A 10-year-old boy has been confirmed dead after going missing for 20 days in Shanxi, after supposedly running away from home after being beaten for stealing money. The prime suspects are his mother and his step-father.
Screenshots of his mother’s social media account has been leaked to reporters by insiders. It shows that after Zhang —qiao went missing, she posted 7 videos in search of him, one of which had the captions, “Please come back. Mommy will never beat you again. I don’t mind if you spend money.”
The insider, Yang Xin, explained that when she saw the videos, she asked the mother in question immediately what happened. The mother claimed that her son had ran away around 2am in the night, and she thinks he went in search of his birth dad. She shows screenshots of texts with the mother, where the mother expresses repeatedly her worry and fear and claims of insomnia. That she “keeps hearing knocks on the door, but when I open the door, there’s nobody there.” Yang Xin contacted the mother on the 5th and 7th, where she responded immediately saying she’s looking for her son in the orchard, that there’s a lot of accusations against her on social media, but she doesn’t care, she just wants him back. But during that same period, her social media accounts show she’s still playing her phone games, and she didn’t appear as worried as her texts sounded.
Multiple local residents explain that they saw the mother on the morning of the 5th, “wearing a face mask and hat, covered from head to toe, posting missing persons posters on the street. I checked it out, and found she’d already walked away. The missing persons posters were stuck on the outside air-conditioning units. They were only as big as a QR code and didn’t stand out at all. I wouldn’t have seen it if I wasn’t looking.”
Comments say, “If she was really that worried, she wouldn’t attach emoticons with her texts.”
“If my kid was really missing, I wouldn’t have time to type out texts at all. I called everyone directly, or left voicemails. I’ve experienced that it’s like to have your heart practically beating out of your chest while you look for your kid.”
“That kid is only 130cm tall at 12 years old, you can tell she never properly took care of him. She probably barely paid attention to him as it was.”
A blogger writes on the same topic, “I’ve always said that Child Welfare Department needs to periodically check up on children with step-parents. I know we’re making hospitals mandatory reporters now, but can’t we go one step further, and go beforehand to see if kids are being abused?
When it comes to step-parents, or hell, even actual parents, people can’t control themselves once they have an urge to kill a kid. There are so many more murders in real life than ever make it onto the trending topics on weibo.
On April 10th some year, a box was discovered on the side of the street in some western city, and two heads and various body parts were found in the box. A total of 11 pieces, about 25kg total. The two skulls had smooth cut surfaces and signs of burning. One had white hair and seemed to be about 60 years old, another had braids and was 10-12 years old (according to teeth and bone analysis by forensics).
According to the coroner, “Both the older and younger victims were female. They were killed and dismembered using the same method. It was probably done by the same person. Based on the shape of the plastic box and its weight, a grown man can carry it by himself. The suspect committed murder, burned the bodies, dismembered them, then discarded them in order to avoid the victims from being identified, in order to cut off police attempts to narrow down on the suspect. Based on this, we can deduce that the suspect and the victims knew each other.
The bodies were discarded next to a narrow public road with no lights, but fairly frequent traffic. This isn’t an ideal spot for discarding a body, suggesting that the suspect was limited by circumstances or doesn’t know the local area. It also suggests that he has his own mode of transportation and probably discarded the body at night.
The bodies were severely burned and were cut into over 11 pieces. The body parts were carefully wrapped. This would have taken a long time, so the site of dismemberment provided a high level of privacy, to store a body and dismember it without anyone noticing.
The materials the body parts were wrapped in were clothes and carpets obtained from a home, so the site of dismemberment was indoors, in a resident of one person or very few people.”
The process of detective work was that, “using the location of the discovery of the body as a centre, searches and interviews were conducted in a nearby radius. Missing persons reports were looked into in the last 6 months, particularly any primary school students who had ceased going to school recently. From this, someone matching the younger victim was located, and further investigation revealed that her grandma had gone missing at the same time.
Using DNA analysis, the victims were identified. The older victim (female, 65 years of age) was the maternal grandmother of the younger victim (female, 11 years of age). Their connections were looked into, and the younger victim’s step-father is found to be the primary suspect and was arrested. The suspect confessed to the murder without resistance, and his description of his crimes matched with forensic reports. He killed them with a strike from an iron hammer, burned the bodies, dismembered them, then discarded the bodies.”
