Chinese girl, 12, reported as living on the street now locked up at home

A 12-year-old girl in southern China was locked up at home after a local broadcaster reported that she survived by collected rubbish and food scraps from the streets, news portal Ifeng.com reported.

“A girl spends all day picking up rubbish in a community in Kunshan,” Jiangsu Broadcasting Corporation reported on its official Weibo account on March 31. “She eats leftovers that she finds in rubbish bins and can only return home at night.”

The report continued: “The girl’s parents said she was mentally ill and could not attend school, but in fact, she is normal.”

Fu Ling, not her real name, lives in a suburb of the Kunshan Economic and Technological Development Zone in Jiangsu province.

“She starts picking up rubbish before dawn,” a community worker named Zhu said .

The girl came from Hubei province and lived with grandmother who died last year. She then came to Kunshan to live with her father and stepmother.