. 

Hsiao's fall to death presents a dark counterpoint, an iconic and particularly gruesome image of how industrial capitalism can victimize the middle class as well as the more obviously exploited laborors in factories and sweatshops. The philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari have explained this pervasive victimization by linking capitalism with schizophrenia. A representative for the mall was more blunt: "This time of year can be very stressful."