We apparently have closure in the disturbing case of the six-year-old boy who was blinded after a vicious attack in Linfen, Shanxi. By closure, we mean that police are going to stop investigating. But what actually happened on that fateful evening, when both of Guo Bin’s eyes were gouged out, remains very much unknown.

China Daily reports that police have identified the suspect as Zhang Huiyin, who happens to be Guo’s aunt, after the boy’s blood was found on her clothes.

Zhang committed suicide by jumping into a well on August 30, before police could question her. She was not declared a suspect until after her death; indeed, there was no reason to suspect her, since the victim had seen his attacker (her hair was dyed blond) and heard her speak (with an outsider’s accent).

No motive is known. That’s Beijing‘s Valentina Luo asks a lot of appropriate questions:

According to the AP, Wang denied reports of any dispute between the families and called them “just a lie.” Binbin’s father says he cannot believe that any domestic dispute could have triggered Binbin’s aunt to hurt him in such a horrible way. “Maybe she went nuts and flew out of control,” he suggested to Chengdu Business News, clearly at his wits’ end.

Aunt Zhang’s colleagues think she’s incapable of such a crime. “She’s decent person, hard working, never had a squabble with anyone,” one told Legal Evening. Colleagues added that Zhang has been “fragile” since being bitten by a snake and hated the sight of blood: even the scene of slaughtering a duck (a common-enough event in rural China) could make her faint, friends said.

Police had offered a 100,000 yuan reward for information leading to a suspect’s capture.

On a slightly better note, it appears Guo Bin will be fitted with a pair of artificial eyes, though he will be blind for the rest of his life. The family has also received approximately 800,000 yuan in donations since the attack made headlines last week, according to China Daily.

Want to see some animal cruelty? Of course you don’t, because you’re a sane, well-adjusted human being with a decent upbringing.

But goddamnit, here’s an old man beating a Tibetan mastiff to death in Tianjin, in plain sight, under blue skies — while someone fucking films. (Picture shows an old man about to hit a cowering dog with a stick, so we don’t recommend clicking through.)

Care for Chinese Animals has this report:

On 30^th Aug, an old man beat his own Tibetan mastiff to death in a street of Tianjin. People passing by trying to stop him but were unsuccessful. Tens of thousands of online and overseas media spread the news, causing public outcry against the man. We want the Tianjin Police to investigate the matter and make sure the murderer is punished, and we are strongly calling for the Tibetan Government to bring in laws that will prosecute people who abuse animals.

We’re not sure why he beat his dog to death, or why he chose to do it in public with the creature tied to a fence. But this dude — fuck him.

Here’s a video of it (and on Youku). An old man is clearly shown bludgeoning a dog to death, so we don’t recommend clicking through.

Incidentally, Tibetan mastiffs are an ancient and noble breed, sometimes passed off as lions, and one in particular — an 11-month-old pup named Hong Dong (“Big Splash”), who subsisted on beef, chicken, abalone, and sea cucumber — was sold for a record 10 million yuan ($1.5 million) in Qingdao in 2011.

Protest an old man beat his own Tibetan mastiff to death in a street of Tianjin (Care for Chinese Animals)

Oh God, people. On Monday evening in Linfen, Shanxi province, a six-year-old boy had both of his eyes gouged out after he was kidnapped outside his home. He was then left outside, bleeding and crying, where neighbors found him later that night.

According to the mother interviewed in this news report (note: video contains disturbing content), her son, Binbin, went outside sometime between 5 and 6 pm. An hour or two later, she called him inside — but he was nowhere to be found.

Around 11 pm, he was finally located. His face and body were covered in blood.

On the ride to the hospital, the boy managed to tell his father a bit of what happened. As the father tells the news crew, a man apparently snatched Binbin and tried to take his eyes. The kidnapper apparently told the boy, “Don’t cry. Don’t cry and I won’t gouge out your eyes.”

“No one understands why this happened,” says one of Binbin’s relatives, interviewed in the waiting room. “Look, who did we wrong? No one. Made enemies with anyone? Also no. We’re just a common family.”

“It’s too cruel,” others said.

