In early January 2021, a verdict unveiled a rather horrific past. A man who died of a disease in Lufeng City, Shanwei, Guangdong, did not want to be cremated, and back in 2012, Shanwei City implemented a one-size-fits-all policy of cremation, requiring the city’s cremation rate to reach 100%. The family contributed 107,000 yuan to find a body that could take the place of cremation in order to keep his intact body for burial. A crippled man killed the foolish man he met by chance on the roadside for this purpose.
The Missing Fool
Everyone in the village knew that the silly son of the Lin family had disappeared. No one knew for two and a half years whether he was dead or alive. The Lin family reported this to the police, and the whole staff went out to look for months, without any results.
The day after the disappearance, the owner of the mini-mart at the entrance of the village made a special trip to ask the Lin brothers, “Where is the one in your family? “The silly son is mild-mannered, although his head is not smart, but he likes to get together with people. He often and the whole village and even the next village fools rely on the village entrance in front of the mini-mart, the most lively time, there can be three or four fools squatting in a row, eyes slanting glance, do not know what is thinking.
Lin family envisioned a variety of the worst results, “thought my second brother will not walk at night, accidentally fell into the pond. “The family’s youngest son, 28-year-old Lin Zailong said. There were rumors in the countryside that some elderly and homeless people who seemed to have no one to rely on would be taken away and sold for their organs. When Lin Zailong heard this, he was always worried that his silly second brother had also suffered such an unfortunate event.
The silly son of the Lin family was born in 1981 and was the second of six brothers in the family. Six months old, his mother Chen Xiangmei noticed that the child was a bit different, with a dull expression. When he was old enough to speak, he couldn’t say a word, and he didn’t understand the adults’ words. Chen Xiangmei had a general judgment in her heart that the child might be mentally deficient and stupid.
Chen Xiangmei thought, “If he’s stupid, he’s stupid, as long as he learns to say “eat” when he’s hungry. The son grew to 30 years old, a fleshy round face, small eyes, less than 1 meter 6, strong body, almost never sick. She taught him from a young age, and although he still “speaks vaguely” and is not well understood by outsiders, he can express simple daily needs such as eating, bathing and sleeping, and can He can take care of himself and remember his name and address. Chen Xiangmei is very satisfied.
Now she is 68 years old, and the whites of her eyes are cloudy, like a layer of fog. When she talks about her stupid son, who was raised with great difficulty, she can’t stop crying, “When I think of him, my heart is like being twisted by a knife. “
On the day of his disappearance, the silly son got up near noon, and after lunch said he would go out to collect plastic bottles in exchange for money to buy cigarettes and good food. He has lived all his life in the town of Lufeng City, Guangdong Province, Jinxiang, familiar with the roads of several villages in town, every day will go out and around, picking up scraps, watching theater, to return home on time at night, never had an accident.
The silly son put on a desert camouflage military cap and went out, first to his brother Lin Zailong’s house. That year, Lin Zailong had just gotten married and had a child. He likes the white and tender little nephew, from time to time go over to take a look, tease a puff spit little baby, followed by a happy laugh. After sitting for a while, he picked up a snakeskin woven bag and said he was going to pick up bottles. That was the last memory he left for his brother.
Six o’clock in the evening, Chen Xiangmei a little panic, silly son has not come home. Usually when the meal time comes, he usually arrives home early. She called out to her youngest son, Lin Zailong, “your brother has not returned from one o’clock out until now. Lin Zailong reassured her that he would be back later.
The mother always seems to be the first to detect some unsettling beginnings. That night, Chen Xiangmei could not sleep, lying in bed tossing and turning. Late at night, 12 o’clock, the door still did not come from the familiar, like a mouthful of sugar shouting mother’s sticky voice, Chen Xiangmei rose up to call the third son. The third son, who was working in Wukan, Guangdong, took the call and drove back to Lufeng overnight. At dawn, the family went out to look for people, and several villages in the town of Jinxiang were searched, but a living adult man was like a raindrop sinking into the sea, with no trace of him.
