Chinese 'Spider-Man' scales building to save boy

A former soldier has been filmed scaling a building to save a two-year-old boy dangling from the grille of a fifth-floor window.

Zhang Xin is seen in video footage climbing five storeys with his bare hands up the building in central China on Wednesday, pulling himself up from floor to floor using window grilles until he reaches the toddler.

In scenes reminiscent of the recent “Spider-Man” rescue in Paris, the heroic climber swiftly makes it to the fifth floor and manages to push the crying child – who had been clinging to the bars on the window as he hung in mid-air – safely back into the flat.

The clip, posted on the Pear Video website, has been widely shared online.

Zhang told Pear Video he was walking past the block of flats with his brother when they heard screaming.

“We heard someone screaming from above and realised it was a child, so we ran to the first floor of the building,” he said.

They had not seen the child hanging from the grille at that stage, so they went knocking on doors trying to locate the toddler.

“We tried every door from the sixth to the fourth floor, but no one was home. Then someone appeared and they let us into their place on the fifth floor – we went in and realised there was a little boy [dangling from] the flat next door,” Zhang said.

State media reported that the child had been left at home alone without supervision, and police were investigating.

Last week, Malian migrant Mamoudou Gassama was honoured by French President Emmanuel Macron and offered citizenship after his Spider Man-style rescue of a four-year-old child – in which he climbed from balcony to balcony to a fourth-floor Paris flat – was also filmed and circulated online.

Another “Spider-Man” rescuer climbed to the third floor of a building in Fuzhou, Fujian province, in March, saving a five-year-old boy who was hanging from a window with his head stuck in a grille.