2/23/23 - COGNITOHAZARD WARNING

Reading this post will ruin your life. It's ruined mine.

Trigger Warning: Look, I want you to take me seriously. I am not someone who does trigger warnings. I have covered fucked up shit before without putting up trigger warnings. This post is going to go into a lot of detail about abduction, torture, sex slavery, and the worst kind of evils. Learning about this has ruined my life and my ability to live with myself as a human being. Think carefully before going forward.

I’ve gotten a pledge from somebody, and it occurred to me that I never explained the premise of this blog. So, here it is. The reason I started this blog to begin with:

This is a youtube video that does a detailed breakdown of the whole case. There is no translation, so I’ll be transcribing the contents in English. Feel free to watch the video yourself, to see the original footage and screenshots of original posts.

Back in January of 2022, there was a cutesy little local news report in Xuzhou, Fengxian, where the government organises people to hand out goods and gifts to people living in poverty. The reporter is filming them hand over food to Dong Zhimin. They made him the focus of the news report, because he’s support an 80-year-old mother, eight sons, one daughter, and a disabled younger brother by himself. They’re all very impressed with how hardworking and yet optimistic he is, and want to use the opportunity to get more awareness out there about his situation. The original news report has been deleted off of the internet now, but even back then, people had noticed that the news report suspiciously makes zero mention of what happened to this man’s wife. It’s not like he made those eight kids by reproducing asexually—and what about the one-child policy? Does anyone even care about that anymore?

But the news story gets enough attention that some internet influencers decide to take their cameras to Dong Zhimin’s house, do some charity work, and get some nice views, likes, and subscribes out of it. For a while, all anyone was talking about is what a great dad he is, raising eight kids by himself. He even got a tiktok account himself, and at its most popular, he had over 200,000 subscribers.

Then on the 27th of January, an influencer (徐州一修哥) posts a video he filmed at Dong Zhimin’s house. Next to Dong Zhimin’s dilapidated house, was an even more dilapidated shed. Inside the shed is a dishevelled woman cowering in a corner, an iron chain around her neck, with no teeth in her mouth. She stares at the tiktokker with terror and confusion in her eyes. There is a single threadbare blanket in the room on a bare wooden bed, a single bread roll, and a bowl of congealed, frozen rice porridge. The iron chain keeps her within a metres of her bed. In January weather, the woman is only wearing a single layer of shirt.

This video lands on the internet like a bomb going off. And in the face of an absolute avalanche of comments, the influencer replies that his intention isn’t to call the police. The only reason he’d filmed and uploaded the video is to try to use public pressure to persuade Dong Zhimin to be nicer to his wife and to the mother of his children. After all, who would take care of the kids if Dong Zhimin got arrested?

Dong Zhimin replies to the video, explaining that his wife has mental problems, and that’s why they have to keep her chained up for fear that she’ll hurt the old people or the kids. They totally let her off of the chain when she’s not having “an episode”.

Nobody believes his explanation, and for a time, everyone on the internet is at-ing relevant authority figures—the local cops, the state cops, the federal cops, various news media—trying to call attention to this obviously abducted woman. There’s no way this is a matter of “mental problems”, because if she really had it that bad, why have eight kids with her? Aren’t you worried about it passing down to the kids? Why not take her to the hospital? She looks like she’s still pretty young still, why does she have no teeth?

Dong Zhimin responds that his family going up for generations have always been poor farmers, and he was made fun of a lot because he was thirty and still hadn’t gotten married. When he finally got himself a wife, all he cared about was to have as many kids as possible. Then, he said another line that made the internet explode. “So long as she gives birth to them, they’re mind. Doesn’t matter whose sperm it is, those are my kids.” Does that mean some of those kids aren’t even his??

Well, soon after, 徐州一修哥’s account is banned, but the video he posted is still spreading like wildfire. Although the government has yet to comment on the situation, but the internet sleuths are hard at work. People went through the tiktok videos that Dong Zhimin had posted of his daily life, going through all the segments with a glimpse of his wife, studying it frame by frame, listening to her supposed “mad gibberish” over and over. They find that she is actually speaking with a blend of south-western dialect and Xuzhou dialect, “The world doesn’t want me anymore. Everyone here is a rapist. How can I possibly run away? No one is going to help. Please let me go.”

