China’s internet has of late been alive with discussion over the case of a woman in northern Jiangsu who has mothered eight children but was made to live in a hut beside her family’s house, sometimes chained up by her neck.
The shocking situation came to light just before the Chinese New Year holiday, when netizens’ discussions were picked up by the family of a women from Sichuan Province who went missing in 1998.
DNA of the missing woman did not match that of the mother of eight, surnamed Yang, but that did not stop a plethora of hastily-made videos from being shared online.
The videos, together with media reports at home and abroad, document the woman’s living conditions in Fengxian County of Xuzhou City in the far northwest of our very own Jiangsu Province.
While the videos were mostly posted online on 28 January, on that same day the Propaganda Department of the Fengxian County Party Committee announced that it and the county government had quickly established a joint team to conduct a comprehensive investigation.
The woman’s identity was subsequently verified and it was revealed that she was married to a man surnamed Dong in Huankou Town of Fengxian County in August, 1998. There was no suspicion of any abduction nor trafficking having taken place, reports The Paper.
The Committee’s report stated that according to family members and neighbours, Yang often beat her children and the elderly for seemingly no reason, while she had also been diagnosed as suffering from mental illness. On account of her violent tendencies, her family had arranged for her to live alone in a hut.
That hut turned out to be a dilapidated shack right next to the large family home. Videos of Yang living there have since been deleted from the internet. Photos of Yang with the chain around her neck remain on websites abroad, such as The World Journal.
In another video, locals commented that the woman could speak English when she first arrived in the village and was in every way a normal person. They claimed Yang’s transformation was the result of domestic violence.
Dong, on the other hand, was seen on video saying he wanted to have more children after being looked down on by others. Now he has seven sons and one daughter to support. The eldest son is 23, while the youngest just 2.
While his wife is confined to the hut, it appears Dong has been doing the best he could for his children. Videos have revealed the children to be neatly dressed and speaking clearly.
A member of staff from the Fengxian Propaganda Department commented that Yang does not get up very often in winter and that a blogger had suddenly called upon her to take photos, only to see her shoeless with messy hair.
That same staff member also confirmed that the family is a poor household which receives a government subsidy of ¥3,000 each month.
Every cloud has a silver lining. Yang’s future, bleak though it certainly is, may actually have received the boost it needed to bring about an improvement in her living conditions, thanks once to the internet and a touch of citizen journalism.
