She once radiated vitality, this 31-year-old mother. She climbed mountains and tried to teach herself to drive. She gave her children birthday cakes decorated with Disney characters and laughed as she dressed them in frivolous pink hats. She picked peaches, pumpkins and plums, and took selfies in the summer sun.
She had "special wishes" that she sometimes spoke to the night sky. She hoped for enough money to buy clothes to stay warm in the winter. She longed to see her dead grandmother once more and to feel the "cosiness of home".
Twenty-two days after her husband disappeared, she walked to a pond and took her own life, as well as those of her son and daughter.
As her story spread across social media and state news outlets, she became a symbol of the struggles in rural China, of those left behind in the country's great economic boom.
They called her the Orphan Girl, for the endless tragedies that befell her family. But she was Dai Guihua, named for the yellow-orange flowers that bring sweetness to the autumn air.
I. The orphan girl
The town of Langtang sits in the mountains of southern China, a lonesome stretch of majestic land where few outsiders stop.
There is not much to see, unless you count the Old Street, a block of dilapidated homes and stores that recall a once-booming trading post; the ceramics factories that blanket the town in a layer of brittle white dust; and the chickens, ducks, cows, goats and pigs that farmers parade down streets as if showing off vintage Lamborghinis.
By official decree, Langtang is a contented place, a town of 82,000 spread across 24 villages in Hunan province where extreme poverty has been eliminated, crime is under control and schools are prospering.
Propaganda videos describe Langtang as a "sacred land" in the midst of rebirth, heeding the "exuberant horn" of modern times. China's leader, Xi Jinping, smiles and applauds on posters nailed to battered doors, celebrating the arrival of the "Chinese dream" of wealth and prosperity.
But the people of Langtang experience a different reality. Incomes, while rising, remain stubbornly low, around US$1500 (NZ$2061) a year in the surrounding villages of Xinhua County, compared with the national average of US$2500 in rural areas.
Work is often gruelling: cement mixing, trash collecting, ferrochrome smelting. Hospitals are ill-equipped to handle serious diseases. The roads, uneven and unlit, give rise to grisly accidents.
In the absence of karaoke clubs, movie theatres, high-speed trains and other niceties of modern life, Langtang's residents channel their energies elsewhere. They gamble, playing raucous games of poker by moonlight. They drink, downing bottles of sorghum liquor and discounted cases of beer. And they gossip.
In the autumn of 2018, the name of the Orphan Girl spread through the streets of Langtang, passing in the scratchy whispers of village elders, the hushed chatter of corn farmers and the occult musings of fortune tellers.
Her mother died when she was nearly 5, ravaged by the grief, her relatives recounted, of losing a son after village officials forced her to have an abortion under China's strict family planning policies.
Dai's father died several years after, they said, uttering his final words after drinking nearly 2 gallons of liquor in the span of three days.
At 16, she moved to the manufacturing centres of southern China and found work punching holes in circuit boards for about US$100 a month. She showed kindness to strangers, giving money to beggars, even when her friends tried to dissuade her.
She was cautious about love, her former co-workers said, never allowing boys to hold her hand at skating rinks, like the other girls did.
When Dai was 26, a pair of matchmakers introduced her to He Zhi, a 29-year-old fish breeder with dark suits and stylish glasses. Dai had already met more than 90 men, at the urging of friends and relatives. But she liked his sweet words and his promise that he was a virgin.
The matchmakers, women in their 70s with discerning eyes, said they were destined for each other. Dai, who rarely wore makeup and dresses, had good intentions, they said. He was handsome, tall and came from a decent family.
"They had the serendipity to be together," said Dai Guanhua, one of the matchmakers.
Together, they seemed to achieve the hallmarks of the Chinese dream. They bought a maroon car that made their friends jealous. They moved into a spacious apartment and raised a son and daughter, Xixi and Xinxin. They went on family trips, visiting idyllic lakes and monuments of Mao, posting enviable photos on WeChat, a social media app.
But their relationship deteriorated amid quarrels over money and family. They divorced and remarried. They got into fights, their neighbours said, beating each other down staircases and leaving trails of torn hair.
