Woman shows up at Chinese hospital claiming she was abducted from Southeast Asia more than 10 years ago
Police in northeast China are looking into the identity of a woman who arrived at hospital claiming she was abducted from a Southeast Asian nation more than 10 years ago, local media reports.
The woman, who calls herself Lili, was left outside the emergency room of the First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University in Liaoning province on Thursday night by two other women, who left a note and disappeared, according to surveillance video.
The note said Lili had no friends or families in the area and suffered from lymphoma, according to the Dalian Evening News.
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Police were contacted and Lili relayed her story, speaking in a dialect of Henan province, which lies to the southwest of Liaoning. She said her father had been a soldier and died in a war. Her mother remarried and she and her three siblings moved in with the new family. But her mother often physically abused her so she fled.
She was abducted and sent to Yunnan province, in southwest China, where she worked as a nanny. Two months later, she was sold and sent to Xinyang in Henan, where she was sold again and married to a rural resident, although the union was never registered.
She learned to speak the local dialect and gave birth to two sons. But the man’s family kept strict watch over her and after many years, the surveillance became unbearable, so she escaped to Dalian with some friends.
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In the city, she met a man and they formed a relationship. She worked a variety of jobs to make ends meet, she said.
About two years ago, she had a fight with her boyfriend and grew so distraught she tried to commit suicide by leaping off a building. She survived the fall but broke both her arms and legs.
About a year later, she found she could no longer stand up. The boyfriend, who had to care for his mother, had no choice but to send Lili to hospital, she said.
After so many years in China, she could hardly remember her real name and had few memories of her hometown, but desperately missed her two sons. Her only hope was her boyfriend would come to see her.
Doctors said that her health was mostly fine but she needed someone to care for her. Police are investigating the case.