The Lin family’s foolish son disappeared in March 2017, and it wasn’t until two and a half years later, in November 2019, that the Lin family received a call from the town police station that they learned he had died on the day he disappeared. In early January this year, a criminal ruling was made public on the China Judicial Documents website, describing the whole process on the day of the incident –
After leaving Lin Zailong’s rented house, Lin’s silly son walked another two to three hundred meters and turned onto the main road in the village, which is a busy, constantly flowing village road with two public garbage bins on the side of the road, and Lin’s silly son was bending down to pull plastic bottles out of the garbage cans when a white van pulled up beside him, and a slightly fat middle-aged man got out of the van, talked to him for a few minutes, judged that he had obvious intellectual problems, and half pushed and half pulled him
Get in the car and drive away from the town of Golden Chamber.
On the way, the middle-aged man bought six bottles of 30-degree red rice wine, all filled to the silly son of the Lin family, and then put him into a coffin prepared in advance, sealed with nails and killed. The reason for the killing sounds a bit absurd: a local man in his 50s, who died of a disease, did not want to be cremated and asked to be buried. Someone pays, someone is willing to package to help him do everything.
The silly son of the Lin family became that substitute and was killed and sent to the crematorium of the funeral home as a stand-in.
Chen Fengbin, a middle-aged man driving a van, was disabled, as was the silly son of the Lin family.
Chen Fengbin nickname “full of stepping”, which is a Lufeng dialect, refers to a person idle, not doing his job. Chen Fengbin dropped out of school as a child, when he was a teenager, he used to hang around in the village, and social youths called brothers, brother-in-law said, he was willing to do most of the things that can make money.
Several neighbors think he is “very nice”, ” Usually quite polite, and the neighbors are very good relations. “Neighbors said he had never done anything out of the ordinary before.
After marriage, Chen Fengbin did settle down for a while, contracted more than ten acres of fields in the village, and his wife Huang Yinglian together to plant vegetables, soybeans, the harvest picked to the market hawking. Tending to the land all depends on the will of God, Lingnan wet, often a heavy rain down, no harvest. But Huang Yinglian said, at that time, she wanted to buy meat, or to buy household items for the family, she could directly take cash from the money of selling vegetables, which is also considered to be given by her husband’s family.
In 2013, just on the way to sell vegetables, Chen Fengbin had a car accident and his entire lower leg was run right over. He was in bed for more than a year, and after the splint was removed, his injured leg was left with permanent sequelae and he became a cripple. He could no longer do heavy work, and his fields were all retired. No one in the village could say what kind of work Chen Fengbin was doing after he stopped farming. But the situation did start to change after that.
Without the shackles of a fixed occupation, Chen Fengbin was increasingly absent from home, often coming home with a smell of alcohol every few days. At first, Huang Yinglian also called to ask where he was going, Chen Fengbin yelled at her, “I’m playing with women, how? “
In retrospect, Huang Yinglian felt a little embarrassed, barely hooked a little smile, spread his hands, “he said so, I can still go to control him? “Huang Yinglian also did not want him to come home, every time Chen Fengbin came home, the two would always argue over various family matters. Chen Fengbin would hit her, sometimes with a slap in the face, sometimes with a sudden kick.
Huang Yinglian said she didn’t know her husband, where he was, what he was doing, she didn’t know anything. The day the police came to the house, Chen Fengbin was rarely at home, riding his motorcycle to pick up his son who had just finished school. Several relatives, including Huang Yinglian, witnessed the police car drive through the alley, but everyone was silent. He became a presence the whole family was ashamed to mention.
From his arrest, sentencing to prison, Huang Yinglian never visited, “I did not have a good relationship with him. I never bothered to think about him or to care about him. “She felt that her husband did not come back, but the family was much easier. Her energy was all on working to earn money, and she found a job as a restaurant handyman, and with the help of relatives from time to time, she could barely afford to pay for her two children and her own living expenses. Her back is always slightly bowed, with a sense of fatigue, and a bit like bending over in resignation.