Everyone is absolutely furious. And finally, on the 28th of January, the Fengxian local government posts an official announcement. It was short and curt, “After internet reports in the case of the ‘woman with eight kids’, we have investigated and discovered the woman in question to be Yang ——xia. She was married to Dong —min in August 1998. No evidence of abduction has been found. Neighbours report that Yang —xia often assaults old people and children and have been diagnosed by a medical institution to have mental problems. We have arranged for medical care for her and further aid to her family, to ensure that they can have a happy Chinese New Year.”

All anyone got from this announcement is that the local government doesn’t give a single fuck about this situation and just want it to be over with. Even if everything the government said is true, is it really okay to treat someone with mental illness this way? At a minimum, isn’t he still guilty of abusing his disabled wife? All this announcement did is further anger people.

Two days later, 30th of January, as none of the heat has died down, the government released a second announcement. Now the story is that “Yang —xia (a name that was made up by Dong —min was a homeless woman picked up by Dong —min’s deceased farther Dong —geng, and began living with them. During this cohabitation, they discovered that while she has mental problems, she’s still capable of consent. When she got married, government workers indeed failed to verify her identity. In November 2020, the police entered her DNA into a database of missing persons and did not find a match. No abduction was discovered after further investigation into her identity. June 2021, Yang —xia’s mental illness worsens and she begins assaulting people. In order to curb this behaviour, Dong —min begins to temporarily chain her up, releasing her when she calms. January 30th, 2022, a medical conference of medical experts agree that Yang —xia has schizophrenia, and doctors recommend that she be administered medicine and, when necessary, to be restrained in order to prevent her from hurting others or herself. Yang —xia is currently in a hospital, receiving treatment. After Yang—xia’s first child with Dong —min, she was taken to have an IUD installed, but it failed for unknown reasons. From May 2014 to now, the government has been giving Dong —min’s family financial support in the form of 1250RMB/month, as well as 37000RMB in 2021 to help him renovate his house.”

The internet response to this is, “What, you can just pick up random mentally-ill homeless people and marry them to your son?? And if they married in 1998, why did her DNA get entered into the missing persons database in 2020?”

Immediately afterwards, Chinese New Year and the Beijing Winter Olympics happened, both big events that completely failed to distract people from the chained woman. Someone on the internet claims that one of their coworkers is from this village, and that everyone knows Yang —xia was abducted from Sichuan. When she first arrived, she was completely mentally fine and even could speak English. She resisted his imprisonment and rape but eventually went crazy after years of torture. They were never officially married—that was all made up by the local government to avoid responsibility. Government officials made up paperwork to make it look like she’d always been a local resident, but the whole village knows that she was kidnapped there.

At the same time, someone else speaks up that Yang —xia’s age and appearance seems to resemble her uncle’s daughter who had gone missing at 12. Her uncle had already passed away from depression due to losing his daughter and she wants to look into if they really are the same person. This missing girl was named Liying, born 1984, went missing in 1996, when she was going to primary school in Nanchong. Liying’s father was a soldier in the Chinese military. Internet sleuths compared Yang —xia and Liying, and I have to say, I agree that they look very, very much alike. Not to mention, Yang —xia speaks with a Sichuan accent.

Someone who claims their father was comrades in the army with Liying’s dad says that she showed her dad Yang —xia’s pictures, he immediately identified her as Liying. He’s gotten in contact with Liying’s mother, who has went to get blood drawn in preparation for a DNA test.

Amongst all this, the government issues its third announcement on the 7th of February. This time, it was issued by Xuzhou government, one tier higher than Fengxian, and this time, a new character is introduced—Xiao Huamei. And once again, the story had changed. The Xuzhou government claims that they have investigated into Yang —xia’s identity, and she is not Liying, but instead a girl from Yunnan named Xiao Huamei, and that supposedly, this was the place of birth entered when Yang —xia filed for marriage. By comparing photos and accent, they have confirmed Yang —xia is indeed Xiao Huamei.