UPDATE, 8/28, 11 am: It’s a female suspect, according to Global Times. Police have offered a 10,000 RMB reward for information leading to her capture. Also:

The boy was unconscious when he was found in a field not far from his home late on Saturday night. The police found his eyeballs at the scene, however, the corneas were gone.

UPDATE, 9/4: Police identify suspect as boy’s aunt, who then killed herself.

UPDATE, 11/25, 9:01 am: Guo Bin has prosthetic eyes.

Last month in Linzhou, Henan province, an off-duty police officer reportedly snatched a baby from the arms of a man, raised her above his head, and threw her to the ground — all because he had made a bet with his drunken friends that the child was a doll.

It was not a doll. She was Yueyue, who suffered three head fractures and will probably live with the effects of this assault for the rest of her life.

Horrifying as that sounds, try this: the officer, Guo Zengxi, around 50 years old, reportedly only got 15 days of detention before being released.

The incident happened near a karaoke parlor on the evening of July 20. The baby’s father, Li Qingfeng, said that about a hundred people surrounded Guo after he threw Yueyue to the ground. Li, who was with his wife, quickly rushed his daughter to the nearest hospital.

The incident was brought to light during an NPC meeting when Linzhou Standing Committee head Di Jianzhou called the incident, “Outrageous, outrageous.”

Police say they have surveillance footage of the incident, which “clearly” shows Guo slamming the toddler. They have also issued a statement that Guo will be punished accordingly, because first-degree assault on defenseless toddlers is some crazy goddamn shit.

Also last month, a two-year-old was killed in Beijing after a parking dispute when a man threw her to the curb.

UPDATE, 8/20, 1 pm: Guo has been detained, again, on Saturday “on suspicion of intentional injury,” according to Xinhua. Also, three officials were suspended for incompetence:

Three senior officials were suspended from their posts at Linzhou Public Security Bureau in central China’s Henan Province on Monday after a policeman allegedly attacked a baby girl after drinking alcohol.

The bureau chief, political commissar and deputy secretary of the bureau’s committee of Communist Party of China have been suspended, said an official with the Public Security Bureau of Anyang City, which governs Linzhou.

(H/T Torval Lokison) (Image via)

This is quite the tragic story. On August 9 at about 4 pm, a young man, reportedly 26, went to Kudi Pet Park in Beijing’s Chaoyang Park with his wife and two dogs. Only his wife would walk out alive.

“This used to be a dog amusement park, now it’s a park of horrors,” an eyewitness tells a Beijing TV reporter in the above video.

“The pet park is for dogs to go swimming,” another eyewitness says. “We all raise our dogs like they’re our children, and then this happens!”

What exactly happened?

Around 5 pm, the park had reportedly basically cleared out except for the man, his wife, and their dogs, who were swimming in the pool. All of a sudden, the dogs — a golden retriever and a poodle — went limp. As the man went in to pull them out, he also became lifeless. His wife reached to touch him, and she too passed out.

One eyewitness says she quickly realized that an electric current must have been flowing through the 30-square-meter pool.

While rescuers attempted to revive the man, the wife regained consciousness. The man was sent to a nearby hospital, where — with relatives outside loudly weeping — he was declared dead.

Beijing TV camped out at Kudi Pet Park’s front gate and intercepted two officials as they were leaving in a car. They got out but gave no comment for the camera. We’ll have to wait for more info.

Just two weeks ago, we saw a girl killed by an electric shock from a karaoke parlor’s defective microphone. Now this.

The following picture comes via Shanghai Daily:

We’ve heard of a mother biting off her son’s penis, but a monkey on a child? Shanghai Daily has this weird and startling tale of the menacing monkey:

A monkey bit off an eight-month-old boy’s right testicle in a zoo in Guizhou Province yesterday and doctors said the damage was beyond repair, Shenzhen TV reported today.

Oh God.

The boy’s family condemned the indifference of the zoo management after the mishap and demanded compensation.

Trivial. Tell us more about the simian’s teeth of abandon.

A park official told the family that injuries from mon[k]ey attacks “are too common and happen all the time.”

But monkeys are so friendly and entertaining.

The monkey that broke loose from the cage and was playing with visitors suddenly attacked the boy when the mother was changing his diaper.

“It happened within seconds,” said the mother, crying and kneeling in a hospital, begging doctors to save her son.