According to a criminal ruling released in early January 2021, Chen Fengbin’s work after the crash included carrying caskets for people. He met an older brother named Wen, who often helped the funeral home by driving bodies or delivering people to the funeral home. When he was too busy, Wen would let Chen Fengbin help, the cost of transporting a casket is 200 yuan.
The relationship is a little hitch. 2017 February, Lufeng Hudong town people old Huang to the lung cancer advanced, on his death bed, he expressed his last wish to his brother Huang Qingbai: do not want to be cremated. As early as 2012, Lufeng belongs to the city of Shanwei implementation of the city’s cremation “one size fits all”, banned burial, banned the sale of coffins. Huang Qingbai asked a friend of his own, there is no way to realize the last wish of his loved ones buried? The friend gave him the phone number of a funeral home staff.
Huang Qingbai contacted the funeral home staff Liang Chenglong, then 58 years old, was the former deputy director of the Hudong Township Party and Government Office and funeral registrar. In a later confession, Liang Chenglong claimed that the other party wanted the phone number of the funeral home driver, so he gave Huang Qingbai the contact information of Lao Wen, who did not know about the Huang family’s transfer of the body to avoid cremation. However, Lufeng City Public Security Bureau in the transfer of the review and prosecution determined that it is written: Liang Chenglong and Lao Wen agreed on the body transfer matters, and asked that after the completion of the matter it should share RMB 10,000 yuan.
Lao Wen took up the task and became a fixer in the chain. He and Huang Qingbai agreed on $107,000 to help Old Huang fulfill his last wish of being buried.
After the price was negotiated, Lao Wen found Chen Fengbin and told him that he needed a body that could be used as a substitute.
On March 1, 2017, Chen Fengbin drove his van, saw the silly son of the Lin family picking up scraps on the roadside, waved at him, then pushed him into the car and poured wine. Chen Fengbin later confessed in his statement, “He drank until he vomited, and I continued to give him a drink, he drank until he was unconscious. “Seemingly to embolden himself, he said, “I drank a glass myself. “
Silly son did not respond, Chen Fengbin think he has probably drank to death, with four nails sealed into a pre-prepared coffin, hidden near the home, and covered with some leaves to cover up.
He called Lao Wen and said that now there is a body.
March 3 was the day of Huang’s funeral. After arriving at the agreed location of the Huang family, a coffin bearer noticed that there was also a white beige van parked at the corner of the intersection, next to a brown coffin was also placed. After arriving at the agreed location of the Huang family, a coffin bearer noticed that there was also a white beige van parked at the corner of the intersection, next to a brown coffin was also placed.
When he left, he saw someone carrying the coffin on the original four-wheeled cart that pushed the old yellow coffin.
The two sides of the coffin will be switched here, the silly son of the Lin family was transported to the funeral home cremation, while the coffin of the old Huang was buried in a pre-selected grave, right next to the reservoir, the Huang family asked a provincial feng shui man to look at, sitting on the mountain and look at the water, the main rich, meaning “look at the wealth
“. Buyers in the street of the rich
Many houses in Lufeng villages and towns show traces of age and rust due to the sun and rain and lack of maintenance. But each village’s ancestral shrine and Pak Kung Temple (Land Temple) are the most brand new and luxurious, with not a trace of moss visible on the outer walls, incense burners full of incense and ashes almost overflowing, and incense cases wiped so that they can illuminate people’s shadows.
Lu Jin’s store is directly across the road, he is less than 30 years old, has been in the business for nearly a decade. The store specializes in red and white wedding supplies rental, large to red and white wedding banquet necessary tables, chairs, cups and plates, small to different sizes of mourning cloth worn by different relatives at funerals, can be prepared here one by one. The store door is facing the road, across the road is a huge reward notice, written a fugitive surnamed Chen involved in black, drug-related, reward amount of 100,000 yuan.