Apparently, Xiao Huamei married to Yunnan in 1994 and got a divorce in 1996, at which point she was already have language difficulties. Xiao Huamei’s best friend Sang —niu was asked by her family to take her to Jiangsu to get treatment and to find a good family to marry her to. Right after the two of them made it to Jiangsu, Xiao Huamei went missing, but Sang —niu never called the police or told her family.

The logical holes in this story is just plain laughable. You need to cross 4-5 states and practically all the way across China to go from Yunnan to Jiangsu—you couldn’t have found a single mental hospital anywhere closer? To transport a woman across the country at which point she conveniently goes missing, and no one ever calls the police or tells her family—what would you call that other than abduction?

The government announcement also claims that Xiao Huamei’s teeth fell out due to “natural causes”, and that all eight children have been confirmed to be the biological children of Yang —xia and Dong —min.

The same day that this report came out, Liying’s uncle petition for Sichuan police to match Liying and Yang’s DNA. Liying’s father’s comrade also submits a statement to the police that he is certain Yang —xia is Liying.

Meanwhile, Dong Zhimin’s influencer career is taking off, and he’s getting sponsorships from wedding planning companies.

On the 10th of February, Xuzhou government issues another announcement where they claim to have found Xiao Huamei’s step-sister Guang —ying. They compared Xiao Huamei’s DNA with Guang —ying and their mother and confirmed Xiao Huamei’s identity. At the same time, Dong —min has been arrested for false imprisonment, and Sang —niu and her husband have been arrested for abducting and selling women.

Across four government announcements, they have went from vehemently denying any accusation of abduction to placing two people under arrest on suspicion of abduction, every single announcement gave a different story, and every story proved the last one to be a bald-faced lie.

But things didn’t end there.

Soon afterwards, the village the chained woman is in was placed under lockdown for “covid”. Two influencers had come to the Fengxian mental hospital to bring gifts and support for Yang, but the hospital had layers of security and police watching every entrance. So they were forced to leave their gifts at the hospital gates. Five days later, they were able to sneak inside the hospital by claiming to need to borrow the use of their toilet, but when one of them was caught filming videos, the hospital took her phone and kicked her off the premises. That night, at 11pm, they came to the police station to establish a case. The police brought them an empty A4 sheet of paper and told them to write down their names and SSNs. They ask if there was an official form for this. The police say, “Wait and I’ll get it for you.” And then disappear for 6 hours. Then, another police informs them that before they can get a case number, the police need to review security footage, and then disappears for another 5 and a half hours looking for security footage. Then, the police say that in order to get a case number, they have to subpoena some nurses first. The influencers ask on the internets that they’re confused how people are getting subpoena’d when there isn’t even a case number yet, and if this is how police investigations normally go. Finally, over 24 hours later after they went to the police, they posted one last time to their social media and then went missing.

After their family began to get worried and looked into it, they discovered that the two influencers have been placed under arrest. The reason for the arrest is never made clear, and the length of the arrest was never established. A whole week later, they were finally released to make a social media post telling people not to worry.

During this period, two reporters from Yunnan go to Xiao Huamei’s hometown, Fugong County, Yagu Village. According to their report, Xiao Huamei is a real person who existed and she did in fact go missing, but after interviewing her relatives, neighbours, and local government officials, all of them say that the chained woman doesn’t resemble Xiao Huamei in the least, not in appearance or accent. Guang —ying says that Xuzhou police did take her blood and her mother’s shirt, but she has never gotten a call back from the police about the results of the DNA test.

On the 18th of February, a famous Chinese talkshow director Wang Shengqiang posts on his weibo, “This happened right in my hometown Everyone knows she’s Liying, but no one can let her be Liying. She can be Wang Ying, Zhang Ying, but never Liying. Liying’s father was a soldier. He risked his life for his country. And now his own country is refusing to help his daughter? After she was abducted to Fengxian, who changed her name? Who issued her ID? Who approved of her marriage? And you tell me the government wasn’t involved in this? You start pulling at one thread and the whole blanket starts to fall apart. So there’s no way she can be Liying. She’s only the tip of the iceberg. There are plenty more like her, in every village. You can’t save them all.”