“Please save him. He is too young to suffer all this,” the woman screamed and nearly collapsed.

The zoo will pay 10,000 to cover the boy’s medical bills. The family, presumably, is asking for more money.

Monkey bites off baby’s testicles during diaper change (Shanghai Daily, h/t Alicia) (Image via)

According to users on Sina Weibo, a newborn was “baked” to death in what appears to be a horrific accident at Quanzhou Children’s Hospital in Quanzhou, Fujian province. The child was left overnight in an incubator or a heat pad that was much too hot, searing the meat off her back.

Relatives of the child say that hospital officials kept the newborn — only 12 days old — overnight because it had a cold. Nurses at the hospital have reportedly refused all interviews. Also disturbingly, surveillance footage from that night has apparently been deleted.

The uncensored pictures from the incident are absolutely terrifying, and we don’t at all recommend you search for them. (They’re here via Weibo, but again, we advise not clicking.)

More information as it becomes available.

UPDATE, 7/22, 12:15 pm: The hospital is claiming the baby died of a bacterial infection. Again, don’t click the above link for the photo, but if a bacteria did that, then the end of humanity has already arrived and we don’t even know it. 

Wall Street Journal has more info:

Hospital authorities and the baby girl’s family present differing accounts of her death. The hospital says the baby died of a bacterial infection. The family insists the baby was scorched to death in the incubator, citing burns on the infant’s back, buttocks and legs.

…The infant’s farther, Ye Yilong, told the state-run China News Service (in Chinese ) that his daughter bad been born with low levels of oxygen in her blood and was sent to the intensive care unit at Quanzhou Children’s Hospital in the city of Quanzhou, in Fujian province, immediately after she was born in July 6. On Tuesday afternoon, he said, he was told that “everything is normal and she can be discharged tomorrow.” But the next morning, the hospital told him his daughter had died.

(H/T Kevin McGeary)

On Tuesday, Tsinghua University law professor Yi Yanyou wrote on his Sina Weibo, “Raping a chaste woman is more harmful than raping a bar girl, a dancing girl, a sanpeinu or a prostitute.” Because you know, in this world, some people just have it better than others, and deserve to be treated better because of it.

That Yi’s statement was in relation to the Li Tianyi gang rape case quickly became lost in the outcry and massively loud sighs against Yi. How could a law professor — at one of China’s most prestigious universities, no less — say such a dimwitted thing?

China Real Time, a Wall Street Journal blog, sought to find out, and caught up with the Tsinghua professor on Wednesday to get a clarification. Get your sighs out of the way right now.

Mr. Yi said his comments didn’t amount to a defense of Li Tianyi. “I’m not saying that Li Tianyi didn’t commit rape, nor that prostitutes could be raped,” he said.

Good start. Why am I waiting for the other shoe to drop?

Mr. Yi said each crime has a certain level of social harm, and the psychological harm is different on different victims.

Ah, there it is.

“The same curse words have different impacts on different people,” Mr. Yi said. “Chaste women and prostitutes have different views on chasteness,” he said, “so [rape has] a different impact on them.”

I don’t know where to begin. With Yi’s anachronistic view of chastity that teaches all women to neither seek nor accept pleasure unless it involves scrubbing the chinoiserie? With his casual linking of rape with sex, as if the former weren’t an act of violence against society, and the latter somehow demeaned woman in the eyes of that society? The impact of curse words? World’s worst sociologist here, ladies and gentlemen. Chaste women and prostitutes have different views on chasteness - now he’s a bloody mind-reader. Mel Gibson in What Women Want wouldn’t have gone that fucking far.

But what do you really think, Yi Yanyou?

Mr. Yi told China Real Time on Tuesday that Tsinghua Law School suggested he delete the controversial post, but he refused. “Deletion means that I think I’m wrong,” Mr. Yi said.

Yi Yanyou is an oaf, and one day, in a different life, will be viciously attacked by a black bear as he swims upstream with his mouth puckered into an oval. He will not survive. Be comforted.

But on Wednesday, Mr. Yi deleted the post. “I don’t want to be in this anymore,” he said in a call to China Real Time.

And by the end of the day Wednesday, he had apologized. “My comment yesterday was indeed improper,” he wrote on his Weibo account. “I’m disturbed by the negative impact and hereby apologize to all.”