This case was difficult because of how the victims were burnt and dismembered and the bodies were severely damaged and had decomposed significantly. But a professional coroner was still able to confirm their gender and age, narrowing down the range of potential missing persons. But this piece of news never made it onto the front lines.”
Comments say, “This is why I would never remarry before my child is in university. Even if I don’t have legal custody, I’m still doing my best to raise my kid and give him a normal growing environment, enough love, and a sense of safety. This is the responsibility of a mother. No matter how hard it is, I have to come through.”
“They just think if they kill the dead weight, their lives will get better. Everything that’s wrong with their life is caused by the victims.”
“I don’t understand why child murderers get delayed death sentences.”
An askreddit question, “What would happen if all women stopped asking for bride prices?”
The top voted reply is, “I’m a woman, I don’t need bride price, or a house, or a car. I don’t have a dowry either. It’s a totally fair arrangement. Here are my criteria:
I’m not going to live in my husband’s family home. I’m not marrying into his family. I’m establishing our own little family with him. It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t have a house, I don’t mind renting. Both of our parents can come over to visit for a short time, but they can’t scold me in my own house.
We split the expenses of maintaining our household. I may not be wealthy, but I can afford to split the check. I’m not trying to find an ATM machine, I can feed myself.
We split all household chores.
Don’t demand I have babies. If I want babies, I’ll have them. If I don’t, I won’t. If you start putting pressure on me to get pregnant, I’ll break up so you can find someone who wants to do that. I’ll make that abundantly clear before marriage.
If I have babies, then girls take my last name and boys take his last name. This is pretty easy, right? Most families don’t want daughters anyways. So let my daughter get all of the love from my family and all of my estate.
The expense of having a kid and recovering afterwards will be solely paid for by the man. After all, I went through the pain and difficulty, he can’t contribute nothing.
We split the expenses of having a child. After my maternity leave is over, I’ll go back to work and get a nanny for the child. We’ll split the cost of the nanny too.
Respect my decisions. Don’t try to make me give up on my career to take care of my family, don’t say I’m calculating. If you want fairness, then let’s be fair all the way through. Don’t try to get the benefits of tradition, and also the benefits of modernity. Women are unlucky enough that the pain of having a child is all on them, you can’t demand I give up on myself too. Between my family and myself, I definitely come first.”
Comments say, “Yeah, if you’re not paying a bride price, you can’t force a girl to have kids. If you really insist on it, then prepare her nutrition expenses, hospital visits, recovery therapy costs, month-sitting expenses, nannies, baby stuff, and her lost wages from work. I mean, I can have kids with you because I love you, but as a man, it’s your responsibility to make sure I and my baby have some sort of safety net during this whole process. I don’t know about other girls, but I’ll only feel safe if the man prepares this money beforehand and gives it to me.”
“What’s the point of a marriage like this? Just stay single.”
“Most places in Jiangsu don’t ask for a bride price anymore, or has dowry larger than the bride price. The more well off a place is, the more they don’t try to take advantage of other people. But people only marry their own social class though.”
Someone posts a PSA, “Babies have special lead metabolism, they have a much harder time getting rid of it in their body, and will suffer the problems of blood lead levels more severely than adults. Because of this, over 600,000 children will suffer IQ damage from high lead levels around the globe every year.
Parents dying their hair can cause lead levels in their children to rise, or even cause lead poisoning. Frequently eating canned foods or soft drinks will also cause blood lead levels to rise.
Day-to-day solutions:
Breastfeeding can reduce the harm of high lead levels. It can help children remove the lead from their body.
Consuming milk or dairy products every day can get rid of lead. The effect is quite obvious.
Washing your hands before each meal with soap can remove lead from your hands, reducing how much lead you consume.
Make sure you’re getting plenty of calcium, iron, and potassium in your diet. These three micronutrients can compete with lead in the blood and reduce how much lead you absorb.
If your child is diagnosed with high lead levels, there are treatments they offer at the hospital that’ll fix it in a month. Don’t wait, because it’ll affect their IQ development. This is important hardware for winning from the starting line.
PS: If you find your child’s fingers uncontrollably shaking, you have to start worrying about lead poisoning or aluminium poisoning.”