Wang Shengqiang says that the men of the house—Dong Zhimin, his brother, his dad before he passed away—all “made use” of Yang —xia. Her teeth were pulled out with pliers, because she kept biting when she was being raped. He claims that his hometown is Fengxian, and he has villagers admitting to this on tape.

Then that night at 9pm, he posts, “Got a call from some important people who told me to shut up about this. I’m not gonna delete my posts, but I’m not going to say anything more.”

But in the end, Wang Shengqiang had to delete his posts because “China is a connections society. I have to keep in mind my own family. I hope all abducted women can find their way home one day.”

That same day, Liying’s father’s comrade’s daughter updates her weibo to say, “This is probably going to be my last post on this matter. Liying’s uncle petition for a DNA test has been refused by the police. They say there’s no question that she is Xiao Huamei. There is no need for further investigation.”

The very next day, a reporter Deng Feng makes a post that brings the heat on this issue again. He has found the original marriage certificate of Yang and Dong, including the birth certificate of their oldest son. Yang —xia’s full name is Yang Qingxia. She was supposedly born 1969, June 6th. They were married 1998, August 2nd. That is, she is 52 years old right now. But the chained woman we see in videos and photos looks significantly younger than over 50-years-old. Logically speaking, under such harsh conditions, she should only look older than her age, not so much younger. And the photo in her marriage certificate is a completely different person than the woman we see in videos.

But someone found a photo of Xiao Huamei, and that is definitely the same person as the photo in the marriage certificate.

But if Xiao Huamei was the woman the Dong Zhimin married, but she is not the woman in iron chains, then where is she now?

Dong Zhimin’s oldest son was born March, 1997. But Dong Zhimin claims he didn’t pick Yang Qingxia up until June 1998, so who gave birth to his oldest son? Can we believe any of the DNA reports from the government? Even Wang Shengqing said, before he was forced to delete his posts, that Jiangsu has a very well-developed routine for faking DNA evidence. They’ve already produced fake IDs and fake marriage licenses, why not fake DNA reports?

Even if we completely believe the government, this would mean that Yang Qingxia gave birth to her oldest son at 28 years old, then she stopped until she was 42-years-old, at which point she rapidly had sons 2 through to 8 within a ten year period, between the ages of 42 and 52. What kind of medical miracle is this?

Meanwhile, internet people who are talking about this case is getting cease and desist letters from Dong Zhimin’s oldest son, for “invading his mother’s privacy”. And he begins threatening to sue anyone who continues to bring attention to this case. Why would he do this to his own mother? Could it be true that he’s not actually her son?

So, according to internet sleuths, a much more likely story is this: Xiao Huamei was indeed abducted from Yunnan and sold to Dong Zhimin. She was forced to marry Dong Zhimin and had a son with him. Afterwards, she was never heard from again, possibly passing away in childbirth due to a lack of medical facilities. 14 years later, Dong Zhimin once again purchases an abducted girl and names her Yang Qingxia and had his other 7 kids with her.

But anyone trying to talk about this story gets slammed with slander and “spreading fake news” charges.

Internet people have tried calling the local Women’s Affair’s Association about helping Yang Qingxia. They were told to call the police. They explain that they have called the police, but nonetheless, the Women’s Affairs Association should do something about this too. The reply they got was “Goodbye” and they were hung up on.

By mid-February, western media is starting to pick up on this story too—here is a New York Times article about it:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/15/business/china-eileen-gu-peng-shuai-chained-woman.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/01/business/china-chained-woman-social-media.html

The same story was covered by Korean media, and even Afghanistan media.

Meanwhile, all traces of her are being cleared off the Chinese internet. Someone made a poignant post.

“Before anyone knew about the chained woman, we can still see her on the internet. But when the whole world starts paying attention, we will never be able to see her again.”

Finally, on the 17th of February, from Chinese National News reports that Jiangsu state government has established a task force dedicated to investigating this case and will ensure that all illegal behaviour will be punished.

Then, 6 days later, the final government reports about this case is published.