Be well, Mr. Yi. May you never be negatively impacted by rape again.

Professor Apologizes for Comments on Rape Case (WSJ)

This is really awful and despicable beyond words. An anti-corruption whistleblower in Huizhou, Guangdong province apparently made very powerful enemies over the course of the past year, enemies who finally got to him on Monday morning when three men attacked from behind using sulfuric acid and knives, according to Southern Metropolis Daily.

Li Jianxin, 47, was blinded in his right eye, suffered severe burns, and may never have full use of some of his fingers. His six-year-old son witnessed the entire attack from his car. As Shanghai Daily puts it:

The attack occurred shortly after he left home to drive his son, 6, downtown. His car was suddenly hit in the rear when he was passing a sparsely occupied road, he said.

After he got out of the car, three men in the car behind him walked up to him, throwing sulfuric acid on his back and slashing at him with knives. He could not flee since his son was still in the car, he said.

Southern Metropolis Daily’s lengthier write-up includes an interview with Li’s wife, Li Guiqiong. As she tells it, her husband, a truck driver, didn’t have much work last June, so he stayed at home and surfed the Internet. He came upon some problems — possible connections between businessmen and officials — and began snooping. “I told him to not mind so much business,” Guiqiong said. “He told me not to mind his business.”

Shanghai Daily says Li also uncovered “reports of local mafia-like gangs and other social problems,” and “posted dozens of online exposes.” In March, a brick was thrown through his daughter’s window, but that apparently didn’t stop Li. It all led to the vicious attack on Monday.

“Local police are investigating the case,” Southern Metropolis Daily reports. The police have opened up an anonymous tip hotline that offers 100 yuan for helpful information.

Two young children were the victims of a dispute between the adults of rival kindergartens last week, according to Xinhua.

Let that punch in the gut settle in.

Xinhua reports that the principal of an unnamed kindergarten in Pingshan, Hebei province intentionally laced yogurt with tetramine, then hired someone to have it sold along a route that children took on their way to a competiting kindergarten.

The poisoned yogurt was sold on April 24. Two girls died.

It’s difficult to imagine anyone in a position of responsibility — a kindergarten principal — being so petty and stupid, and for our own sake, we’re not going to try. Needless to say, here’s the epitome of cowardice.

Believe it or not, this is not the first time in the last two years that a child has died from poisoned yogurt. In 2011, authorities in Changchun, Jilin province say a boy fell victim to “deliberate poisoning,” though we’re not sure under what circumstances. The above-linked article points out that there were also cases of mercury poisoning in 2009 and 2010.

A 67-year-old man surnamed He who went in for a doctor’s visit earlier this year got a bit more than he asked for, according to an article published on Saturday on People’s Daily via China Business News.

On February 8, He went to a hospital in Shangluo, Shanxi province complaining of swelling and discomfort around his genitals. In subsequent visits, doctors diagnosed him with penile cancer and rushed him — “pressured,” according to He’s family — into surgery.

On April 2, He went under the knife. A day later, doctors inspected the biopsy. On April 5, the results came back: there was no cancer. Instead, the discomfort was caused by a cyst on the foreskin.

In addition to a scar the size of a belly button, “this result caused much grief and indignation,” writes China Business News. The surgery also does not appear to have gone well — it was performed “approximately six millimeters from his penis,” according to Want China Times, which is much too close – as He now suffers from increased pain and reportedly has to squat to urinate.

The hospital now admits that they should have taken the biopsy before the surgery. The family is considering legal action.

POSTSCRIPT: Do not google image search “penis surgery” if you know what is good for you.

(H/T RFH)

This looks bad.

Around noon on Monday, a 13-month-old baby was run over by a birth control official’s car in Rui’an county near Wenzhou, Zhejiang province, according to state media. Reports the Guardian:

According to the report, he had been in the arms of his father. But after the officials started their vehicles, he was found crushed under one of the cars. Officials took him to hospital but doctors were unable to save him.

The father is Chen Liandi, 39, pictured above showing his ripped coat to reporters.

The Guardian has a few more details of what transpired:

Eleven officials from Rui’an birth control office near Wenzhou in eastern Zhejiang province had driven to his home to fine his parents for breaching China’s strict rules on births, according to a briefing from the local propaganda officials.

