Kan Xiaofang seems to have fully foreseen her fate the next day: “This time, it’s hard to predict the fate of my return home, if there is any chance, please ask my family to look for the suicide note in the iron box. If you can be buried in the place you want to be buried, better, if not, please scatter my ashes on the Fu River, down by the water, is also a good choice, do not bury me in Shang Yu (Yu’s old home), I do not want to die without peace. No funeral, no need to look at the day, no need to look at the time, not to use a large casket, the urn is good. Also do not need the so-called sacrifice, only do not want to forgive the killer, do not forgive him! “
One last cry for help
Last spring, Kan Xiaofang decided to flee her abusive husband. She didn’t lack courage and immediately went for it when she made up her mind. In Huangshi City, Hubei Province, half an hour’s drive from where she lives in Yangxin County, she found an assembly line job alternating day and night shifts in an electronics factory. Like in high school, she worked hard, bored and never complained.
But fear always haunted her. Living a double-shift life was partly because the night shift paid more money, and partly because it reduced her chances of showing her face in the daytime – she heard that her husband, Yu, was asking around about her. In late summer and early autumn, she fled to Wuhan, further away, and joined a glass factory, still working two shifts, with a monthly salary of more than 4,000 yuan.
The company’s main goal is to provide a comprehensive range of products and services to the public. In October 2020, she told Feng Shuang that she wanted to learn English on her own, but Feng Shuang thought that the reason was that “there might be a greater demand for English teachers”. Feng Shuang sent her a link to a set of textbooks for intensive college English reading, and 10 minutes later, she returned, “I’ve already bought it. “
Kan Xiaofang is fit to be a teacher, friends and family say so. She is not tall, about one meter six, a pair of long, thin eyes, face bulging. She is patient and caring, and always has a smiling face when she meets people. My friend Meizi said that after so many years of marriage, Kan Xiaofang is happiest when she mentions her children. No matter how busy she is at work, she has to teach her two daughters to recognize words personally, stroke by stroke.
Her hometown is in the village of Zhulin, Sanxi Town, Yangxin County, Huangshi City. Before she got married, she was the only one of the four children in her family to be a college student, and had repeated her studies for a year, and her family supported her studies. In 2014, she was 30 years old, and under the pressure of her family and society, she got married to Yu from the next village.
In September of the same year, her first daughter was born, and five months later, she became pregnant again and gave birth to her second daughter. Soon after the birth of her second daughter, more than two years after the marriage, Yu began to commit domestic violence. In the sixth year of her marriage, she sued for divorce, and on New Year’s Day holiday in 2021, Kan Xiaofang went to her home in Yangxin County with her sister to pick up household items. Yu no longer lives here, but Kan Ying recalls that in the shoe cabinet at the door, they found an axe with a silver handle that had slightly lost its paint.
Kan Xiaofang is not without fear – “Look, even the axe is ready, I guess he just intends to kill me ” – but the divorce case urgently needs to be resolved, there is no escape, she must return to Yangxin. Besides, the case was about to go to trial again and seemed to be simmering down. more than 3 p.m. on January 8, she accompanied the judge and appraisers home to assess the property for possible property division afterwards. Kan Ying remembered that the judge informed Yu, but Yu replied that he would not be there.
Kan did not lose her alertness, she asked her sister to park her car in front of the community and wait, and the two kept a cell phone call, “Once there is an accident, you call the police”. In front of the house, Kan Xiaofang knocked on the door for a long time, no one was home, they both put down their hearts and hung up the phone. She then found that the door lock was changed, Kan Xiaofang called a locksmith to unlock the door, the appraiser came into the house to measure, and then left with the judge.
Close to 4:00, Kan Xiaofang and the locksmith left. In the upstream news report, the locksmith stated that when the two walked to the elevator entrance, a man wearing a helmet came out and he pulled out an axe from his backpack and stopped Kan Xiaofang. It was none other than Kan Xiaofang’s husband, Yu Mou. She sent the locksmith the last request for help in her life: help me call the police.
At the tenth hour of four, Kan Ying sent a WeChat to his sister, is it over yet? No one returned. She made two more phone calls, no one answered. A sense of foreboding rose, she ran out of the car, found that the sister residence downstairs has been surrounded by the crowd, she rushed in, a stretcher carrying down a bloody face, jacket has also been covered with blood. She asked, “Is this the 29th floor down? No one paid any attention to her. Until a small child said, “This is the one from the 29th floor.
