A video of a Chinese mother of eight children, found locked up in a dilapidated village hut with a chain around her neck, went viral.
And netizens in China responded furiously.
The video which was first uploaded to Douyin, which owns TikTok, was shot by a man who visited the woman in a rural property near Xuzhou city in the eastern province of Jiangsu.
The vlogger who is known for documenting unusual families, is first seen with one of the eight children, seven of them boys. In the video, behind the alleged father and all the youngsters, there was a woman in chains.
The man who was shocked to see what he saw, brought the woman some warm clothes, and asked several questions.
The woman however, was unable to answer properly.
The woman was seen dazed and unable to comprehend the questions from the vlogger, who asked her repeatedly about how she feels, and whether she is cold.
In the video, the woman is seen dressed in only a light layer of clothes despite the freezing winter temperatures.
When this video went viral, Chinese netizens who were angered, demanded the authorities to intervene and help the poor woman.
Since being posted, many netizens in China started discussing about possible human trafficking that may happen in some of China's impoverished rural areas, while others started drawing comparisons to a 2007 Chinese film Blind Mountain, which tells the story of a young woman who is kidnapped and sold into slavery.
In this case, they suspected that the woman is a victim of kidnapping and domestic abuse.
When the police intervened, they dismissed those speculations.
The name of the woman was then made public, with the police identifying the woman by her last name, Yang, from Feng County Huankou Township.
They said that the woman had married her husband, identified as Dong Zhimin in 1998, and had been diagnosed with a mental health illness. His family told the local authorities that Yang often had violent outbursts.
The explanation was short and far from satisfying.
Many questioned how this woman gave birth to her eight children, and many more asked how this incident escaped China's strict family planning restrictions.
Because the police didn't address the main issue, outraged netizens kept up the pressure, with some making daily calls for investigation.
They demanded answers about the cause of her detainment, the use of chain, and her overall welfare.
Why was she chained up? How can she have eight kids with her husband given China's reproductive controls?
Because netizens were complaining in anger, this prompted a second statement from authorities, suggesting a more thorough investigation.
"Dong is suspected of violating the law. The public security authorities have launched an investigation into it," the statement said, according to local media reports.
The authorities also said that Yang has been hospitalized for treatment, and that her children had been taken into state care.
A report then added that the woman was a beggar who married Dong because Dong's father took her in. Although the local birth planning unit had performed "birth control measures" after the woman bore her first and second child, "both failed due to her physical condition."
Officials then added that Yang had been diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Again, the statement was not enough.
Netizens considered the subsequent missteps by Xuzhou authorities is an attempt to cover up something. Not only netizens in China were angered, as Yang's case also sparked worldwide attention.
The video was then reshared and reposted on various social media platforms, including TikTok and Twitter.
Angered, the public demanded the local authorities to do more than just that, and take greater responsibility.
"She is a person, not an object. After having eight children over 20 years, she is only to be found today? None of the government departments and judicial bodies involved in are innocent," wrote one user.
The pressure even brought the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) attention, and how the public considered it to have a long series of unsolved problems, including the imbalanced male to female ratio, as the result of a cultural preference for boys in a country that restricted families to one child from 1980 to 2013, when the policy began to loosen.
The pressure was so intense, that even the hype around the Beijing Olympics and Lunar New Year festivities failed to distract people from the issue.
On Weibo, dedicated topics about the woman's case has received billions of views, only days since the news first emerged.
There are many other online discussion about the case, but since China is heavily censoring content it deems inappropriate, some of the posts have been removed.
For example, the authorities have removed many posts discussing human trafficking and censored the key topic phrase, like the "Xuzhou Eight Children".
The authorities have also removed a number of WeChat accounts that discussed this issue.
It's worth noting that on December 30, 2021, China's state-owned Xinhua news agency named Xuzhou "China's Happiest City" for 2021.
The city located in eastern China's Jiangsu province showed dramatic economic growth. But within days, the city's pride immediately morphed into mortification when the vlogger found Yang.
Following the news that went viral, an official from the CCP Xuzhou Propaganda Unit said that the authorities are investigating this case further.
Understanding of the laws banning domestic abuse "is relatively weak in rural parts of China, and there's a lack of social governance, resulting in human trafficking," said the CCP official.
"But we are working on it now. Please give us some space to get a clear picture," he added.
On February 7, the authorities at Xuzhou reversed their earlier statements, and said that the woman's name is actually Xiao Huamei, or "Little Plum Blossom."
This updated report said that the woman came from a village in southern China's Yunnan province, and in 1996, her mother had asked a woman identified only as Ms. Sang to take her daughter to Jiangsu to treat her mental illness.. The daughter disappeared, and Ms. Sang failed to inform the mother and didn't report her case to the police.
But in the report, the girl who went missing is Li Ying, not Xiao Mei.
Chinese netizens didn't believe that report.
"So all the previous investigation reports are lies!" one netizen said.
"How do you explain the chain on her neck?" asked another. "And how did they manage to get married if she's mentally ill?"
"She went missing and no one cared to tell her family? And this is not human trafficking?" another netizen asked.
Responding the increasing pressure, the Xuzhou authorities made another statement, saying that Xiao Huamei is indeed a victim of human trafficking, and that three people have been arrested in connection with the case, including her husband, Dong, who has been charged with illegal detention.
Ms. Sang and her husband have also been charged with human trafficking.
Following this statement, many netizens started praising the authorities, saying that the report "makes more sense." But still, some demanded more explanation.
"We need follow-ups. What's her age? Where's their marriage license?" one netizen asked.
The main question is then to know whether the woman's real name is Yang, or Xiao Huamei or Li Ying.
"We need to see proof other than a report. If this is not the final investigation and the results are wrong again, someone needs to be held accountable," another netizen said.
CCP's Xuzhou Propaganda Unit said that earlier reports didn't provide a clear picture due to the limited information the authorities have at the time, which in turn led to the statement that said she wasn't being trafficked.
As more information poured in, officials can finally make a conclusion.
"But now we are actively pursuing this case. I hope netizens and media can give us some room to conduct the investigation and not pressure us too hard," he said.
A former official at CCP who became an activist, said that a third party needs to conduct the investigation to guarantee transparency.
"If the CCP is really confident in itself, it needs to allow other international organizations to conduct the investigation so people will actually believe the result," the person said. .
China's longtime one-child policy has resulted in an imbalanced male to female ratio, especially in rural areas, where parents value sons more than daughters.
The "natural sex ratio" at birth is 105 boys for every 100 girls, that according to the World Health Organization. This happens because extra males are needed to offset their tendency to die at a younger age than females.
But in China, the ratio can sometimes exceed 120 boys for every 100 girls.
Back in 2020, there were 34.9 million more males than females in China, making it a challenge for men to find a wife.
And this was proven more difficult for men living in rural areas, where gender imbalance is even greater, according to the BBC.
It's this gender imbalance that resulted in more human trafficking of women in China's rural areas.
It is reported that the authorities know about this illegal activities, but usually turned a blind eye, with some even profited from it.