Then their daughter, almost 2 years old, got sick, coming down with seizures so violent that she lost consciousness and her lips turned purple, according to their social media posts. The local clinics turned her away, forcing the family to drive more than 130 miles to the nearest children's hospital. They took out dozens of short-term loans and credit cards to cover medical costs and other expenses, according to public records; they racked up more than US$15,000 in debt.
"I hate you, God," Dai Guihua wrote on WeChat. "You have such a cruel heart. Do you really want me to lose her? You took away my parents and my brother when I was young. Wasn't that enough?"
He Zhi came up with a scheme to save the family from financial ruin, according to interviews with friends and relatives of the couple, residents of Langtang and a review of Chinese legal records and news reports.
He would fake his death and start a new life, allowing Dai to file an insurance claim of more than US$150,000. But he did not tell his wife about his plan.
One day after 1am, He drove a rented Kia SUV to a neighbouring town and parked it on the edge of a cliff that overlooked a vast teal river. He put the gear in drive, the authorities said, and watched the car fall over the edge.
Dai searched for her husband for days. She cried at home, her neighbours said, as friends and relatives blamed her for his disappearance.
On a frigid day a few weeks later, Dai walked with her children down a village road, carrying her marriage certificate, a bag of medicine for her daughter, and 10 credit cards. She headed toward the pond.
II. The video star
It might have been Shan Jian's love of superheroes — Batman, Superman and the Flash — whose catchphrases he could recite by memory. It might have been the murder of his father by village thugs when he was 13. It might have been the fact that strangers expected a man whose name meant "sword" to be daring and heroic.
Whatever the reason, Shan, 31, had devoted himself from a young age to battling injustice and moral decay in far-flung corners of rural Xinhua County, using the internet as his megaphone.
He saw the inequities in the deaths of Dai and her children, opining about the tragedy on his social media platform. He criticised her actions, but he was also moved by her story of suffering.
"Women should live like human beings, without restraints," he said in a commentary. "Bravely challenge tradition. Dismiss authority. Live your own life."
Shan, a host and performer for Xinhua Focus, a social media channel, roamed darkened streets and sunlit fields in search of scandal. Armed with a video camera and a pack of King of Cotton Roses cigarettes, he recorded comedic clips about bumbling officials and rapacious millionaires. He produced commentaries decrying violence against sanitation workers and calling out "phony" people buying cars they could not afford.
Shan, who went by the nickname Wine Cup and ran a bar on the side, dreamed of a day when his videos might attract a larger audience. He found his viral moment when a man with a nervous voice called, asking for a favour.
His name was He Zhi, the man explained, and his wife and children had just drowned in a pond after a plot to fake his death went awry. He told Shan that he worried about public backlash and wanted a video made of him apologising by the pond in Langtang.
Shan was initially wary of He Zhi, believing he represented a generation of rural residents who went to extreme lengths to escape the shame of poverty.
At his bar, where he hosted Michael Jackson impersonation shows and Jägermeister drinking contests, he had met young workers who had gambled their savings away in pursuit of fake Louis Vuitton bags and other indulgences. Others took out "guillotine" loans with interest rates as high as 35 per cent to pay for clothes, cars and homes.
"We have a problem: caring too much about face," Shan said. "Too many people pretend to be someone they are not and go farther and farther down a path of fantasy."
Shan agreed to meet He by the pond. When he arrived, He Zhi, wearing a navy checkered suit and tinted glasses, fell to his knees and cried.
"I really didn't expect my wife to be so foolish," he said, while Shan interviewed him. "How could she be so impulsive?"
Shan posted his video that evening, calling He's actions "hopelessly stupid".
"What's left are three ice-cold bodies and a suicide note," he said.
As Shan finished his report, images of Dai and her children flashed across the screen. Shan displayed a quote from the note she posted on WeChat: "I hope in this society everyone can have more forgiveness and less blame. More kindness and less evil."
