Waiting for Lao Rongzhi death sentence, Zhu Dahong waited from 29 to 52 years old.
1999, Zhu Dahong's husband Lu Zhongming was killed by Lao Rongzhi's boyfriend Fa Ziying and was killed and dismembered on the grounds of carpentry work. In the past three years, Fa Ziying and Lao Rongzhi have jointly committed robbery, kidnapping and intentional homicide in Nanchang , Wenzhou , Changzhou , Hefei and other places.
Fa Ziying was executed on December 28 of that year. Lao Rongzhi began his 20-year escape, while Zhu Dahong was struggling to support the entire family alone.
The little woman who once stood behind her husband and didn't have to worry about anything, "he supported her like a house that was about to collapse at home." In order to make money, she often got up at four or five o'clock, went through half a city to work, and during the busy farming season, she had to come back to farm in the night. The three young children experienced the sadness of losing their father early, and dropped out of school to work just after graduating from junior high school.
Photography of Lu Zhongming, Zhu Dahong and the children. Photo provided by the interviewee
When Zhu Dahong struggled to pull up three children, Lao Rongzhi lived another life - playing the piano, drawing, and raising a dog. On November 28, 2019, Lao Rongzhi was arrested on Xiamen . On September 9, 2021, the Intermediate People's Court of Nanchang City, Jiangxi Province sentenced Lao Rongzhi to death for intentional homicide, robbery, and kidnapping for multiple crimes. On August 18, 2022, the second trial of the Lao Rongzhi case was held. After three days of trial, the court announced a verdict at a later date.
23, Zhu Dahong is no longer young, wrinkles are climbing on the corners of her eyes, and white hair is also drilling on the top of her head, but she is finally waiting for the final result.
"I believe the law is fair." Over the years, Zhu Dahong has been trying to sew her and her children's "breaked" life. When everything is settled, "I will live the days ahead slowly and well."
On September 9, 2021, Zhu Dahong, who participated in the trial, was interviewed. Photo by Li Yang, Beijing News reporter
"Happiness has completely disappeared"
Zhu Dahong, 52 years old this year, looks much older than her peers, with wrinkles piled up at the corners of her eyes, and spots connected to her cheeks. Because she does cleaning work all year round, her hands are hard and rough, but very powerful.
60 pounds of two buckets of water, she pushed her shoulders and helped her hands, and she could lift the bucket with a shoulder pole tremblingly. She also spoke short and powerfully, her voice was loud, and the syllables that popped out were fast and loud. Sometimes the other party could not hear what she was saying clearly, and the phone was quickly hung up.
Zhu Dahong is very busy, busy farming, busy working, busy paying off debts, and raising three children, almost all relying on her. This kind of life has been like this for more than 20 years. But her life shouldn't have been like this.
On the afternoon of September 12, 2021, Zhu Dahong carried water to prepare to water the ground. Photo by Zuo Lin, reporter of Beijing News
1999, for Zhu Dahong, who was only 29 years old at the time, life was still "very promising". She has a hardworking and smart husband and three lovely children. The oldest is only 7 years old and the youngest is only 3 years old. She lives a prosperous life.
Lu Zhongming can work in carpenters, and in the 1990s he could earn seventy or eighty yuan a day. Zhu Dahong often proudly said to the children, "Your father is a craftsman. If others earn one dollar, he can earn five yuan." In his spare time, he would go to the street to collect piglets and sell them to the cities to the south.
He is also a good husband who loves his wife. Zhu Dahong recalled her married life, and her face was full of satisfaction. It was her happiest years. "We haven't quarreled for a long time, and he has never let me fuck her for a while." The couple looked forward to the eldest son's time to go to elementary school. When autumn comes, the house will be built, and Lu Zhongming is planning to buy a new plane.
Before leaving home for the last time, Lu Zhongming instructed his second son Lu Yang, "You have to listen to your mother and come back to buy you fruit." Lu Yang kept shouting, "Don't go, don't go." "This time, I'll be back in the busy farming season." Lu Zhongming comforted him.
toolbox left by Lu Zhongming. Photo by Zuo Lin, Beijing News reporter
Everything came to an abrupt end on July 22, 1999.The first-instance judgment of the "Lao Rongzhi Case" shows that in order to intimidate another victim, Fa Ziying deceived Lu Zhongming, who was 31 years old, to his rented residence, and killed and dismembered the body. He put the body into a freezer. Lao Rongzhi assisted in moving the freezer containing the body.
, and Zhu Dahong is still waiting in her hometown for her husband to come back from work. It was not until a month later that she learned from her relatives that her husband was killed. Zhu Dahong couldn't understand how the good old man who would organize people to help plant rice during busy farming and would get up in the middle of the night to help others work was killed.
