Early in 2022, a woman only known as Yang, was held against her will and forced to give birth to 8 children in Feng County, Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province, China attracted a lot of attention. The poor woman was kidnapped, forced to give birth to eight children and chained and left in a cold shabby shack. After repeated denials, local authorities finally admitted that this was actually a case of human trafficking.
The trafficking of women is widely seen as a consequence of gender imbalance or “missing girls” in China. It stems from a decadeslong catastrophic one-child policy and the preference for boys. What shocked many people is that after Yang’s case came to the public view, her so-called husband, Dong Moumin received donations from internet users and his house became a check-in place of many celebrities, according to NetEase. Twitter account Xiahuashengru also expressed his consternation seeing a “rapist” start to receive business endorsements. This particular incident is recent, but that moral disaster has been going on for many decades in China.
When reading Yan’s story this year, Laofu, the former director of the Social Security Center of the Xi’an Bureau revealed another “chain woman” story, from 30 years ago that he witnessed. It also happened in Xuzhou.
Female PhD student kidnapped in Xuzhou, victim’s family had to pay compensation
In this incident, the victim’s family even had to pay compensation to the person who bought their daughter.
The story titled ‘The Sinner’ was told by Laofu, who was once a train section leader.
At that time, Laofu was working on a train from Baoji (寶雞) to Lianyungang. On this occasion, he turned the locomotive at a train station, then talked to the director of the passenger station surnamed Hou. While they were talking, suddenly dozens of people rushed in, looking like they were about to fight.
Two police officers from the Shanghai Public Security Bureau had come to rescue a kidnapped girl. Her name is Mo Hua (莫華). She was originally a doctoral student. She had come to Xuzhou five years before the incident to do some survey work and it was then that she was kidnapped. Mo’s parents are university professors, they both work in chemical engineering at the Institute of Chemistry.
They came to Xuzhou to save their daughter. Unfortunately, the people that were to rescue Mo were not prepared but the kidnappers were very hostile and well organized. At that time, the head of the Xuzhou said to the Shanghai police that the village is poor. People from the city can’t find wives so they come to the country.
A man by the name of Mao Dan had purchased Mo Hua. and although the police were in their rights to take Mo Hua, someone would have to reimburse Mao Dan the 800 yuan ($116) he had paid for Mo Hua.
At that time, the poor girl was dressed in rags. Her eyes were dull, and she looked more like a rural woman than an intelligent doctoral student. Moreover, her spirit seemed abnormal, her body was already very weak.
Professor Mo was so angry that he shook all over and said: “My daughter has been trampled to this extent, and in the end, we still have to pay (Mao Dan).” But if the professor didn’t pay, they wouldn’t let him leave with his daughter. At that time the police were also scared because there were so many people. In the end, there was no other way, professor Mo and the others collected 2,000 yuan ($290) to pay Mao Dan and only then did professor Mo’s family return safely.
Young woman from intellectual family lived in ‘hell on earth’
But the story doesn’t end there. When the two sides argued, the villagers claimed that young Mo Hua had given birth to two children. But they claimed that she had killed both of her babies so Mao Dan wouldn’t have any descendants.
Because Mo Hua wanted to run away, her legs were beaten and broken, and then they used chain her up. This kind of shame and torture was beyond words. Each time, she was raped by a group of people, then she became pregnant.
Although Mo Hua was finally saved, her mental trauma was so great that she suffered a serious mental illness. Arriving home, Mo Hua was sometimes awake, and sometimes comatose. In addition, because she had been chained, starved, and tortured, she became ill. When her parents took her for treatment, she neither cooperated nor took the prescribed medicine. As a result, 2 months after returning home, Mo Hua died.
Mo Hua recounted the humiliation and torture she had to endure. Her father’s hair had turned white from the shock. Mo Hua’s mother, Professor Wu, could not stand her daughter’s humiliation. One day, when her husband came home, he found it strangely quiet, and discovered a letter clamped to a bottle of deadly poison, which read: “I’m leaving, let’s take revenge for Huahua.”
