Please, Watch This Daredevil’s Insane Swansong
Jumping into retirement over the Yellow River.
As a stunt driver, sometimes you don’t get to pick your final stunt; fate, as it were, picks it for you. However, either by superior skill or unprecedented luck or maybe some pact with a higher/lower power, famous Taiwanese director-slash-daredevil Ke Shouliang (a.k.a. Blackie Ko) got to choose which act of insanity would be his last, down to the date and location. Professionally, that’s akin to a C-section, though in this case without an epidural.
In 1997, on Jun. 1, Shouliang vaulted his aero-optimized sports car over the Yellow River’s famous, gargantuan Hokou waterfall. Between the platforms was naught but 165 feet of churning, muddy river. Despite stress fractures in the wooden landing pad, Shouliang went through with the jump, sticking it perfectly. The platform held.
Even so, the Yellow River jump was only Ke Shouliang’s second most famous feat. In 1992, on a motorcycle, he jumped the Great Wall. In the end, it wasn’t a jump that got him: the stuntman died in 2003 from apparent alcohol poisoning.