"I feel that the sky has collapsed and happiness has completely dispersed." Zhu Dahong paused for a few seconds before he continued, "I will never meet someone like him again in my life."
"How did my life have come to this point?"
After Lu Zhongming was killed, Zhu Dahong began to be afraid of walking at night. "I feel like a murderer when I see anyone." There are few lights on the dirt roads in the countryside, so she could only grit her teeth and walk home.
At the end of the road is her home. The brick and tile house cannot be built. The earth house is no longer maintained and repaired. The roof is covered with thatch, the walls are cracked and large cracks are filled with plastic paper to block the wind. Because I am afraid of falling, I use a tree stump to support it, but I still can't withstand the wind and rain, and there is a possibility of collapse at any time. In the northwest corner of the house is a bed built with bricks, with no cotton quilts on it, only a thin layer of wood and layered with grass.
Legal aid lawyer Liu Jingjie first met Zhu Dahong in such a situation. She remembered that the two children were sitting beside the bed, and the raw potatoes they were holding were still hanging with mud. They at least rubbed them and ate them in one bite.
Zhu Dahong cried as soon as she saw Liu Jingjie. She couldn't understand, "How did my life have come to this point?"
Fa Ziying was executed on December 28, 1999. Lao Rongzhi was on the run, but the civil compensation proposed by Zhu Dahong was exempted from compensation because "Fa Ziying had no actual ability to compensate."
could not hold on anymore, so Zhu Dahong took his three children to his parents' home. The family could not live in, so he went to borrow a house that his neighbor could not live in. Seeing that the three children were not well fed and dressed, Zhu Dahong thought about death at that time.
Finally, it was the daughter who gave up her idea of suicide, "The child stood in front of me, and my heart came back to life. I do this, I am sorry to the children and my parents. People who live in this world must at least know gratitude and rewards."
Zhu Dahong and Lu Zhongming's three children. From left to right are daughter Lu Qing (pseudonym), eldest son and second son Lu Yang (pseudonym). Photo provided by the interviewee
Around 2004, Zhu Dahong took her children back to her husband's hometown Huaitang Village, Changfeng County, Hefei City, to take care of her mother-in-law. In Liu Jingjie's words, "She raised her up like she was holding onto the house that was about to collapse at home."
After Lu Zhongming was killed, her mother-in-law was crying all day long and her eyes gradually became blind. The family has no labor force, and farming has become particularly difficult. Zhu Dahong is a strong-willed person and is unwilling to bother others. In addition, the income from farming is only four or five thousand yuan a year, so she cannot maintain the livelihood of the whole family, so she has to go out to work.
Children learn to take care of themselves at a very young age. In the third and fourth grades of elementary school, Lu Qing learned to cook by herself - put the pot on a small coal stove, add some white water, put the cabbage grown by her home and cook it for a meal. The best food is the rice that is 2 or 3 yuan per serving at noon in the school. Lu Yang eats it clean every time, so there is no need to think about it at night.
Clothes are also worn by others, they are colorful, their pants are big, and some even have holes. One winter, Lu Qing received a pair of pretty new little red leather shoes, but it was too thin. She was so cold that she sat on the side of the road and cried. Lu Yang had no choice but to stuff some paper into her shoes to keep warm.
Sometimes when you go home from school, the door is locked, and the brother and sister cannot enter the house and sit at the door of the house and cry. When Zhu Dahong came back, she saw the children crying, and she also cried.
At such times, she always misses Lu Zhongming very much, but she dares not talk to her children for fear of making them sad. Occasionally, Lu Yang makes her angry, and she will say, "You did not inherit your father's intelligence."
Lu Yang and Lu Qing's memories of her father all come from the photos and the words of her mother.In the photos kept by Lu Yang, the father's smile always stretched - some were standing on the motorcycle, some were standing in the rapeseed field, and some were sitting side by side with Zhu Dahong and holding the child. There was also a smile on the mother's face in the photo.
In Zhu Dahong's impression, the children only knew that their father had passed away, and the details of the case were not known until Lao Rongzhi was arrested. But in the children's world, without a father itself means difference.
Lu Yang is most afraid of holding a parent-teacher meeting. He is unwilling to answer why his father didn’t come, and his personality is getting more and more inferior. During adolescence, he was a little rebellious like other children. He followed the naughty classmate to secretly sell peanuts that were sunk at someone else's doorstep, and the teacher invited the parents. Zhu Dahong rushed to school from the construction site and walked all the way, "How come I have a son like you?" Lu Yang followed his mother with a bicycle, "At that moment, I felt that I was particularly wrong, and I became mature all of a sudden."