In this family, the two sisters are the closest, the sister needs money to study in those years, the two brothers as an apprentice earned very little, all rely on the sister to go out to work to send money home. Kan Ying screamed and called his sister, then saw the man on the stretcher’s hand raised slightly, and his head tilted a little. Her eyes moved down and recognized the flat black boots on her sister’s feet.
All the hard work that had gone into starting a new life had been knocked out of her by the axe. “I think of her smiling face every time I see her now when my eyes are open, and when I close them I think of her lifting that look out of the elevator that day, and it’s especially cruel, really. “Kan Ying said. The skull was shattered into the brain marrow, and it took five hours just to sew up the flesh that had been cut open, and the blood bank at the county hospital was empty from the transfusion. People were transferred to the city hospital, January 10, the doctor said, even if the person survived, but also a vegetable, please prepare the family psychologically, the morning of the 11th, the doctor said, the person will not live, and so her heart stopped, you will pull her back. The family’s tears were all shed, and at 9:40 p.m., Kan Xiaofang left.
A few days later, the second brother Kan Renping got his sister’s SIM card from the police and went to the business office to type out the call records. He called the people his sister had contacted after the New Year and asked one by one, “Do you know Kan Xiaofang? “By this method, he found the dormitory where his sister worked in Wuhan.
It was a ten-square-meter dormitory without much stuff, only some clothes, quilts, electric pressure cookers, dumpers, sweet potatoes, noodles, and rice. Somehow, he noticed that all his sister’s cosmetics were only a bottle of Dabao, “not a single eyebrow pencil or lipstick”. On the bedside were the “Basic Study Guide for Humanities and Social Sciences” and the “Complete English Grammar for Junior High School”. He picked up the book and dropped out a folded up final exam notice with Kan Xiaofang’s name on it, January 9, 16:30 pm, Introduction to Modern Teacher Science, open book.
Marriage
In the words of her sister Kan Ying, Kan Xiaofang graduated from college at the age of 25, and was already an older youth in her hometown. But for her, falling in love and getting married did not seem to be the first priority in life. She was engaged in lock sales in Guangzhou, and later went to Hangzhou to do e-commerce, and had the idea of opening her own store. As for finding a significant other, her best friend Meizi said Kan Xiaofang hopes to meet someone she truly likes, and does not intend to find a random person to marry before the age of 30, and has no romantic experience. The company’s main goal is to provide the best possible service to its customers. “
The pressure of family and society made Kan Xiaofang give in to the ideal lover who came before her at the age of 30. Family, village people and door-to-door marriage proposal of Yu Mou uncle are reminding her that she is not young, need to get married and have children as soon as possible, otherwise there is the possibility of becoming an advanced maternal age.
Less than two months later, in March 2014, Kan Xiaofang and Yu Mou, three years older than herself, got married in a flash and lived in her mother-in-law’s house after the wedding. Kan Ying remembers that her sister neither said she liked Yu Mou, nor denied this person, but only obeyed the family arrangements. The family felt that the man looked honest.
What Kan wanted was an equal marriage, and she wanted to be respected like a real person. But she did not get that respect. Kan Ying sent me a copy of a statement Kan Xiaofang submitted to the court last July, in which she wrote that Yu was unwilling to “lift a finger” to boil hot water for her during her pregnancy. In December 2017, she forwarded an article titled “If men learn how to “sit on the moon”, 99% of fathers will be more likely to be willing to take care of their children. “, 99% of fathers will not divorce “, the article attempts to scientifically explain the phenomenon of postpartum depression, and calls on men to share childcare responsibilities with their wives and understand the emotions of new mothers.
Love has become a luxury. It is the heartlessness that makes it so painful to hit people when they will hit them, specifically in the vital areas,” she wrote. “The violence began in 2016, the family remembers that she suddenly came home with two children on her back, the mother found her with cuts on the corners of her mouth and bruises on her hands, and after asking, Kan Xiaofang cried and told the fact that she had been domestically abused.
The story that followed is one that people have probably seen countless times in the social news: the second brother, Kan Renping, called to confront Yu, who came to the house with his father to apologize and sincerely said he would never do it again. Kan Renping provided a record of a chat he had with his sister last year, and Kan Xiaofang recalled what happened after the “loud” apology: she received a phone call from Yu. She received a phone call from Yu, threatening to chop Kan Xiaofang to death with a knife if she was with him – his mother had to hire someone to cook because there were guests at home and no one was cooking.
