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Cousin has been bound by family ties

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Shi Jiangtao

Deng Xianyan only met his cousin Deng Xiaoping once, but the family connection has weighed on his shoulders his entire life.

'When Xiaoping was overthrown [in Beijing], we became targets of a purge against capitalists,' said Mr Deng, 52, president of a Guangan liquor company.

During the Cultural Revolution, when Deng was removed from power and sent to work in a tractor factory in Jiangxi province , Deng Xianyan was detained after he tried to make money by selling rice on the local market.

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Mr Deng is Deng Xiaoping's youngest cousin. Their grandfathers were brothers.

Most of Deng's family left Guangan, but Mr Deng remained there for most of his life - mostly in Paifang village.

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Deng left Guangan in 1919 when he was 15. He went to study in Paris and did not return to his village before his death from Parkinson's disease in 1997 at age 92.

'I met Xiaoping only once. It was in the mid-1980s when he visited Chengdu . I went to see him along with several other local relatives,' Mr Deng said.

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