III. The healer
Liu Tehua grew up steeped in the teachings of Buddhism and Taoism, listening to his father's stories of uncommon feats and mystical worlds. He learned to chant, to sing and to blow sacred horns. As a priest, he went door to door with his bag of holy tools and yellowed texts, sacrificing chickens to dispel evil energy and saying prayers for sick children.
On an October day, a school principal came to Liu with an unusual problem: ghosts were haunting a pond where a mother and her two children had just died. Residents claimed they were having visions of the dead in their sleep and could hear them lurking. Nobody dared go outside.
The pond was a source of supernatural wonder in Langtang. It was there, residents said, that a tornado had once appeared from nowhere and crushed a home and its lone resident. It was at the pond, they said, that a sheet of metal had flown through the air one night and killed an elderly woman. And it was the pond, they said, where others had gone to end their lives.
Liu, who is in his early 70s, was skeptical of ghost sightings. He knew the young mother and her children had already been laid to rest by monks chanting sutras in the rain. But he was not going to turn down an opportunity to charge up to US$50.
He also understood that religion could bring stability and vitality to communities with few resources. He wanted to keep tradition alive, to help families cope with the struggles of everyday life.
It was especially important in the countryside, where people had long stopped looking to government or business for reassurance. Officials in Langtang spoke of sin and evil in a strictly political context, like in surveys asking residents to report mafia-like behaviour and threats to the government.
Liu remembered the terror of the Mao era in the 1960s, when his father stashed away precious books while the authorities smashed Buddhas and burned ancient texts. He recalled the 16 years that followed, when his family did not speak of religion.
Langtang was now a more spiritual place, with Buddhists, Taoists and fortunetellers. Religious tokens hung from the necks of factory workers. Many people lived by the lunar calendar, consulting its teachings before choosing when to marry, move or plant crops. When people came down with strange illnesses or farmers needed help controlling unexplained fires, they turned to priests like Liu for help.
Liu worried the people of Langtang saw religion as a tool for personal gain. "Some young people only want to gamble and to win money," Liu said. "But the Buddha does not bless gambling."
Before dawn, Liu walked up the wooden stairs of his home to a shimmering aluminum box, where he kept his father's books. He took out a copy of a mantra meant for healing.
Dressed in a black robe, he walked to the pond. He burned fake money as a sacrifice, unfurled three portraits of the Buddha and threw apples into the water, as offerings for the dead.
Liu, standing with the school principal and other residents, addressed the spirits directly, telling them to "go far away". He never mentioned Dai Guihua or her children by name.
IV. The teacher
Chen Lamei was the indestructible schoolteacher who "always stood upright as the pine trees, calm as the water", state media declared. Cancer and comas had not stopped her. Poverty and isolation were no match.
But Chen, 51, a history teacher at Suxi Lake Middle School in Langtang, did not consider herself a hero. In her view, she was an educator from the mountains dealing with an epidemic of lonely schoolchildren. She closely followed the story of Dai and her children, national news in her own hometown. She saw Dai in her own students.
Dai was the girl haunted by the trauma of her mother's death, as childhood friends recalled, dropping out of school at age 13 to work 12-hour shifts at a ceramics factory.
She was the teenage worker who learned to navigate the world without parents, they said, bringing sour beans and steamed rice for lunch at the factory and teaching herself to ride a bike.
She was the assembly line worker who became distant and depressed, telling co-workers her childhood had been pitiful.
"She suffered too many setbacks," Chen said.
During those cold autumn days, as the streets of Langtang buzzed with talk of Dai, Chen was shaken. She knew the lasting impact of neglect, the way it made children go silent.
Langtang's families were disintegrating. Parents were going to big cities for work, leaving their children behind in the uncertain care of grandparents or distant relatives. Some never returned after divorcing and starting new families.
Chen wanted Langtang to avoid another tragedy like Dai's. Her students dreamed of becoming bosses and soldiers — anything to avoid working at a factory. But they were skipping class and wandering the streets. Some went to work in the fields rather than go to school, passing the days digging for sweet potatoes.
Chen set out to count the orphan children in her class. She visited students' homes to plead with grandparents to take better care of them. She called parents and tried to persuade them to return.
"The best present you can give them is to come back and keep them company," she told them.