Since then, Lu Yang rarely talked back to his mother. When he felt wronged, he hid in the corner and cried alone. He learned to reconcile with himself, "Dad is gone, and my mother wants to support this family no matter how difficult it is. I have to grow up quickly and take care of my mother."
The wooden cart that Zhu Dahong used to pull rice is now placed in the corner. Photo by Zuo Lin, Beijing News reporter
, hold up the home
, If it weren't for the fact that Zhu Dahong broke her leg a few months ago and had to recuperate at home, she would have been doing the hotel cleaning work day and night in Hefei.
She has been working for more than ten years, working shifts in the morning, noon and evening. She works for more than ten hours a day during peak season, cleans thirty or forty rooms, and swings quilts, changing sheets, and brushing toilets for a long time. Her shoulders, legs and waist often suffer from pain, and she always wears plaster. Even if you run out of strength, your monthly salary is only two or three thousand yuan.
In order to facilitate overtime, Zhu Dahong spent 100 or 200 yuan to rent a private house in the city. The cement walls were bare, and even Lu Yang was not willing to go there. "It was a little hotter, it was like entering a microwave oven, and it couldn't breathe."
This is much better than running back and forth every day. It's nearly 20 kilometers from the village to the place where I work. Zhu Dahong has to ride an electric bike to the bus stop first. She has only learned how to ride it in the past two years, and she is still very unskilled in driving. It's normal that it takes only 20 minutes to get there, so it takes nearly 3 times.
When there were no buses in the early years, it took longer to go on the road. At four or five o'clock in the morning, she would set off from home, walk all the way to the entrance of the village or town, and then take a taxi through half of the city, "Every morning and come back late every day, crying all the way to Hefei to work."
is even more amazing to catch up with the busy farming.
After get off work, Zhu Dahong had to rush back to the village immediately, light a light at the door, and turn over the rice that had been dried during the day alone until midnight. When it comes to watering season, she borrows machines from door to door to pump water; when it is time to harvest, because there is no tractor, Zhu Dahong has to pull a wooden truck to harvest rice, and the two children push it behind, and it has to walk at least two miles. If it rains, she can only let the rice be wet and moldy.
"Those days were dark and there was no light." In fact, it was not impossible to remarry, but she didn't want to. "I would rather suffer myself than raise my child to adulthood. I can't let my child become an orphan and eventually become a wanderer. Maybe I will become a scum in society."
Zhu Dahong's coal stove and gas stove at home have been blackened. Photo by Zuo Lin, reporter of Beijing News
She gritted her teeth and held on. When Lu Yang and Lu Qing were in junior high school, Zhu Dahong finally painted the brick house with cement. At that time, almost everyone in the village lived in the cement house. She also bought bicycles for the children to avoid it being too hard to walk six or seven kilometers to school. I bought a gas stove at home, but there was no range hood and the walls were smoked black.
The children are also becoming more and more sensible. Lu Yang would ride a bicycle to pick up his mother at the entrance of the village. After school, the brother and sister soaked in the fields to work, harvesting rice, picking cotton , and picking peanuts.
All three children chose to drop out of school and work after graduating from junior high school. Although Zhu Dahong supported the family bit by bit, the family still couldn't make ends meet with their income, and the debts were getting more and more.
Lu Yang is dedicated to making money and paying off his debts. He finds ways to work every winter and summer vacation in junior high school.After dropping out of school, he went to rub noodles, worked as a waiter, worked in the factory to make screws, and studied running errands to deliver food, "Which one has more money to make." Last year, he worked as a chef apprentice during the day and moved goods at night.
The people who carry goods are middle-aged and young people are very few, "Because I'm too tired." The most common time, he moved seven or eight tons of goods in one night, "I feel that my arms are not my own arms, and my legs are not my own legs." The hands were called out, and he still stood up, "We have to accept the reality, and we still have to eat the hardships we should endure."
Zhu Dahong quarreled with him a lot, thinking that learning craftsmanship is the serious thing, Lu Yang just listened silently, thinking about taking one step at a time.
"I didn't let my child read the book, this is a regret for me." Zhu Dahong was a little bit self-blame. But the children can only be grateful to her.
Once Zhu Dahong celebrated her birthday, her daughter sent a text message: Dear Mom, you have worked hard to bring us up over the years, and you are our spiritual pillar.
"I feel warm in my heart, the child knows my hardship." Zhu Dahong was very pleased. She kept this text message and always looked out when she was alone.
Zhu Dahong's family works outside all year round, and their doors are often locked. Photo by Zuo Lin, reporter of Beijing News
Waiting for a result
Liu Jingjie has known Zhu Dahong for more than 20 years. She watched this strong woman sew the broken life bit by bit, and also saw more and more traces of years left on her body. She knew that Lao Rongzhi was always a thorn in Zhu Dahong's heart.