Lu Jin took over this business from his father when he was 19, and has handled more weddings and funerals than he can count. He has heard the last wishes of many elderly people at funerals, to “be buried in full”, they are convinced that cremation after death is a pulverized body, can not shelter future generations, can not Lu Jin took over this business from his father when he was 19, and has handled more weddings and funerals than he can count.
Guangdong Province in 1998 to promote urban and rural funeral reform, but Shanwei City has always been lax in implementation. Lu Jin took over that year, it is 2012, the national strict implementation of cremation. Shantou Municipal Party Committee and Municipal Government also issued a comprehensive implementation of funeral reform, which mentioned Shantou funeral target management assessment, from 2001 to 2010 for 10 consecutive years in the province’s bottom first. While other surrounding areas, including Chaozhou, Shantou and other cities, the cremation rate has basically reached 100%.
That summer, Shanwei City implemented a one-size-fits-all policy of cremation, requiring the city’s cremation rate to be increased to 100%, with monthly rankings of towns and fields to inform the cremation rate, and the results of the assessment linked to the promotion and selection of local officials.
Almost no one accepted this policy meekly. Many people choose to steal burial private burial. Many brothers in the family, people who are tough and can fight will simply ignore the cremation policy. There was a funeral brigade vice captain and team members, on the day of the funeral to block, not only beaten, but also imprisoned by the family, the public security authorities arrived, only to be rescued.
It is also not uncommon for bodies to be transferred to avoid cremation. At least four related cases have occurred in Lufeng on the China Judicial Documents website.
Some people have tried to substitute animal carcasses such as pigs and sheep, with the bodies of others, that is even more so.
In 2014 a resident of a village in Lufeng had reported in name that in order to fulfill his grandmother’s last wish to be buried, he approached the head of funeral reform in the town and asked if he could do everything according to the cremation ceremony like others, and then steal the remains of his loved ones on the way to the funeral home and send them back to be buried. The villagers said, “The town’s deceased family members are better off to operate in this way. “However, the funeral director asked for 60,000 yuan,” our family is too poor to get 60,000 yuan at once, had to go against the wishes of the elderly. “The villagers finally angrily questioned,” why rich and powerful people can pay to buy places for special burial? “
Many of Lu Jin’s peers have done the job of helping people find bodies to cremate instead. Their professions include red and white wedding supplies rental store owners, funeral band musicians, mages and so on. Their special status allows them to frequent funeral sites and know the death situation of each village well – no one can do this job better than them.
Suitable for the transfer of the body is not easy to find, in order to avoid being detected, some buyers will require two bodies of the same sex, the time of death can not be too far apart, so that even if the funeral staff investigation, it is easy to muddle through. A red and white wedding supplies store owner has helped buyers find a dead for a long time, completely white bones of the nameless body, funeral home staff to carry the coffin on the cremation table found that the weight is light, unlike the weight of a normal man died, let the family to confirm the information of the deceased. The family’s unusual evasive status made the staff suspicious, and eventually reported to the funeral inspection brigade.
Lu Jin has heard of a “powerful peer”, ” The company has been contracted to store unclaimed bodies in the local freezer. One order, the peer will be able to pull out a body to meet the requirements of the replacement package. These bodies are mostly vagrants, beggars, old people living alone, “generally can not find the family, was found no one to find you trouble. “
The vulnerable, poor people are a link in the chain at the mercy of others. More than one body hunter received the task, clearly looking for “five households” and The bodies of “poor families”. A five-insurance family had an 82-year-old man die, and they sold the body to the body hunter for 32,000 yuan. Another five-poor family asked for 80,000 yuan, but the body hunter thought it was too expensive and turned to another source, eventually buying a nameless female body for 50,000 yuan and then offering it to the buyer for 80,000 yuan.
Such a corpse-hunting route is relatively safe, caught will only be sentenced to theft, insulting the corpse, and the voluntary provision of the corpse by one party can also be the reason for a light sentence in court defense.