Comments ask, “I’m an adult and my hands shake sometimes?”
“If a baby’s hand twitches while sleeping, is that related?”
“Is it because soap is basic? Can you use scented soap? If you just use straight soap, it’ll make the skin on your hand get all rough. What about acidic liquid soap?”
A tiktok video of a man at the dating corner of the park, with a sign outlining what he’s looking for in a partner. He says, “Whatever she’s offering, I’ll offer. If she doesn’t have something, then she can’t demand I have it too.” On his sign, you can see that he has one house, one car, and 10K in income per month. And he wants a partner who has one house, one car, and 10K in income per month.
“I can put up 188K in bride price, but that’s not for her family. It’s investment in our new family. And she needs to bring 188K in dowry over too. We’ll have two kids. They’ll each take one of our surnames. That way, no one’s taking advantage of anybody. Men and women make the same money, they’re working the same jobs after graduation, but girls get to spend all of their income on eating and playing and make up, but men have to work hard and save up to buy houses and cars. This is unfair.”
Comments say, “But if each party is bringing exactly the same things to the table, then the man is still taking advantage of the woman’s ability to have children, and the risks and suffering she has to go through for it.”
“I’ll agree if he births one kid and she births the other.”
“If she doesn’t have something, then she can’t demand I have it too? But you can’t have kids, so why can you demand two kids from her? How is this not taking advantage of anyone?”
“How do I persuade my mom against selling her arts and crafts at a stall? She started learning how to make these boxes from a livesteam, and she’s made a ton of them and wants to sell them. She tried taking them to the nearby middle school and nobody bought any. She wants 30 RMB a piece and to try selling it near a university. I think she’ll probably fail again. She tried grabbing a passing middle school boy to sell her boxes to him, and felt really upset when he didn’t like something she’d put her heart into making.
Right now, I’m thinking about lying to her that I’ll sell them for her, and just give her money for them myself. But I feel like I’m gonna get found out one day, and I’m afraid that my mom’ll think there’s a market for these and it’ll affect how she lives her life. Is there a better way to go about this?”
Comments say, “They’re not pretty, not cheap, and not very practical. University students are kind, but not stupid. Make her see reality. Short pain is better than long pain.”
“If you get found out, she’ll only be more upset. Try selling these at a primary school? Maybe little kids will like things like this.”
“Show her boxes being sold on Taobao which are much prettier and cheaper. Then she’ll know there’s no point.”
Hong Kong media is now covering the Cathay Pacific discrimination event, saying that Cathay Pacific has had problems with discrimination going back at least 20 years. Cathay Pacific’s worker union is still refusing to admit to discrimination of passengers who cannot speak English, which is surprising, but it’s exactly proof of the problems deep within Cathay Pacific. The article also expresses that if Cathay Pacific really wants to change, they’ll have to change all the way down to the bones.
The article records many incidents of Cathay Pacific discrimination against passengers, to show that this isn’t one or two incidents, over one or two days. It goes back over two decades. An overseas passenger recalls that, “Over two decades ago, I’ve complained with a friend about Cathay Pacific. They were passing out ice cream, and she had fallen asleep, so they didn’t give her any. After she woke up, a French couple told her, so she went to ask the stewardesses, and got the reply that they didn’t have any more ice cream. The French couple felt that was odd, so they asked the stewardess, and the stewardess gave them more ice cream. And the couple gave the ice cream to my friend.”
Comments say, “They pretend to be westerners to forget that they’re still Asian at the end of the day. They’re the most delusional people I’ve ever seen.”
“This reminds me of the BMW Mini incident.”
A tiktok video of an incident in Hainan, where a mother was hit by somebody. Her son tries to stop the assaulter from leaving, and were beaten up by the couple in question.
Comments say, “The policy that if you fight back at all, it’ll be judged as a mutual fight, has completely destroyed the sense of justice and fairness. Stand with me and fight against judges trying to muddy the waters.”
“The concept of a mutual fight has completely destroyed the concept of self defense, and destroyed any courage people might have to fight back against injustice.”
“The backbone of Chinese people are getting destroyed.”
What are the legal norms around self-defense in China? The story makes it sound like there's not a legal allowance for self-defense — you're not allowed to fight back if you're attacked?
Poor mom, I thought the boxes were pretty :(