Zhang Yingying's parents: It's been 7 years, and their daughter's remains have not been found, and they are still being hurt by online violence

streak

2024-06-26 19:56Life field creators

On June 9, 2017, 27-year-old Zhang Yingying, a graduate of Sun Yat-sen University and Peking University, went missing in the United States and spent less than two months at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

On June 30, police arrested Christensen, a physics student at the same university, and announced that he had kidnapped and killed Zhang Yingying. He was sentenced to life in prison without probation.

Zhang Yingying's remains have not been found.

▲Zhang Yingying's parents are at home in Nanping, Fujian

In June 2024, we traveled to Nanping, Fujian Province to visit Zhang Yingying's parents.

Their time seems to be stuck in 7 years ago, it is difficult to sleep, they can't put it down, they have nowhere to vent, and time has not healed them, but "it hurts more and more".

The couple kept their daughter's room and came here in the dead of night to weep and sit dry.

They are plagued by the disease, but the attitude towards treatment is not positive.

Since the incident, they have never received professional, sustained, and affordable psychological assistance.

▲Until now, Zhang Ronggao's search page is his daughter's news

In March, after Zhang Yingying's father retired, the family lost its financial resources.

They rely on live streaming to earn a meager income, but the emergence of online violence has forced them to face secondary harm.

Written by: Hong Bingchan

▲The handshake building is impermeable, and the sky above is cramped

Zhang Yingying's parents did not move out of their original home. This small building in Nanping, Fujian Province, was built by Zhang Ronggao's father, and several terraced houses were next to each other, and their family was squeezed in the middle. The airtight handshake building blocks the daylight, and the home is dark even at noon. It's the rainy season in northern Fujian, and the ground and walls are always covered with dense droplets.

In this house, time still seems to have stopped in June seven years ago. There is no difference between day and night, day after day. "Living like an alien person, it's unclear when to rest and when not to rest." Zhang Ronggao said. The couple spent their days at home, one leaning on the sofa in the living room on the first floor, and the other lying in the bedroom on the second floor. Sitting still, dealing with two mouthfuls of food, absentmindedly watching videos, and so on, passing the time, in Zhang Ronggao's words: "It's just to live with others." ”

▲Zhang Ronggao sat all day long

After their daughter disappeared, they completely lost their sleep. Lying in bed, my mind "can't help but think about things", finally a little sleepy, I sleep less than an hour and wake up, often only sleep for one or two hours a day. People sometimes fall asleep and forget reality for a while. Yet they have nowhere to run. Zhang Ronggao felt that the pain had not faded away with time at all, "It just got more and more painful." ”

Along with the smiles that are missing. Zhang Yingying's personality is like that of her mother, they are both lively and love to laugh. However, Zhang Ronggao couldn't remember his wife's smile for a long time, "as if he had never seen her smile again", and as for himself, "he could never really smile".

His wife, Ye Lifeng, thought about moving to the house several times, "Change the environment, rent a house from someone else in the village, and if you are unhappy, you will live alone, farm the land, and raise chickens." In order for Zhang Yingying to study, they paid a high loan fee to the school and moved from the village to the city. The house had long since collapsed, and the rammed earth walls, beams and tiles were shattered, and there was nowhere to return.

Zhang Ronggao has a lot of concerns. "No one but you came to my house and avoided us. When people are in trouble, it is difficult to move an inch. He didn't want to go back to a familiar village to rent a house, and he didn't know where to find empty houses and idle fields, so he didn't leave.

▲ Zhang Yingying's room, her guitar is still kept

Zhang Yingying's room is almost untouched, her smiling photos stand in the most conspicuous position, wiped spotlessly, and in the bookcase are "Traveling in the United States", "Traveling in France" and "Concise French Tutorial". In the corner at the other end, she quietly leaned on the guitar she had been carrying with her since Peking University, which was a memento of the couple's only daughter.

