By Chris Buckley

New York Times

BEIJING >> In a crowded Chinese neighborhood, she suffered the loneliest of deaths.

She was trapped and forgotten in a broken elevator of her apartment building for more than a month before her body was discovered last week. She had a hand pressed against the door, some accounts said.

But now this death in Xi’an — the northwestern city famed for its ancient entombed terra-cotta warriors — has stirred protest and a nationwide roar of anger by people furious that lax building management that can turn trivial acts, like riding an elevator, into fatal traps, news reports and Internet accounts said on Monday.

Hundreds of residents in the Gaoling District of the city, where the woman died confined between the 10th and 11th floors of her apartment building, gathered to rally last week, according to photographs and accounts on Chinese websites. Other pictures were said to be of the police, some in riot gear, lined up against the crowd.

“The management did nothing,” declared one of the banners that the residents held up, according to an image on Sina.com Weibo, a popular microblog site. “She was in the elevator dead for over a month before being found.”

The woman, in her 40s, has been identified in news reports only by her surname, Wu. She lived alone on the 15th floor of the apartment building, mostly keeping to herself, the reports said, quoting neighbors.

But she has gained posthumous fame as a symbol of how lackadaisical residential management, a widespread complaint in Chinese cities, can become far worse than an inconvenience.

Two repairmen turned off the power of the elevator on Jan. 30, after it malfunctioned, according to the reports, quoting police investigators and district officials. They shouted to check for anyone inside, heard no reply, but failed to follow rules and pry open the doors to make sure.

They left the elevator unrepaired for more than 30 days. Wu’s body was found last Tuesday.

“What if the management staff had gone to look inside the elevator before shutting off the power? Would this tragedy have happened?” asked a newspaper published in the eastern province of Zhejiang. It was one of dozens of newspaper and Internet commentaries lamenting the accident.

“Unfortunately, in this society, there are too many what-ifs,” it said.

Wu’s death in solitude came after two public deaths last year on faulty escalators in Chinese shopping malls, when unsuspecting passers-by were dragged underneath into their machinery. Those deaths, of a 4-year-old boy and a 31-year-old woman, were recorded on video monitors, and the footage ignited widespread anger that simple mechanical maintenance had been mishandled.

In many Chinese cities, property developers hire maintenance companies to manage the fields of apartments that have sprung up in recent decades. Complaints are widespread, especially in poorer developments where maintenance companies keep outlays to a minimum. Residents of the development where Wu lived complained about broken lights, water and power cuts, and constant elevator breakdowns, the Beijing Youth Daily said.

News reports have speculated that Wu starved to death. Fatal dehydration seems more likely.

But the police have said that they were still trying to determine precisely how and when she died and why her cries for help, if she made any, were unheeded, said the Huashang News, a news outlet based in Xi’an. Relatives came looking for her last month, the report said, but apparently neither they nor any neighbors linked her disappearance to the elevator stuck a few floors below her home.

People from the elevator repair company and the maintenance firm in charge of the faulty elevator were detained by the police, the newspaper Beijing Morning Post said on Monday. It did not give their names.

“The local police are investigating when and why she entered the elevator, and why the property management and residents all stated they were unaware,” said the report.

While the elevator was out of use, people living in the apartment building used another, and they may not have heard any cries for help from Wu.

One neighbor said she recalled a muffled sound on the night the elevator failed, the Huashang News said.

“I heard a strange sound from near the elevator, a thud-thud noise,” the neighbor said. “My daughter said the lift had broken down, and because it often did that, I didn’t pay attention.”

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