The story of five children who died inside a dumpster in Bijie, Guizhou province last month shocked the country, shook more than a few souls and consciences, and led to the firing of at least six mid-ranking officials.

It seems the city isn’t quite done with its changes though. This latest one, however, is a bit of a puzzler.

As Offbeat China reports, new dumpsters have been rolled out in Bijie with red lettering that reads:

Humans and animals are strictly prohibited to enter. Violators are at their own risk.

Netizens have not reacted well. Offbeat China again:

Netizens’ anger over such prints are beyond words. Currently, the image of the newly- printed dumpster ranked No. 1 on Sina Weibo’s top trending list within a matter of hours. Local town chief already apologized. But according to Bijie government, it was Deng Hongmei, local official in charge of city sanitation, who approved these new prints without careful examination. She was already under investigation. But like many netizens asked: “Is this how Bijie resolves the tragedy of left-behind kids?”

The 5 boys found dead in a Bijie dumpster a month ago were all left-behind kids whose parents were off to China’s big cities for better income. These boys were left in their rural hometown without proper parenting and schooling. Netizen 社会五味 commented: “Animals won’t understand these words. And for local people, if the government has done its job, who would want to stay in a dumpster to keep warm?”

“Who would want to stay in a dumpster to keep warm?” — that’s it, of course. Instead of assuming people would crawl into a dumpster, why not create an environment in which they would never need to?

Gotta love/hate the way bureaucrats think.

(Bijie Dumpster: “Humans and animals prohibited”)

South China Morning Post reports that Li Yuanlong, who first wrote about the five Bijie children in Guizhou province who were found dead in a dumpster on Friday, has been sent on “a vacation,” and it’s clear that it’s not the voluntary kind.

Li Muzi, the son of Li Yuanlong, said his father had been taken away by the authorities at 1pm on Wednesday and put on a plane at Guiyang airport for “a holiday” at a tourist destination he did not want disclosed.

“My father told me he received several phone calls before he was taken away from home,” said Li Muzi, who is studying in the United States. He keeps in contact with his father over the internet and by phone. “Apparently they are trying to prevent him from helping other reporters follow up on the incident.”

By all indications, Li is okay — physically, anyway — and who knows, maybe they sent him to Hawaii. But he’s being extra cautious, going so far as asking his son to delete a microblog entry about his “disappearance.”

[Li Muzi] said his father was worried it could have a bearing on how long he would be kept away from home.

Kept away from home.

It’s not altogether surprising that officials would do this; after all, livelihoods have been affected — the livelihoods of powerful officials, that is. Eight officials have been suspended or fired, including deputy district chiefs – officials chopped after kids found dead, reads Global Times headline — and a previously unheard of township in Guizhou province has been properly smeared.

What we shouldn’t assume is that higher levels of government had anything to do with this, considering no one — and I mean no one — would be dumb enough to think punishing a journalist here would be a good idea. If there’s one thing we know about how business is done in these fourth-tier, hinterland-type counties, it’s that the powerful can do whatever the fuck they want, and someone with some power in this case must have decided to act out on his vendetta.

That person is a piece of shit. Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do about that, even if the appropriate response is to shove an ice pick up his nose.

UPDATE, 11/24, 12:01 pm: The Guardian:

The Bijie propaganda office denied the allegation, pointing to a note posted from Li’s bulletin board account that said he had not been taken away and was simply attending to urgent business.

…The Chinese Human Rights Defenders network said Li, 52, had previously served a two-year sentence for inciting subversion of state power and been put under pressure for writing about sensitive subjects.

…[Lawyer] Li Fangping added: “They just want the public to stop paying attention to the issue; they want to use this result [the sackings] to distract the public’s attention – they are not concerned with the causes, the effect and its consequences; they are not analysing this incident; not asking why officials were responsible; not asking what the problems in the system and the emergency response mechanism were. [They] did not mention how to prevent it happening again.

“The officials did not mention at all why it is so common for students to drop out in this district or why there are no NGOs getting involved.”

And Charlie Custer of China Geeks:

But I wouldn’t say it’s really true that higher authorities had nothing to do with it. The central government’s inability to control, or perhaps lack of interest in controlling, local governments fosters and facilitates an I-am-king-around-here attitude in local officials, and that inevitably leads to stories like this. Central authorities didn’t order the arrest of Li, no, but they have fordecades presided over and molded a system that allows local authorities to do things like arrest reporters with minimal consequences, and often no consequences at all.