In 1999, when Fa Ziying was just executed, Zhu Dahong often called Liu Jingjie: "Why hasn't Lao Rongzhi been caught yet?" Liu Jingjie understood her, "Zhu Dahong has always held hope and wanted to give Lu Zhongming an explanation, and also hopes to get some compensation."
Zhu Dahong remembers that he was most anxious more than ten years ago, thinking about Lao Rongzhi who "disappeared" all day long. Her name, the photo of her hair with "big waves", kept spinning in Zhu Dahong's head.
In recent years, Zhu Dahong sometimes comforted Liu Jingjie: "It is very likely that she is hiding where she is, and it is difficult to find her. I believe the police will always find her."
Zhu Dahong (left) when she was young and took a photo with lawyer Liu Jingjie. Photo provided by the interviewee
On November 28, 2019, Lao Rongzhi, who had been absconded for 20 years, was arrested in Xiamen. Three years have passed, and Zhu Dahong can still tell this day quickly.
She still remembers that the night after Lao Rongzhi was arrested, she was preparing to cook. Lu Yang hesitated and grabbed her: "Mom, it's dad's business. The other person seems to have been caught." Zhu Dahong was extremely excited and hurried to Liu Jingjie for verification.
Then, reporters who interviewed her flocked to her. In Liu Jingjie's office, the lawyer and Zhu Dahong were surrounded, and the files were turned aside and could only be fixed by transparent tape. Zhu Dahong was not very used to the interview. Liu Jingjie remembered that she left in a hurry after only saying a few words.
Zhu Dahong has always been unwilling to be paid attention to as the victim's family. She does not want to be discussed, be pitiful, harvested or sympathetic or regretful. Once when she was buying groceries, someone recognized her, but she denied it.
On December 21, 2020, the first trial of the Lao Rongzhi case was held in Nanchang. Zhu Dahong attended Fa Ziying's trial. At that time, she thought Fa Ziying was particularly terrifying. "I got goose bumps all over my body and didn't even dare to say anything." But she couldn't control her angry expression. The young and serious face was photographed by the reporter and printed on the newspaper of that year.
This time, she was no longer afraid of Lao Rongzhi, but just wanted to see with her own eyes what kind of person she was and want to know why they wanted to kill her husband.
During the trial, Zhu Dahong, who was sitting behind the prosecutor, was expressionless and occasionally lowered her head. When she heard about Lu Zhongming's case, she sat upright and couldn't help but choked and asked Lao Rongzhi: "Do your heart grows from flesh?"
In December 2020, the first trial of the Lao Rongzhi case was held in the Nanchang Intermediate People's Court for the first time. Photo source: Nanchang Intermediate People's Court
During the 8 months of waiting for the verdict, Zhu Dahong's impatience was aroused again.She called Liu Jingjie from time to time: "What should I do if I don't sentence to death? How much can I compensate?"
On September 9, 2021, the Nanchang Intermediate People's Court sentenced Lao Rongzhi to death in the first instance. Upon hearing the verdict, Zhu Dahong felt much more relaxed. She smiled at the camera: "I am very satisfied with the result." The only thing that
is the compensation judgment of 48,065.5 yuan. Liu Jingjie knew very well that these compensations were far from enough, so she applied for judicial assistance to the court.
The first trial result of the "Lao Rongzhi Case" gave Zhu Dahong some confidence.
On the night after the trial verdict was announced, Zhu Dahong looked for a way at the high-speed rail station, and a cleaner came over: "You are the one who goes on TV, right?" This time Zhu Dahong did not avoid it, "It's not a bad thing, it's no big deal to recognize me."
In September 2021, the weeds had grown tall in Lu Zhongming's cemetery. Photo by Zuo Lin, reporter of Beijing News
The children went to worship Lu Zhongming in a special way. The weeds in front of the grave had already passed their ankles, and the burnt grass turned gray and mixed with the debris of firecrackers. They were spread on the thick layer in front of the grave. A red dragonfly fell on the shaking grass. Lu Qing clasped her hands together and read the news to her father. After
, Zhu Dahong's family continued to follow their previous life. This year when waiting for the second trial of Lao Rongzhi, Zhu Dahong's heart became more calm. She believed that Lao Rongzhi would receive the punishment she deserved, and she was unwilling to think about this anymore. She just wanted to live a good life in the future and watch the children get married and start a career.
When everything is settled, Zhu Dahong and the children will go to Lu Zhongming’s grave to take a look. 23 years have passed, and a new life is about to begin.
(at the request of the interviewee, Lu Yang and Lu Qing are pseudonyms)
Beijing News reporter Zuo Lin
Editor Liu Qian Proofreading Wang Xin
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