Zhang Ronggao put his daughter's clothes in the suitcase, put them on top of the cabinet, and then stuffed his clothes and bedding into his daughter's closet. He always came to his daughter's room to sleep. At two or three o'clock in the morning, I went to the terrace outside the door, smoked cigarette after cigarette, or wandered the road, went to the entrance of my daughter's middle school, followed the river, crossed the bridge, and rewalked the path my daughter had walked before her death.

He missed her all those nights when he couldn't sleep.

▲Zhang Ronggao went to the middle school where his daughter studied

Zhang Yingying's mother and I were chatting on the second floor, and she asked softly, "Can I hug you?" She repeated in her ear: "Where has my daughter gone?" I didn't do anything bad, why didn't my daughter do? ”

She wouldn't go out. June is the time for the high school entrance examination and the college entrance examination, and she is afraid that when she meets a female student wearing a school uniform on the road, she will remember how good her daughter is at reading and how well she can take the exam. She didn't dare to go to the neighbor's party, and the topic was always that she couldn't avoid whose daughter got married and gave birth, and she would run home sadly.

▲ Zhang Yingying's mother is always crying

She was also afraid of that kind of shadowy gaze. It's a community of acquaintances. We dragged the equipment box to our home to shoot, and bumped into the eyes of the looking faces at several street corners. There is almost no soundproofing between the handshake buildings. Whose family cooks, whose family quarrels, whose children come back, whether they ride a bicycle or drive, whether they are alone or with lovers, there are no secrets in the neighborhood.

Zhang Yingying used to live on the second floor, but because she was so noisy by the sound of mahjong downstairs that she couldn't study, she argued with her neighbors several times, and had no choice but to move to the attic. It's hot in the summer, cold in the winter, and rats line up to pass by the eaves at night. She sat in front of that small window, completely single-handedly, all the way from Sun Yat-sen University, to Peking University, and then to the United States.

Everyone knows that the Zhang family has a hard-working, talented, and promising daughter. Her sudden disappearance caused too much discussion. Until today, 7 years later, Ye Lifeng walked on the road, as if she could still hear the sound behind her, she couldn't tell whether the voice was out of concern or cold eyes, and she wasn't sure whether the voice existed.

She would run to the fourth floor and ask her daughter's picture, "Where the hell are you?" When you go out, you say to reassure me, where are you now, reassure me, I will never forget this sentence. ”

Twice I went to the United States and did not find my daughter. The murderer was sentenced to life in prison without probation, and Zhang Yingying's parents did not receive his apology and remorse, and they "could not accept it for the rest of their lives". Not long after the accident, they listened to the advice of others and deleted the video and pictures of their daughter from their mobile phones, thinking that they could "get out quickly", but now they regret it.

There is no funeral, but there is no sacrifice day, no tombstones, no ceremony. Anger, longing, regret, there is no specific direction and outlet, they can't vent, they can't let go, so every moment of their lives is soaked in mourning, crying with the walls and floor.

▲Zhang Ronggao broadcast live on Douyin

In March this year, Zhang Ronggao retired at the age of 60. He used to drive in the power plant and also worked as a janitor, with a monthly salary of more than 2,000 yuan. At that time, he transferred from the rural household registration to the town, and the unit paid the minimum amount of social security, and after retirement, he still had three years to pay it all, so he had no pension and medical insurance. Ye Lifeng never went to school, was illiterate, and never went to class.

Although the trial of Zhang Yingying's case has long been settled, "the Internet said how much money was lost, but there was not a dime in compensation." Zhang Ronggao said.

After retirement, the couple completely lost their source of income. In fact, since his daughter's accident, the United States has been gone for half a year, and when he comes back, he has dealt with various things, and Zhang Ronggao's work has been intermittent. Over the years, a reporter has come to visit, knowing that they are more difficult, and proposed to start a live broadcast. On the one hand, there is a little income, and on the other hand, there is a channel to communicate and chat with netizens to relieve the mood. But the reporter reminded them that there are bad voices on the Internet, and if they can bear it within half a month, they will continue to broadcast it, and if they can't bear it, they must not broadcast it again.