It’s a very lengthy and detailed report, going into how they have interviewed over 4600 persons of interest and reviewed over 1000 related documents. Once again, they confirm that Yang Qingxia is Xiao Huamei, and she is the woman in the marriage certificate photos. This was confirmed after testing her DNA against all of Xiao Huamei’s surviving family members. They have also confirmed twice that the DNA does not match with Liying’s mother. The reason she doesn’t look like her photo on the marriage certificate is just due to age and losing her teeth. But Xiao Huamei’s birth year is not 1969 as it says on her marriage certificate, but instead 1977. She was abducted by Sang —niu and her husband, who are known criminals who had already served 5 and 7 years respectively for abducting women and children. They arranged a deal to sell her to a man named Xu for 5000RMB. But after 3-4 months, Xiao Huamei fled and was taken in by a couple who operated a hotel. They sold her to a nearby construction worker, who then sold her onto a man named Liu, who sold her to Dong Zhimin’s dad.

Her marriage certificate with Dong Zhimin was issued in 2000, under the claim that their original certificate was lost. When he applied for a replacement, he entered the marriage date as 1998. That’s when her name was entered as Yang Qingxia and her birthday entered as 1969. When she went to give birth to her second son, Dong Zhimin arranged for a fake ID for her.

The reason her DNA was suddenly entered into the missing persons database in 2020 is because in order to Dong Zhimin to apply for welfare, he needed to get a family ID for her. In order to do that, he needed to submit her DNA.

Her first child with Dong Zhimin was born 1999, and not 1997 as it says on his birth certificate. This mistake happened because there are two children with the same, and the internet sleuth had found the other guy’s birth certificate, who had been born in 1997. Immediately afterwards, Xiao Huamei got taken into get an IUD. In 2010, it failed, and she became pregnant with her second child. And between 2011 and 2020, she had a further 7 children. Once again, they reiterate that all 8 children are biologically related to her.

Her teeth had indeed fallen out on their own due to natural dental problems due to poor oral hygiene.

Finally, the report says that all 117 government officials involved in ignoring this case and trying to cover it up has been asked to sit in the naughty corner and think about how they’ve been a bad boy.

The fifth report tried to fill in all the plot holes left by the previous four reports and pacify the angry internet commenters. And most people believed this version of events.

I, personally, think it’s just as full of shit as the Chinese government has always been.

Although most people were on the correct side of the issue here, throughout this whole case, there were plenty of internet voices saying, “Well, are you happy now? You’ve ruined a happy family. Now you’ve got kids with no mom, a man with no wife, and the saddest of all—she won’t have anyone to take care of her in her old age. With her mental illness, where can she go where she wouldn’t be abused? Now she has to die sad and lonely too!”

“No one is thinking about the kids here. They already barely have a mom. If their dad goes away to jail, what are they doing to do?”

“It’s not that I think we should just let it go, but after all, someone needs to take care of the kids.”

Although these sentiments have plenty of downvotes, they have plenty of upvotes too.

Here the youtuber mentions that it’s wellknown that nothern Jiangsu has “human wholesale markets”. These markets have such a big scale and such high profit margin that whole villages are involved in their operation. Wang Shengqiang is correct—the chained woman is only the tip of the iceberg. There are not dozens of cases of abducted women and children, there are not hundreds of cases, there are not thousands. There is at a very minimum, tens of thousands of women in the exact same situation right now in China. The chained woman is a symbol of a massive demographic.

For example, after all the attention the chained woman received, in the very same village of Fengxian, there is another family with a woman wrapped in a blanket, laying on the floor. This is how she has lived for the past two decades. She was abducted to the village around the same time as the chained woman, and she has given birth to two children. When her husband saw how much money Dong Zhimin made off of tiktok, he started getting in touch with influencers to come to his house and film his wife. He has admitted right on camera that he purchased his wife for 1000RMB and that he beats her all the time. She’s known in the village as “the hung woman”, because her husband used to hang her up and beat her, and the whole village could hear her scream.