Kan Xiaofang thought she could solve the problem of domestic violence. This is the character she has always been, independent and opinionated. Her solution was to move, and in 2017, they bought a new house of more than 120 square meters in Yangxin County. She thought that by starting over in a place far away from her in-laws, the quarrels with her husband might then decrease and life would become different. Kan Ying remembers that her sister took out about 70,000 to 80,000 in savings, and Yu contributed 10,000 to 20,000 and paid the mortgage of more than 2,000 a month.
Kan Xiaofang asked her second brother, who was engaged in renovation work, to help find workers, but in general, there is a separate fee for transporting the renovation materials to the house. In order to save money, she bought a flatbed cart and personally carried dozens of pounds of sand, cement and floor tiles from the vacant lot outside to the cart, pulling it a few dozen meters to the elevator entrance, transporting it to the 29th floor, and then turning a corner and pulling it home. Every time Kan Renping came, he always met his sister who was covered with dust. The neighbor who lives downstairs and Kan Xiaofang renovated at the same time, and they thus became friends. This neighbor remembers that he never saw Yu involved in the renovation.
The new home is bright and warm. in March 2017, Kan Xiaofang went on a trip to Sanjiao Mountain and begged for a family house sign, which said, “Good to replace the new home with the old nest, away from the dirt new home Xingjia Road. People and no trouble peace and blessings, luck turn body strong joy high. “She also sent a circle of friends for this purpose,” it seems to buy a house is really to buy the right, do not leave the old nest difficult to prosper home. “
But the fantasy was soon shattered, the husband’s violence continues, Kan Xiaofang had said in the statement, Yu Mou like to watch violent videos, “feel very addictive, very exciting. “Family members can often see the bruises on her body. In addition, Yu also refused to provide the necessary financial support for her. In the statement, Kan Xiaofang complained that her husband’s monthly salary of more than 10,000, in 2019, Kan Xiaofang worked at home while taking responsibility for childcare, Yu Mou only gave her a total of 6,000 yuan throughout the year, “think it seems to give more, but also want to ask back. “
After the children were a little older, she chose to go back to work to get financial resources for herself. She delivered in the county for a while. Plum had seen with her own eyes that Kan Xiaofang had installed a divider on the delivery tricycle, with the two children sitting in front and the delivery box behind, taking the children to the delivery. She also worked part-time at a training institution teaching elementary school language and bursting with enthusiasm. Plum remembers Kan Xiaofang taking out a “dense handwritten” lesson plan and asking her, who was an elementary school teacher, for advice. “She asked me how to teach here and how we usually teach. In fact, in Meizi’s school, multimedia teaching has long been promoted, no one has handwritten lesson plans. That part-time job made Kan Xiaofang realize that she liked teaching small children and that she might be able to become an elementary school teacher in the future.
At the beginning of 2020, when the new Huangshi Guan outbreak broke out, Kan Xiaofang’s neighborhood was cordoned off and she and Yu spent the entire day together in a closed environment, when the most serious domestic violence occurred – Kan Xiaofang had told her sister Kan Ying and several close friends several times afterwards – that she had been stripped naked by Yu. -She was stripped naked, punched in the head with her fists, and dragged by her hair against the wall. A neighbor downstairs said she heard the sounds of a fight and the cries of two children that day.
A few days later, the neighbor received a weibo message from Kan Xiaofang asking for help, which said that if she heard similar sounds again in the future, she would like to go upstairs to see what was going on. After being domestically abused, Kan Xiaofang felt dizzy. Mr. Li, who is in charge of guarding the district, still remembers that Kan Xiaofang offered to go to the hospital, and he asked the reason, and the other party whispered to him that she had been beaten by her husband and had a headache. That day, Kan Xiaofang bought some medicine and came back.