▲ The couple cleaned up their home

At the beginning of last year, Zhang Ronggao and his wife started live broadcast on Douyin. They spent 1,200 yuan to rent a live broadcast place for two months, and later changed to broadcast at home, with a whiteboard full of prompts written in front of them. He stumbled to learn the words in the live broadcast room: "Babies", "Click on the little yellow car", "Thank you for the gift of so-and-so". He sells affordable daily necessities, vegetables and fruits, lemons for 9 pieces, dishcloths, and paper towels. As long as her body allows, Ye Lifeng will sit quietly behind her husband.

Even if they were mentally prepared, they were still stabbed by bad reviews. Bad comments said that they "eat human blood steamed buns", "suck their daughter's blood", "go dancing when their daughter is gone", "auntie is lazy, playing with mobile phones, yawning".

Now, there are generally fifty or sixty people in the live broadcast room, most of them are caring netizens, and there are two or three "black fans", and they will even go to the backstage to report Zhang Ronggao's live broadcast room. He didn't know how to operate to block him, so he had to shout to the other party: "If you don't want to go with me, you can come to me directly." He was glad that his wife was illiterate and could not read the insults scrolling on the public screen.

"There are no people to look at, there are so many people who hurt, and we are very helpless, if we have a little income, we will not do this thing." When he couldn't help crying, he turned off the live broadcast room, "I don't want everyone to know." ”

Jiang Ge's mother once came to Nanping to meet Zhang Ronggao and his wife, and in the face of bad comments such as "eating her daughter's blood steamed buns", she used legal channels to fight back against online violence, and used the income from bringing goods to maintain the cost of rights protection. She encouraged them to live broadcast and support themselves, "If crying can bring the child back to cry, we will do nothing but sit at home and cry." Netizens commented that only Jiang Ge's mother's persuasion is useful. In the eyes of Zhang Yingying's mother, who is also a mother who has lost her daughter, she can recognize the pain and deep vulnerability of Jiang Ge's mother.

Zhang Ronggao often worries about money and blames himself for money. After Zhang Yingying went to the United States, he wanted to earn more, so he went to run a long-distance truck. On June 9, 2017, as soon as he arrived in Ningbo, he received a call from his daughter's boyfriend, Hou Xiaolin, telling him that Yingying was missing. He immediately rushed back to Nanping and sent his household registration book and identity information to the police to verify his identity.

At that time, UIUC students searched for Yingying for several days, wondering why her parents did not show up, and only communicated through Hou Xiaolin in the middle. What they didn't know was that Zhang Yingying's parents did not have passports, could not speak English, and had never been abroad, so in order to find their daughter as soon as possible, they worked hard to find the Beijing office, and finally got a visa to the United States a few days later.

It was Zhang Ronggao's first time in the United States, and it was difficult for him to find a strategy to deal with such a complex situation from his past experience. People of all identities poured into his world, police officers, FBIs, teachers, classmates, volunteers, lawyers, journalists, psychics, ...... Speaking something he didn't understand, but he read a similar look on their faces, "It doesn't feel like it's going to be good." ”

The school arranged accommodation until two months later when they were "kicked out", and he met the principal once and "didn't know what he was talking about". The F.B.I. didn't tell the family much about the early stages of the investigation, and he was frustrated to think that no one was catching the killer. Later, the F.B.I. and his family updated their progress once a week, and he learned that Christensen was not far behind him when he participated in the march and concert to find Yingying on June 29. It was also at that scene that Christensen's lover wore a listening device that recorded his confession of guilt.

The second trip to the United States was in 2019. Zhang Ronggao went with Ye Lifeng and his son Zhang Xinyang. They were told to stay calm and that exaggeration could easily lead to repatriation. Christensen's lawyer negotiated with Zhang's family, "He said that if I promised him not to be sentenced to death, he would tell us where my daughter was." Zhang Ronggao disagreed.

