Woman rescued after 21 years living in cave

Huang Peishu, who was abducted, sold into marriage and lost her only son, found a way to forget all these tragedies living in a cave for 21 years.

Thousands of kilometres away in the capital of Southwest China's Sichuan Province, her 68-year-old elder brother Huang Peirong sadly told reporters yesterday that he has to wait for three months before going to bring his long-lost sister in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region back home in a small village in Sichuan.

He and his son had visited the Huang Peishu, who is currently hospitalized in Hohhot, capital of the autonomous region. Doctors there said she had to receive at least three-month treatment before she could board a train taking her home.

The woman, now 58 years old, disappeared from her home village in Zhongjiang County in the spring of 1982 after two unhappy marriages. Her family tried in vain to look for her and finally thought that she might be dead somewhere.

But they never imagined she had been abducted to Inner Mongolia and sold to a local, Sun Runshan, becoming his wife in Sanjuyao Village of Helin County in Hohhot.

In 1982, human smugglers from Sichuan took Huang Peishu, then 35, to the village where Sun, then 45, was attending a funeral.

The smugglers allegedly claimed Huang was their younger sister, and that their family was so poor they wanted to find a husband for Huang in the village.

The illiterate Sun, who had never been married because of poverty, paid the couple 1,000 yuan (US$124) and took Huang home.

The next year, Sun and Huang had a son. Thanks to the birth of the child, Huang, who was not used to lifestyle in Inner Mongolia, decided to settle there. But the unexpected death of the son half a year later brought her back to a chasm of misery.

The family claims Huang became desperate and crazy. She hurt Sun's mother one day in a quarrel. Beaten by Sun's uncle, Huang ran away to a cave nearby and refused to return home.

Sun, who said he loved Huang, sent her meals every day and raised hens in the cave so that Huang had live eggs to eat. As the temperature of the cave was -20 C in winter, Sun sent quilts made of sheep hides to the cave.

"Villagers thought she would only live for one or two years in the cave as it was so cold. I had made a coffin for her in advance. But she is still alive," Sun said.

Because the cave was remote, Huang did not arouse any outside attention until five years ago when Ren Zhiming, former deputy chief of the Hohhot Photographers Association, happened to spot her when taking a picture in the village. In following years, Ren took some pictures of Huang.

At the beginning of this month, Ren told Huang's story to Liu Li, a reporter of Inner Mongolia Morning Post. The story was published in the newspaper two days later and caused a stir among the public.

A week later, the Helin county government sent Huang to the Inner Mongolia Mental Health Centre to have a check-up. Prompted to help, migrant farm workers in Hohhot, from Sichuan, donated more than 10,000 yuan (US$1,238) towards Huang's medical fees.

Huang Peirong found out about his sister from a local reporter two weeks ago and the next day boarded a train to Hohhot. He and his son reached the hospitalized woman after nearly 50 hours of travel.

"To my dismay, she could recognize neither of us," Huang Peirong said. "My sister was one of a few literate women in my home village. She was very clever," he added.

In hopes of giving her a better life, he decided to take his sister and Sun back to Sichuan but Sun and doctors rejected the offer.

Source: China Daily