While most people across the country were ushering the Chinese Lunar New Year, a university student was struggling for life after ending up at the hospital for working overtime. 

The 22-year-old junior from Hebei University was working part time at a semiconductor company in Tianjin but was reportedly working up to 15 hours on a daily basis for days since taking the job on January 12.

According to a Weibo post released on Tuesday by Yuan’s sister, Yuan had suddenly collapsed in the factory's washroom during a break on her 16-hour shift. In a video footage, she was seen vomiting blood and was later declared dead at a local hospital on January 30. 

“She finally failed to survive the excessive fatigue,” read the post, adding, “the semiconductor factory has a working time of 15 hours, which is too long.”

Before her death, Yuan had once disclosed her work burden on the social app WeChat. “Working for consecutive 15 hours, I’ve got a headache,” said the girl, who took the job as the part-time worker during the winter vacation to partly support her family.

While the compensation for Yuan's death is still being negotiated between the company and her family, as the case is currently under investigation, numerous netizens have expressed their condolences to Yuan's family, while sharing their experiences of working excessively. 

“I used to work in Yuan’s factory and the mechanism is really inhumane,” said @Dengwo6084381291 on his Weibo account. “Apart from the physical fatigue, the psychological pressure is hard to endure.”

Another Weibo user named @Nianyouyinian agreed, saying, “At the time when I was serving there, the 15-hour mechanism always entails working day and night without a break.”

The case, once again underscores the heavy workload in many Chinese companies, which ends up killing thousands of workers in China. And it's not an isolated case. 

Yang Fei, 34-year-old employee from Chengdu in southwest China’s Sichuan Province, died after spending excessive hours at work in December. In June, Jin Bo, a 34-year-old editor from China’s famous Tianya BBS, collapsed at a Beijing subway station and soon passed away due to cerebral hemorrhage, reportedly caused by work overload. 

A 2014 report on China’s labor market shows that up to 90 percent of Chinese workers were working more than 40 hours a week. According to reports on several Chinese media, an estimated 600,000 Chinese are working to death annually, which means some 1,643 people die every day as they work under extreme physical and psychological pressures.