"Do you think the law can be like this? Is it possible to negotiate the conditions that people have to pay for sin? ”

In the depths, Zhang Ronggao has never been able to let go of a knot. At that time, a Canadian school gave Zhang Yingying an offer, but the scholarship could not cover all the expenses, and she still needed to pay 80,000 yuan. Zhang Yingying considered her family's difficulties and gave up this opportunity, and later went to the United States through the quota of the Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, with a subsidy of about $1,700 per month. Less than two months later, she got into the Saturn car, and she didn't have time to get the subsidy. "I have a lot of responsibility because I don't want her to go to [another school] without making any money."

It was not until the end of the trial that the murderer's lawyer informed Zhang Yingying of her location. After the incident, garbage from Christensen's apartment was transported to a transfer station. The garbage masher compacts the garbage repeatedly until it takes up very little space, and then landfills it in a private landfill. According to 2019 reports, over the course of two years, the remains may have been covered with at least 9 meters of rubbish, the size of half a football field.

At that time, the prosecutor agreed to look for Zhang Yingying, but the search in the landfill plant required a large amount of money to solve the problem of surrounding pollution and convince the owner of the landfill. Because there was no money, the search was stopped.

The live broadcast is not only to solve the problem of food and clothing, they want to save money to go to the United States to find their daughter, he knows that "it is very slim to go, I just want to see my daughter again, I can't help it, I just want to go there to accompany her more." ”

Zhang Ronggao was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes a few years ago. After a few questions, he finally pulled out a plastic bag containing his medicine. There is a medicine that has been taken a long time ago, but it has not been dispensed. I asked him if he could tell which meals to eat before and which to eat after, "I don't know, I just eat when I think of it." ”

Ye Lifeng has obvious menopausal symptoms. Hot flashes, night sweats, tiredness for no apparent reason, I quietly asked her about these physical conditions, and she said that no one cared about her before. She often feels dizzy, coughing is not always good, because of lack of nutrition, she feels that her bones are losing, and her joints are dull when she walks.

A counselor once came and told them to "let go", how could they possibly let go, and they died without a problem. Since then, they have never received consistent, reliable and affordable psychological assistance.

Zhang Ronggao often mentioned that "life is better than death" and "it is better to go and ask for food". He wanted to forget the first half of his life by going into self-imposed exile, leaving the house and begging for food on the street in a place where no one knew him. But when he thinks of his wife and son, he has concerns, "I can't let them go." "What's more, can complete self-abandonment stop him from suffering? He was silent, he didn't know.

After his daughter left, he pieced together the parts she had not told her parents from the words she had left behind and the accounts of friends and classmates.

His evaluation of his daughter is well-behaved and sensible, and in Zhang Yingying's diary, he learned that the motto she believes in is "stay hungry, stay foolish". The classmates at the institute took him to the place where Yingying worked, and he learned that his daughter was carrying 20 or 30 pounds of equipment in the field, "which is harder than farming." ”

Earlier, Zhang Ronggao was driving in other places and often did not return home for several months. His daughter rarely told him about her studies, and he rarely asked about it. At one parent-teacher meeting, other parents asked the principal if it was because there was no English environment at home that their children could not learn English well. The principal said that why Zhang Yingying took the first place in the exam every time, and he knew the details of his daughter's reading. After the college entrance examination, the neighbor told him that Yingying was on TV, and he learned that the local TV station reported that she was particularly good in a certain subject, but he couldn't remember which subject.

Yingying came back from the Chinese New Year holiday before, and Ye Lifeng said to her daughter: "You want to sleep with me at night." Yingying would joke with her: "I'll never sleep with you again." When she fell asleep, Yingying ran downstairs, "Secretly sleeping next to me." ”

Ye Lifeng always felt that Yingying would return to her in her dreams. "Once I fell asleep, thinking that my uncle came to sleep with me, I woke up in a dream, I thought it must be my daughter Yingying back, she slept silently next to me."

"I feel like my daughter is still in the world, you know?"

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Personal opinion, for reference only