On the internet, you can search for court judgements. There are numerous filings for divorce by women in Fengxian, with the stated reason being that they were abducted here and never consented to marriage. Not in a single case was divorce granted. There is at least one woman who has fled her abductor for 5 years and is filing for divorce, and yet the court still refused on the grounds that, “she has not provided sufficient proof that their relationship is beyond repair.” And that they should, “learn how to treasure each other and protect the integrity of their family together.” Note that she never even got a marriage certificate with her abductor. But the Fengxian court decided that since she did, in fact, cohabitate with him for several years, it counts as a civil marriage.

They also charged her 120RMB legal fees for the filing.

Just one year before the story of the chained woman broke out, Wang Wenqun, yet another woman in the very village of Fengxian who was abducted there, was beaten regularly, fled and had been living on her own for 3 years, who the court claimed that, “They have had a happy and stable marriage for over two decades. Every marriage has its conflicts, we do not think it is appropriate to approve of a divorce in this case.”

A book published on the scale of abducted women in China, there is a passage that reads, “From 1986, there have been 48,100 women abducted from all over China and sold to Jiangsu, Xuzhou. In one village in Xuzhou, 2/3rd of the women there were abductees.”

There was a movie made about abducted women called Mangshan, based on a real case. A girl was abducted and sold to Inner Mongolia. After 3 years, her family finally hear of clues of her whereabouts and track her down. When they find her, she had already birthed a daughter. They saw that she had a child, and her husband didn’t seem to treat her too badly, so they left her with him. They paid him several thousand dollars before they left, as her dowry.

When her second child was 5-6 months old, when she went out one day to shop at the grocery store, she got abducted again. She went through four different owners, ending up in a cave, the property of two brothers who used her to vent their lust. When she was finally found by reporters, she had gone insane. The walls of her cave were covered with the words “run run run run run”. Everyone in the village knew she was abducted there. Everyone knew she was frequently beaten, because she’s “crazy”. They know she’s being chained up, because she might “hurt others”.

Why is this crime so common?

Well, what is the maximum penalty for purchasing a person? 3 years.

If you purchase a panda, you get sentenced to death.

What does it matter that the penalty for abducting a person is 5-10 years, and if there are additional factors, it might even be upgraded to 20 years or death? So long as there is demand, there will be supply.

There is a Chinese website, babies come home, which helps people abducted as children piece together where they came from, from blurry childhood memories, and help them find their family again. Since its establishment in 2007, it has received tens of thousands of applications for help.

In an official interview by CCTV and the chained woman, she is lying in her hospital bed, as a doctor asks if she wants a drink of water. She struggles to sit up, reaches out, and begs, “Please, let me leave. Let me go.”

“Do you want some sleep?”

“Help me. Let me leave!”

“You’ll feel better after a nap.”

What’s the ultimate result of this case?

Well, shortly afterwards, Russia went to war with Ukraine, and that was all people cared about. Discussion about the chained woman rapidly disappeared off of the internet. By the time it was March or April, even mentioning the words “Xuzhou” or “Fengxian” or “chained woman” got your account banned for “spreading fake news”. As far as I can tell, the chained woman is still in Fengxian, still chained up. Although supposedly, her abductors were arrested, I don’t think they have been charged with anything. They’ve certainly not went to court. In January, some lawyers in Beijing tried to go to Fengxian to help her, but there are blockades around Fengxian, and they were refused entry because “higher ups have ordered it”.

I want to help.

I need to help.

But I don’t know how to.

Calling the police doesn’t work. Lawyers don’t work. The only thing I can think of is to draw international attention to this case. To make it not a forgotten controversy lost in the short attention spans of the internet. To keep reminding people of the incompetence and evil of the Chinese government, with the hope that maybe they’ll decide to do something about it.

If you want to support this blog, keep linking people to this article, or to the NYT articles, or to the youtube video (if they speak Chinese). Any money I receive will go instantly to a fund, and when I get enough, I will hire SEO services to raise awareness of the case where a woman cut off her husband’s penis and was sentenced to a fine of 200RMB.

If I get way more money than I expect, I will put all of it into a charitable foundation that pays for criminal defense lawyers for women who cut people’s penises off.

If you can think of any better ways to help, please let me know. I am willing, I just don’t know what I can do in this situation other than continuing to bring it up.