(H/T Alicia)

Sina Weibo user @公民李元龙 may have posted the first photo of those five Bijie children who died of carbon monoxide poisoning in a trash bin last week, and it’s perfect. Look at that light. In a post that was published yesterday at 9:18 pm (884 forwards, 322 comments so far), @公民李元龙 writes:

A miracle, I obtained a picture of those five children who died of suffocation. Apparently it was the day before the children died, using a phone at Bijie College, taken on the stone steps of a highway underpass just 200-some meters from the place where the children died.

News of the children’s deaths continue to circulate, with Xinhua writing an editorial yesterday calling the incident “a wound in society.” Many netizens have compared the story to Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Match Girl,” about a poor Danish girl who sells matches on the street. The Bijie boys — so-called because they lived in the poverty-stricken coal-town of Bijie, Guizhou province — died of carbon monoxide poisoning from the matches they lit while trying to stay warm inside their dumpster. Notes Wall Street Journal:

“When I was little, the study topic for ‘The Little Match Girl’ was: Understand the horrible tragedy of the little match-selling girl’s death on the streets on New Year’s Eve and how it reveals the darkness of capitalist society,” wrote one Sina Weibo user. “Vicious capitalist society! That’s how we were educated.”

Wrote another microblogger: “I thought the little match girl was something that only happened in capitalist societies. Why this sense of superiority about our system?”

And of course, people are wondering how bureaucrats can strut their wealth when so many people have so little. Via Tea Leaf Nation:

One commentator (@木尔) with more than 40 thousands followers contrasted the death of these boys with the wealthy life led by the Party Secretary from the same city, who the blogger complained has a weakness for luxurious leather belts: “[The cost of] any one of his belts could easily cover many people’s foods and clothing.”

Indeed, the search for a culprit ranged far and wide: Sloppy governance, careless parents and schools, an indifferent community.

…As fairy tale writer Zheng Yuanjie concluded: “Though you left the world in a dumpster, you are not trash. The irresponsible adults are. A child frozen to death means a future frozen to death. Beijing spent 800 million RMB to [heat the city for an additional 15 days this winter], but still did not warm you … please forgive us.”

But poverty simply has a way of being, in any society. It’s always a tragedy; what can any of us do? Perhaps let the story be a reminder for all of us to be a little better.

(H/T Josh Chin)

A really sad story out of Bijie, Guizhou province: on Friday, five young children were found dead in a dumpster, apparently of carbon monoxide poisoning. Xinhua reports that “the boys were suspected to have suffocated as they tried to sleep in the dumpster to survive the cold night” — temperatures were around 6 degrees Celsius, with rain.

Offbeat China, which has been on a heck of a roll as of late, tells us that the boys were Tao Zhongjin (12 years old), Tao Zhonghong (11 years old), Tao Zhong (12 years old), Tao Bo (9 years old) and Tao Zhonglin (13 years old), the sons of three brothers. “The five left home on November 5 and never came back since. According to their families, the boys often went out a few days without noticing family members. 4 out of the 5 boys were school drop outs. 8 local officials, including 2 school headmasters, were removed from their posts as a result.”

Offbeat China has also translated a Chineses story imagining the children’s final moments. Excerpt:

They rubbed the whole bundle of matched quickly against the trash bin wall, for they wanted to be quite sure of keeping their dreams stay. And the matches gave such a brilliant light that it was brighter than at noon-day. Never formerly has they feel so secure. They held each other in arms, and all flew in the brightness and in joy so high, so very high, and then above was neither cold, nor hunger, nor anxiety – they were with God.

But in the trash bin, at the cold hour of dawn, sat five poor boys, with rosy cheeks and with a smiling mouth, leaning against each other – poisoned by carbon monoxide to death on a Thursday night in November, 2012. Stiff and stark sat the boys there with their little pot, in which they set fire. “They wanted to warm themselves,” people said. No one has the slightest suspicion of what beautiful things they had seen; no one even dreamed of the splendor in which, with their companionship to each other, they had entered on the joys of a new life.

UPDATE, 7:15 pm: Government officials have been sacked over this incident. Via SCMP:

Angry members of the public are calling for Bijie’s Communist Party chief Zhang Jiyong to step down following the deaths of five homeless boys in a rubbish dumpster last Friday.

The tragedy has outraged China’s netizens and sparked criticism of the local government’s efforts to help the homeless.

As of Tuesday morning, the incident has already led to the sackings of six mid-ranking officials in charge of civil affairs and education in the town, northwestern of Guizhou province, according to Xinhua news agency.