The baby’s father, Chen Liandi, 39, became agitated and forcefully obstructed the team, while his wife, Li Yuhong, agreed to go with them so they could continue their “thought work”, the short news report claimed.

It’s not explicated how, but the baby got separated from his father, and run over.

People’s Daily reports that the driver, surnamed Cheng, is being investigated for criminal offense, and has been detained “in accordance with the law.”

UPDATE, 2/8, 3:14 pm: Via Shanghai Daily: “Police have detained a local official and his driver in Zhejiang Province for fatally running over a 13-month-old boy during an argument with the baby’s parents for violating China’s family planning rules.”

Related: Seven-Month Pregnant Woman Beaten, Forcibly Aborted (June 13, 2012)

We’ll begin our excerpt from graf no. 2:

“This [the rape] is not a good thing. She is a little girl. If other people know this, it will damage her reputation,” said father, whose name is being withheld by the Global Times to protect the migrant worker family’s privacy.

He said the attack happened Monday afternoon as the girl walked the one mile from her home to her school, and that the girl had met the man several times before, adding that so far, the criminal is at large.

“When she can check out of the hospital, we will take her to the criminal police. She will then see the footage and detect the criminal,” he said.

Our reaction is pretty much encapsulated by this comment from Redditor Option84:

Hope it was worth it. Enjoy the bullet in the back of your head motherfucker.

Girl, 7, seriously hurt in sexual assault [Global Times]

A 17-year-old in Anxi, Fujian province tried to cut off his penis to spite his out-of-control teenage and totally normal hormonal drive. Thankfully for him, he was not successful.

According to Strait Metropolis Daily, the 17-year-old was at home Saturday, in bed, when he took a knife and tried to castrate himself. His screams startled his parents, who quickly took him to the hospital via his neighbor’s car. (Poor neighbor.)

The hospital was able to stop his bleeding before transferring him to Second Affiliated Hospital of Fujian Medical University. According to the doctor, the patient said (doctor-patient confidentiality doesn’t exactly exist in China) he was ashamed of constantly getting erections in public, in broad daylight, and that it made him feel loathsome and depressed. He had been suffering for a long time before turning to the knife.

“Confronted with this journalist’s questions, [the 17-year-old] didn’t say a single word from start to finish,” writes Strait Metropolis Daily reporter Yu Zhicun.

Doctors successfully operated on the young man, who is expected to recover sexual functioning.

Yu ends the article by writing that parents should educate their children and foster open communication about these, ahem, issues.

By the way, do not do a Baidu image search, in Chinese, of “self-castration” or “Fujian Anxi 17-year-old youngster perhaps ashamed of erection self-castrates.” I just did. What a horrible, horrible mistake.

Remember the cannibal/zombie craze that swept across the world over the summer, starting with Rudy Eugene chewing a homeless man’s face on a Miami highway on May 26, followed by Alexander Kinyua eating a murder victim’s heart and portions of his brain, followed by Luka Magnotta (the less said about this one the better)? The trend, if you can call it that, seemed finally to end on June 26 with the face-chewing of a female driver surnamed Du in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province, by a drunk bus driver surnamed Dong. “Doctors at a nearby hospital said Du will need plastic surgery to repair the damage from the bites on her nose and lips,” reported Shanghai Daily, and that was that.

Ah, if only. Look what we have here in Foshan, Guangdong province:

The victim, surnamed Pan, told Guangdong TV news that the man, naked to the waist, accosted her on the street on Saturday afternoon, pushed her into a corner and started to gnaw on her face.

Face-gnawing is the worst.

According to police, the middle-aged man wielded a long shovel and was seen attacking random people that day. Apparently a terrible wielder of shovels, he preferred his teeth as a weapon, because he then tried to bite the arm of a cop:

“The man beat a police officer when he tried to catch him and tried to jump on a passing truck to escape,” said officer Zhou Houjin, “We caught him after he failed to jump on the truck.” Zhou said the man appeared to be in a frenzy as he bit him on the arm. Police said the man was sent to a hospital to see if he is mentally ill.

If he is mentally ill. I’ll put a bet on “probably.”

(H/T Alicia)