The next day, Kan Xiaofang asked to go out of the district again, saying that her head still hurt and she wanted to take a film, and Mr. Li let her go again. A few days later, when Mr. Li came to the house to take the residents’ temperatures, he scolded Yu for being angry about what happened to Kan Xiaofang. Mr. Li recalled, “He admitted domestic violence in front of me, and kept saying he was sorry, saying he would never again refrain from violence. “
Kan Xiaofang decided she wanted a divorce. She called Plum, who had been through a divorce, and asked for advice on divorce procedures. Plum remember that the good friend on the phone did not waste time on complaining, she sensibly asked Plum advice on what to do about divorce procedures, whether to hire a lawyer if the man does not agree, “her will is very strong, said the divorce must be divorced, in his place over maybe one day was beaten to death are possible. “
“Do not forgive him.”
Most of the people around her advised her to think again for the sake of the children, but for the sake of the children of what? No one can say, is it in order to grow up in an environment filled with violence? Last July 28, Yangxin County People’s Court hearing divorce case, Kan Xiaofang’s father did not choose to accompany, “my father said to go in and do not know whether to persuade her to leave or persuade her not to leave, listening to the heart is also uncomfortable, or respect her wishes “, Kan Ying said. Nothing new in court: a relative who accompanied the attendance recalled that Yu made more sincere apologies and promises, and even knelt down, handed over his salary card, and promised that if he was violent again, the house to pass to Kan Xiaofang.
Under the persuasion of relatives on both sides, Kan Xiaofang accepted the settlement. A few days later, Kan Xiaofang, Kan Ying and Yu went to the Justice Bureau to consult a notary, trying to put Yu’s promise of “transferring the property if he is violent again” on record. At the entrance of the Bureau of Justice, Yu suddenly started to grab the documents from Kan Xiaofang’s hand, and during their argument, Kan Ying remembered that Yu hit his sister’s stomach, head and hands with his hands and feet in broad daylight. After Kan Ying called the police, Yu left.
In the upstream news report, Yangxin County Court related sources Sheng indicated that not long after the end of the trial, the judge received a phone call from both sides to express their willingness to divorce, the court decided that, after dividing the property of the two, the divorce case again in court.
At the end of the plea submitted to the court, Kan Xiaofang wrote, “marriage is equal, not ‘cattle’ and human relations, this marriage For me, this marriage is equivalent to tying a rope to the nose of a cow, for someone to drive, and to endure the lash. “She once sent a message to a male relative and said that if the other person becomes a woman, she can experience the feeling of being persuaded not to divorce by people around her after being domestically abused by her husband,” I just sigh that in this life we are all in the wrong birth. “
In the phone, for the question of whether Yu had domestic violence Kan Xiaofang, Yu’s brother said with a very low volume “do not know. The company’s main business is to provide a wide range of products and services to the public. ” as a reply, and said, “anyway, he killed someone is wrong …… nothing to say already. “Five minutes later, he hung up the phone.
New Year’s Day back to Yangxin, Kan Xiaofang asked his sister to help pay attention to the local price of the right second-hand houses, if the divorce goes smoothly, she does not care how much property she can share, just want to take the children as soon as possible to find a place where they can settle. It’s okay if you don’t have enough money, she can borrow it and slowly make money back later. Life will always gradually get better, she firmly believes, she also told her sister, I do not want to get married later.
After Kan Xiaofang’s death, her family found the letter she had written on May 22 last year in the metal box containing her diploma. She left all her possessions to her mother and said she wanted to be buried at the top of Kanjiachong Reservoir, “the higher and deeper the better”. The bamboo forest was dense, quiet and not desolate, a place where she hoped to find peace after her death.
In the dormitory in Wuhan, Kan also found a letter written in a notebook. He tried to turn over every page of the notebook to find out if his sister had left any more words, but only found that several pages had been torn out of the middle of the notebook. He guessed that his sister would write a letter like this every time before she came home, and if she returned safely, she would throw the letter away.
On the phone, Kan Ying read out word for word the letter written on January 7 – Kan Xiaofang seemed to have fully foreseen her fate the next day: “This return home is unpredictable, if there is an eventuality, please family in the iron box Look for the suicide note. If you can be buried in the place you want to be buried, better, if not, please scatter my ashes on the Fu River, down by the water, is also a good choice, do not bury me in Shang Yu (Yu’s old home), I do not want to die without peace. No funeral, no need to look at the day, no need to look at the time, not to use a large casket, the urn is good. Also do not need the so-called sacrifice, only do not want to forgive the killer, do not forgive him! “
On January 9, in the examination room of Introduction to Modern Teacher Studies, no one answered the paper belonging to Kan Xiaofang.
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