Factbox: “Let Me Out” -- Social Media Prods Probe into Mystery of A Chained Mother of Eight Children

BEIJING, February 24 (TMTPOST) -- A video, posted on TikTok’ sister app Douyin in late January, was meant to showcase the virtues of a middle-aged man who has raised eight children in a time when China needs babies more than ever. However, it went awry badly.

The video was reportedly made by a township official in Feng County, Xuzhou metropolis in Jiangsu, a province in economically developed eastern China. The official visited a poor family during a country-wide precisely targeted poverty eradication initiative, which is also an one-on-one initiative that matches persons in the public sector, including government officials, state-owned company employees, school teachers and even state-owned newspaper journalists, with a disadvantaged family. By sharing the video on the social media, the local official hoped to attract donations to the family from viewers with a big heart.

Quickly donations in the form of children’s clothes arrived, followed by many video-makers who wanted to gain instant popularity and coveted status of online influencers. One Douyin user came to the village to shoot a short video of the children. While preaching the virtue of filial piety, he followed a boy of the eight to a hut where the mother was living. However, he was startled to see a woman being chained by an iron link from her neck with a lock.

The woman looked preoccupied and scared. She wore clothes for the spring season in freezing weather. The Douyin user picked a thick coat from a pile of children’s clothes randomly scattered on the ground and helped her put it on.  

The woman appeared to have no teeth. She murmured: “Far away, far away.”

In another video, she said: “The world has abandoned me.” The boy said that his mom had written Chinese characters of “Go home” many times on the wall of the hut.

The disturbing footage shocked and outraged the viewers of social media outlets, including Weibo and WeChat. Many question marks arose from the videos: How could the chained woman manage to have eight children as the one-kid policy ended only in 2015? Why was the woman denied freedom? Was woman trafficking involved? Why did the woman have no warm clothes?

However, Dong Qingmin, the father of the eight children, found nothing wrong with it. One video-maker asked Dong whether the kids were actually all his. “They are all mine as long as they call me dad,” he said cheerfully. He went on to become an ambassador of a wedding services company and a renovation company in Feng County thanks to his meteoric rise to fame on the social media. 

“A mother of eight children in Feng County” immediately became number one topic on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter. The county government got embarrassed. They quickly released a statement on January 28, saying that the woman, surnamed Yang, was born in the same township as his husband and got married to him in August 1998. It ruled out the possibility of woman trafficking or a forced marriage. The statement also said that Yang was chained because she was mentally ill and often assaulted her kids and in-laws. The statement also emphasized that the local government had handed out welfare benefits to the family.

But the online statement, which was rerun verbatim by dozens of national and provincial and local news media outlets, raised more questions than answering. The statement was read for 1.65 billion times and drew 1.09 million comments, most of which were skeptical of the conclusions drawn by the county government.

In two days, the county government released a second statement at 23:46 on Sunday, January 30, one day before the Chinese New Year’s eve. The statement read that the woman’ legal name in the certificate of marriage was given by her husband. She was picked up by her father-in-law when she was losing her way and begging for food near the village. She has lived with her husband since then.  

The county government acknowledged that township officials failed to check the woman’s real identity when registering her and her de-facto husband as a couple. The county government also admitted that Dong was suspected of mistreating his wife and the police had formed a special team to investigate whether any crimes were involved. The woman was hospitalized for the treatment of her mental illness.

The second statement marked a U-turn from the first one, as it acknowledged the woman was not born in the county and her origin was a mystery. Obvious factual discrepancies in the two statements spurred more social media users to join a quest for her real home.

Many articles were circulating on social media, arguing having sex with a mentally ill woman is a crime. More questions ensued: How could a mentally ill woman get a marriage certificate? Was she raped? Why were her teeth gone? Were she tortured? Many conspiracy theories swirled online.  

Traditional print media and television media outlets were largely quiet except running the two statements. No investigative stories were published. China’s national television broadcaster CCTV visited the woman in the hospital and aired the dialogue between a doctor and the woman. Some attributed the neglect of mainstream media coverage to the Chinese New Year holidays while other said the village was cordoned off from the outside world.

One bizarre thing happened. The eldest son of the eight, who is 23 years old, reached many online content creators, demanding the removal of anything containing his mother’s image by citing the infringement of her rights to the photos.

A video clip of the woman asking for her discharge from the hospital surfaced online and went viral quickly on WeChat. That video, aired by national broadcaster CCTV on February 10, was utterly disturbing.