But Chen Fengbin is different from all these body hunters, he directly chose to kill a mentally disabled male he happened to meet. Two years later, police arrested him based on surveillance video clues along the road. in December 2020, the second trial of Chen Fengbin’s case began, and the court found that his actions constituted intentional homicide and sentenced him to death with a two-year stay of execution.
Some of the other people involved in the case, the middleman Lao Wen, died shortly after the incident due to a sudden illness. Another middleman, former funeral worker Liang Chenglong, was found ineligible for prosecution by the Lufeng City People’s Procuratorate in April 2020. The buyer, Huang Qingbai, the verdict similarly states, “has been non-prosecuted.”
In several judgments, the buyers were invisible presences, and no one was held accountable.
Huang Qingbai brothers’ ancestral house is located in the village of “rich people street”, surrounding neighbors said, the street used to live in the village of the rich people, although most of the rich people moved away, but people still habitually call this place. Although most of the rich people have moved away, but we still habitually call this street the street of the rich. Nowadays, there are not too many rich people on the street, the houses are mostly old and dilapidated small buildings, some residents have opened the first floor to do stores, selling local dried seafood and cheap small goods.
But this gray street, the Huang family’s house is to make people bright existence. The four-story building stands out in a crowd of low-rise homes, renovated just a few years ago, with immaculate tiles and railings on the outside. Neighbors are reluctant to talk much about the Huang family, they only say that they have been doing business in Shenzhen for years and do not live in the village.
The village entrance with a gold frame framed “fame list” still has traces of the Huang family brothers. The names on the list are all good people who donated money to the village to build roads and pavilions, with rows of names engraved in gold powder on black marble. Most people donated a couple of thousand, while the old Huang, who has died, donated 13,000 yuan to the village to build roads and accumulate merit.
Lin Shaoren who could not return
The Lin family spent most of the year looking for their stupid son. “Lufeng turned over, and found Shenzhen ah, Guangzhou. “The younger brother Lin Zailong said that at that time, several of their brothers stopped working and focused only on the one thing to find someone.
More than 60 years old father also followed around. Lin’s father’s body has long been a problem, before being examined for serious gallstones, after the disappearance of his son, Lin Zailong said his father’s disease more serious, “he has been pain has been tolerated, it is unbearable to eat a painkiller. Also do not go to the hospital for examination, a mind is to find the son. “
Lin Zailong remembered that at the end of June 2017, someone called to say that they had seen a mentally disabled man in Guangzhou, who looked very much like the son the family was looking for. The father bought a ticket to Guangzhou on the same day, the result was naturally disappointing. It was also on that occasion that my father could not stand the pain anymore and went to a hospital in Guangzhou for a checkup and was told that he had advanced gallbladder cancer. Depressed, he came back from Guangzhou, and after 10 days, his father passed away.
“Then there was really nothing I could do. “Lin Zailong’s voice lowered. Each brother had his own home, and after stopping work for a few months, life was becoming a problem. They borrowed some money from relatives, but it couldn’t last long. The brothers could only go back to work to earn money, and the search for people gradually stopped.
They had the psychological preparation that the second brother might not come back. When their father was cremated, they burned some of his belongings together and buried them with him. But Lin Zailong said, they thought the second brother was met with an accident, a slip, no one thought he would become a victim of intentional homicide.
They have not seen Chen Fengbin’s family since the beginning, nor have they seen the Huang family. On the day of the trial, Lin Zailong and two other brothers attended the trial and saw Chen Fengbin through the video – it was a very ordinary middle-aged man, square-faced, medium build. His tone was relaxed, Lin Zailong said, “I could not see a bit of guilt in his face. “Speaking of the day’s process, Chen Fengbin’s posture is also casual, “as if killing a fool is no problem, no one will care. “
This makes Lin Zailong feel unbearable. How can no one care? His second brother is not the verdict read on the Lin Mou, was born, his mother Chen Xiangmei named him “Shao Ren”, think pronounced smoothly, but also sound.