More and more, she was a parent to her students, cooking pancakes and inviting them to her home. The propaganda outlets called her "Mother Chen" and "the candle that glows in the mountains".
Chen waited for the school system to change, for her efforts with families to bear fruit, for reality to live up to the propaganda.
But autumn after autumn, when school gates opened and the national anthem played, she said her classroom filled anew with lonely children.
V. The farmer
At the end of a road with no name, in a house with cracked walls and a single dangling light bulb, Lu Ying, 58, led a modest but largely content life.
She worked in the fields from dawn until dusk, when her husband, a cigarette behind his ear, sighed and said it was time to go home. She hung posters of celestial mountains and prayed to the yellow dragon god for good fortune.
Then one day Lu got word that her golden child, He Zhi, the youngest of three sons, was in trouble. The police had arrested him shortly after his videotaped apology by the pond. Now he was Prisoner No. 721 at the Xinhua County Detention Center.
She did not comprehend why officials had barred the family from visiting He or writing him letters. She was angry at her son for his actions, but did not understand why officials were accusing him of property destruction after the family paid about US$9000 to cover the damage to the car.
She wondered if the authorities would be more lenient if she had the wealth and connections to sway local officials, who often faced pressure to deliver convictions.
"We don't have any ability to change the situation," she said.
He was the quiet and industrious son who excelled at hobbies traditionally reserved for women, like sewing and stitching. She displayed his embroidery of a Buddhist goddess in her home next to a portrait of Mao.
"He didn't gamble, didn't smoke, didn't drink, didn't visit prostitutes," she said. "My son was good in every way."
Lu endured a series of grim moments.
The day the family, using bamboo sticks and fishing hooks, recovered the bodies of Dai and the children from the pond. The brawl that erupted at the funeral, as relatives of He and Dai fought over whether to bury the children with their mother and who would pay for the coffins. The solemn ceremony in Lu's backyard as the coffins descended into the He family grave.
On a rainy March morning, five months after He's arrest, Lu put on emerald shoes, tied her hair in a neat ponytail and took a car to Xinhua County People's Court for her son's hearing.
Inside the courtroom, He's hair seemed greyer. As he acknowledged his guilt and described the financial pressures he had faced, Lu looked to the floor and sobbed. She listened as a prosecutor told He that he should "become an upright person".
"Your family is already gone," the prosecutor said. "You should move on."
Throughout the 90-minute hearing, He did not turn around. Lu never saw his face.
Lu left the courthouse in tears, passing propaganda signs promoting President Xi's promise to "sweep away evil" across China, and got a ride home.
Months passed without any news about her son. Sometimes, Lu and her husband went through a bag of Dai's belongings that the police had recovered from the pond. There was a mahogany comb, prescriptions for her granddaughter's medicine and a tattered American dollar. They held on to a grey scarf that Dai used to tie herself to her children on the day they drowned.
In May of last year, as Langtang was coming out of coronavirus lockdown, the Chinese news media reported a verdict in He's case. Citing evidence of insurance fraud and destruction of property, the court sentenced him to six years in prison. The court said in its ruling that it had rejected an appeal by He, who argued the punishment was "too heavy".
Langtang tried to move on. A guard rail went up along the road where Dai had jumped. The village matchmakers, who faced persistent questions about the wisdom of their most famous pairing, stopped speaking about Dai and He.
"Is there any fault in this?" said Ma Jiefang, one of the matchmakers.
People from across China continue to remember Dai and her children, offering virtual sacrifices — roses, fried chicken, cherries — at an online memorial.
On important holidays, Lu and her family walk to the graves, which stand tall under plastic sheets of synthetic flowers.
Many days, Lu sorts through piles of radishes and soybeans in her driveway, hoping for the return of her son, now 36.
Sometimes she sees him in her dreams. She imagines him coming home for National Day or the Dragon Boat Festival. She remembers making elaborate holiday feasts, surrounded by her grandchildren, her son and Dai.
Written by: Javier C. Hernández
Illustrations by: Jun Cen
© 2021 THE NEW YORK TIMES
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