Professor Mo quickly ran into the bedroom to find his wife lying on the bed dead. Her face was fierce and scary. Professor Mo suddenly fainted. After regaining consciousness, he closed her eyes. But this is still not the climax of the story.
Kidnapping one person, paying with the life of the whole village
Professor Mo tore up the suicide note, and hid the bottle of poison and reported her death to the police.
Professor Mo was numb from the loss. He sat all day in a chair, neither opening his eyes nor speaking. Thinking of his situation, the Institute of Chemistry where he worked, let him rest, no longer needing to work. Professor Mo said: “For a while, I wanted to go out to relax.” The Institute of Chemistry agreed.
Professor Mo sold his house. He used the money to go back to the village where his daughter had been kidnapped and rented a room.
After that, he went to the town and discovered the location of the well where people got their water drinking. He calculated how much poison he would need and poisoned the well.
People died inexplicably one after another, first the old and weak, then the young also began dying. The people were so scared that they moved away. The authorities also took this seriously and sent officials to investigate.
Coincidentally, north of the hamlet was a heavily polluting chemical factory; the investigator collected a large amount of soil, and water, then concluded that it was the factory that caused the pollution. The factory suspended production. People in the hamlet came back.
After their return, a new round of deaths began. Because professor Mo is a chemistry expert, he used a poison so rare that the investigation team did not discover it.
The investigation team went to the village again, professor Mo stopped poisoning, so the investigation went nowhere. The villagers left once more. The administrative head of the hamlet, who had to stay in the village to help solve the case, eventually was poisoned and died.
After knowing that the hamlet head was dead, professor Mo surrendered to the police. He explained what he had done when he surrendered.
The consequences of a society without morals or justice
Female abductions have become commonplace in China. The kidnappers were still alive and aggressive; the victim’s family was traumatized and badly damaged. But if they report to the police, for example as in this case, the court could have possibly said that professor Mo’s daughter (Mo Hua) was guilty of murder. To avenge his daughter, professor Mo chose the worst path, and everyone died in the end.
People in the village said that because they were poor, they couldn’t find a bride, so they had to kidnap them. A Chinese writer, Jia Ping Ao, also commented on the Yang’s case from this year, “If they don’t purchase women, this village will die out,” implying that it is possible to accept this crime in order to maintain the race. But this argument does not make sense. In the program “Commentaries on the world” posted on February 14, after recalling the story of Mo Hua, professor Zhang Tian Liang put forward his critical thinking and humanistic views.
First, if poverty could be a cause, why not think of a way to make them more affluent, provide the poor with an education and job training. Why choose such an extreme and dehumanizing way?
Confucius said, “Do not do to others what you don’t want to be done to you.”
In another episode, professor Zhang argued that each year thousands of people are trafficked in China. The Chinese Communist Party holds unlimited power; there are about 600 million surveillance cameras all over the country, you just need to insult the CCP, and 5 minutes later the police will come and arrest you. So why not solve the problem of human trafficking?
Furthermore, from a spiritual point of view, professor Zhang acknowledged that a person’s level of poverty or a locality has a relationship with the karma of that place. In other words, happiness and suffering today are all related to good and bad deeds that a person committed in this life or in a previous life. If a poor person wants to really change his destiny, he must start by being a good person. As he raises his moral standard everyday, he will accumulate blessings, so at least in the next life he will not be poor.
Professor Zhang pointed that to really treat others well is to tell them to be good people, not to justify their crimes.
Each person who comes into this world is a gift from God. They should take a righteous path, like a true human, with dignity and self-respect. If they commit crimes like kidnapping, torture, trampling on others to maintain descendants, what will be their evil retribution in the future be?
Everyone, no matter how difficult the current situation is, should always hold goodness in their heart, gradually change their destiny by staying on a righteous path and not do evil to get instant joy.