When I was young, my father gave out pocket money to several children, Lin Shaoren saw himself not, opened his mouth and called out to Dad, asking “why I do not have”. That year Lin Shaoren was 9 years old, the first time he called out to his father. Chen Xiangmei remembered that her husband was so happy that day that he bought back a big fish to add to the family meal.
They had wanted to find a wife for Lin Shaoren who could take care of him in the future, but there was no suitable candidate and they were worried that the gene of mental retardation would be passed on to the next generation, so they gave up. In 2015, several brothers and their father put together 200,000 yuan to build a spacious bungalow. Several brothers drew lots and agreed that whoever won the lottery, the house would be written in his name, and the main responsibility for supporting his parents and his own silly brothers would fall on whoever.
Lin Zailong said, Lin Shaoren is the most favored child in the family, “because he does not know what to do well, but parents love him more. “Several brothers influenced by their parents, there has been a tacit agreement,” if the parents are no longer, then we will then take care of him. “
In Chen Xiangmei’s view, Lin Shaoren and other children are no different. He often watched TV late into the night, she would scold him, “You still do not sleep, do not have to get up tomorrow to help me sweep the floor and wash dishes? “Lin Shaoren just muttered, I know, I know.
Because he often went out by himself, Chen Xiangmei said she didn’t know who he had learned to smoke with. But he knew to take cigarettes to others, to be handed over with two hands cupped. There are people who know to home guests, he will rush to make tea, the tea bowl up, respectfully shouted: “Aunt, come to drink tea. “
Lin Shaoren as a child often followed his brothers to the village near the scrap collection, the plastic bottles collected on the wall in front of the home, to subsidize the family, or for cigarettes. Once he had saved five or six bags of scrap, the results were all stolen. He cried very sadly, while crying, said, no more no more, no more cigarettes. No one told him what to do, but after that, Lin Shaoren picked up bottles again and came back, not put them in the doorway, will be neatly stacked in the attic.
“He’s very smart. ” Chen Xiangmei murmured and repeated. He would take pictures with his father’s old cell phone that he had outgrown, using it to photograph the flowers and grass along the roadside and the large expanse of fish pond. The village next door was showing an open-air movie, one of his favorite activities, and he took his phone with him, watching and taking pictures, and came back to show Chen Xiangmei a variety of photos that did not care about the angle of view. Chen Xiangmei praised him, you are great, I can not even use the phone. Whenever this, he will show a little proud expression, “you poor, I less Ren will. “
The owner of the small supermarket at the entrance of the village is his friend, not watching TV or open-air movies, he went out to turn around, pick up a few empty bottles, sitting on his butt in front of the small supermarket, dumbly watching others play cards, square dance. When someone comes to buy something, sometimes he can understand, he actively helps the supermarket owner to pass things, carry rice. The children in the village do not call him a fool are also his friends, scrap collection saved money, in addition to buying cigarettes and snacks, he will also buy Ultraman plastic toys, and wandering children play together. At mealtime, Lin Shaoren said goodbye to his boss on time, waving both hands and dragging his steps home slowly.
Except for that one day. A crippled man from the van, grabbed a snake skin bag he used to carry scrap, threw the car. Lin Shaoren tangoed over to get the scrap back and never made it home again.
His ashes were finally thrown by the crippled man into the shed at the entrance of the people’s cemetery, and buried with the other unclaimed bones.
In the years since Lin Shaoren’s death, Chen Xiangmei’s health has gotten worse and worse, she has had several surgeries and a long hideous scar on her abdomen. She began to forget some things and could not find her son’s photo, but thought it was good not to find it, “every time I saw his photo I would keep crying and suffering. “She would always think of the day her son disappeared and she turned on the light in the room upstairs, which she never did before, “I thought he was going to come back sooner or later. “She said, “when he comes back to see that light, it will not be very dark, not afraid. “
(In the article, except Lin Shaoren and Lin Zailong, the rest of the characters are pseudonyms)
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