She was admitted to the local hospital the next day after the release of the first statement. She implored to her doctor: “Let me out.” The doctor, named Feng Liquan, kept telling her: “Have a little sleep! Have a little sleep! Sleep for a while, you will be alright. Want to drink water? Tell me which part of your body you find uncomfortable.” It was brand daylight but the doctor was ordering her to sleep. The doctor kept pressing the bed quilt on her. “Let me out! Let me out!” she pleaded repeatedly.

She was diagnosed with “obsessive and compulsive schizophrenia” according to the plate attached to her bed. The plate also revealed that her age was 52. Many social media users argued that the tone and speed in which the doctor uttered his commands made them wonder the person suffering from schizophrenia is the doctor himself.

On February 7, the first working day after the Lunar New Year holidays, a third statement about the incident was released by the Xuzhou Municipal Government, a higher government right above Feng County government.

The third statement claimed that Yang ‘s original name was Little Huamei (literally meaning a “Plum Flower”) and her both parents were deceased. According to the statement, Little Huamei’s relatives and fellow villagers recalled that she returned to her home village in 1996, mentally ill, after her first marriage that began in 1994 in Baoshan city, Yunnan province. With the permission from her mother, a woman surnamed Sang took Little Huamei to Jiangsu for her medical treatment and a potential marriage. However, Sang lost contact with Little Huamei when they arrived in Donghai County, Jiangsu province. Sang neither reported the case of a missing woman to the police nor informed Little Huamei’s mother.

The statement also said that Little Huamei’s mental conditions got stable by the release of the statement. Her loss of teeth was due to a gum disease. Her other health metrics are all normal.

The chained woman got new first name and last name-- Little Huamei – in the third statement, which are different from “Yang Mouxia” that appeared in the first two statements. However, Xiao Huamei’s age was still not mentioned.

On February 8, the next day after the release of the third statement, California-born Eileen Gu won a gold medal in the women’s freeski big air event for China, also a third gold for China at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games. A nation-wide mania for Gu, nicknamed the “Ice and Snow Princess,” briefly eclipsed the attention to Xiao Huamei.

Meanwhile, a duo of former investigative journalists named Guo Min and Ma Sa set out on a journey to the home village of the woman of eight children. They found that few in the village recognized the chained woman in the video, who spoke the Han language, not the mother tongue of Xiao Huamei. Only a man was positive that the woman in the video was Xiao Huamei, but his wife cautioned him against telling something he was unsure of and said her husband was actually drunk.

The investigative news story that about the details of the duo’s trip was read by many online users. Doubt about the link between Little Huamei and Yang surged online.

On February 10, the Xuzhou Municipal Government issued the fourth statement on social media Weibo, confirming that Little Huamei is the daughter of deceased Pu Mouma through DNA tests. Dong Moumin (55 years old) was detained on suspicion of false imprisonment and Sang and her husband were also detained on charges of woman trafficking.  

Despite the four statements, some questions remained unanswered. An original certificate of Little Huamei’s marriage to her so-called husband surfaced online. The photo of the certificate showed she was actually 52, the same as that in the plate on her bed in a patient ward. How could a woman give birth to 8 children, with the youngest being only 2 years old? How could she give birth to seven kids in a decade when she was 39 years old to 49? Incredibly fertile for a woman who was not properly sheltered and deprived of normal nutrition?

Tens of millions of netizens expressed their suspicion: the facial features of the woman in the marriage certificate were strikingly different from those of the chained woman. How could they be the same person?  

The chained woman replaced freeski gold medalist Gu as the most-watched woman in China.

On Wednesday, February 23, Jiangsu provincial government released the fifth statement regarding the woman of eight children. According to the statement, a special province-level team was formed on February 17 to investigate the real identity of the woman and the story behind her.

According to the statement, special investigators have conducted over 4,600 verbal interviews and reviewed over 1,000 documents. The statement revealed that Little Huamei was born on May 13, 1977 and is 44 years old now, not 52 in her marriage certificate and the plate on her bed in the hospital. The statement acknowledged that her birth date on official documents was fabricated by Dong, who alleged to be her husband.

From January 28 to February 23, a total of five statements were issued as social media users were not satisfied with the findings announced in a previous statement. It was rare to have an issue to haunt the minds of a nation for such a long time.   

Many articles about woman trafficking occurring in Feng County or Xuzhou published by print media or excerpted from books in the past three decades were posted on social media. A media observer said the woman of eight children is just “a tip of an unseen massive iceberg”. He believed that woman trafficking is likely to be a pressing issue in the upcoming Two Sessions in March.

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