Some questions that sound ordinary sounded like thorns to Jiang Ge's mother, Jiang Qiulian.
In November 2016, international student Jiang Ge was killed outside his residence in Tokyo, Japan, by his roommate Liu Nuanxi's ex-boyfriend Chen Shifeng. Jiang Qiulian believes that Liu Nuanxi also has an unshirkable responsibility. After four and a half years, Jiang Qiulian sued Liu Nuanxi for a dispute over the right to life was pronounced in the first instance on January 10 this year. A reporter asked Jiang Qiulian: "The court has ruled that you won the case, will you focus more on your life in the future?" ”
Jiang Qiulian was stunned for a moment and replied, "What is your life?" Since I had Jiang Ge, I have called Jiang Ge's mother, I am not called Jiang Qiulian, and I have no life of my own. ”
A similar situation occurred in April last year, when the case had just begun, and the Shangguan News reporter and Jiang Qiulian talked about the past few years: When it came to the details of the case, her answer was meticulous and calm; but when asked about her future life, she would always be silent, appear resistant, and even ask the reporter: "How do you think my future life should be?" Do you really think I have a future life? Behind the unmistakable tone, there seemed to be a resolute and extreme mother.
These almost paranoid moves have sparked criticism online. Many people believe that she deliberately set up the object of revenge because she could not accept the death of her daughter, "without her own life". There are also people who criticize her for being hypocritical and consuming the dead when she brings goods to make money.
But those close to Jiang Qiulian believe that neither of these evaluations is true: no one can make a mother erase her daughter from her life. Living for the truth and justice behind Jiang Ge's case is Jiang Qiulian's courage to live, and it is also the rationality of her connection with the world for the rest of her life.
On the public account of "Jiang Ge Mama", she taught everyone to cultivate bean sprouts. When the green beans that have been stored for 3 years sprout new sprouts, she is very happy. But at the same time, I also think of my daughter, "Songzi is as thin as a bean sprout."
As a photographer who has been photographing Jiang Qiulian for many years said: In this difficult trek, we may never be able to empathize with her encounter, and her dedication to the whole thing is a personal choice.
Jiang Qiulian at the forum. Photo by Zhu Jianyong
The day of victory
Jiang Qiulian clearly remembers that on January 10, 2022, the day the Chengyang District People's Court in Qingdao City, Shandong Province, pronounced the verdict, it was the 1894th day that her daughter Jiang Ge was killed.
When she walked out of the courtroom, her hands were clasped around her chest, holding the verdict like a treasure. The judgment shows that the defendant Liu Nuanxi compensated the plaintiff Jiang Qiulian for various economic losses of 496,000 yuan and a consolation payment of 200,000 yuan for mental damage within ten days from the effective date of the judgment, and bore all the case acceptance fees.
"I respect the court's verdict, but I feel that the punishment is not in place, and justice is not up to standard," Jiang Qiulian told reporters word for word as she walked out of the trial building.
The bag she carried with her was Jiang Ge's clothes. When the case was filed in April last year, she also brought Jiang Ge's water cup and clothes from the time of her murder. On that occasion, she told Shangguan News: "Bringing these things to the trial is to ask Ge'er to witness the trial with me." ”
The news of the victory was actually 10 days later than expected.
The trial date was originally set for December 31, 2021. However, on the evening of December 30, Jiang Qiulian temporarily received a notice that because the presiding judge was unwell and hospitalized, the trial time for announcing the verdict needed to be postponed. Jiang Qiulian's heart hung up again: she was afraid that there were new variables in it. She emotionally questioned the matter in her public account.
The verdict was finally set for the morning of January 10, 2022.
In the early morning of January 9, Jiang Qiulian could not sleep, and she recorded a video of publicly expressing her gratitude to everyone. Perhaps vaguely, she had a premonition that this sentence would be a consolation for Jiang Ge.
On the day of the verdict, the first thing Jiang Qiulian did after receiving the verdict was to go to Jiang Ge's tomb and read the full text of the verdict to her daughter, and she said to Jiang Ge: "Mother did it." ”
Jiang Qiulian pays tribute to Jiang Song.
Some netizens left a message on Jiang Qiulian's Weibo account, "Jiang Ge's mother can finally get rid of the shadow of Jiang Ge's case." She retorted: "Jiang Ge is the greatest sunshine in my heart, this pain can never be shaken off, this verdict is a consolation, for her to complete a thing." ”
According to the agreement, the day after the first-instance judgment came out, Jiang Qiulian would go to Beijing to present a pennant to her lawyer, Huang Leping. After discussion, the two decided to hold a symposium in Beijing, so that reporters who could not come to the scene of the trial and judgment could also chat with Jiang Qiulian, and second, Jiang Qiulian could also tell her story in recent years.
The next day, during the day, she appeared at the scene of the Beijing case forum, and although she was still tired in her eyes, her spirit was much better. She had been trying to restrain her emotions, occasionally showing some bitter smiles. But when it came to the details of Jiang Ge's murder, she still choked up several times.
Jiang Qiulian and the lawyer took a group photo. Lawyers Huang Leping (left) and Jiang Qiulian (middle)
Pursue morality
To seek justice for a deceased daughter is a mother's last obsession.
Before taking over the case, huang Leping, the lawyer representing her, always believed that Jiang Qiulian should be the image of "becoming a humble woman because of the pain of losing her daughter". After the first meeting last year, he broke this stereotype, "Ms. Jiang is also a well-communicated and relatively controlled family member of the victim. ”
As with the previous trial and the two pre-trial conferences, defendant Liu Nuanxi did not appear when the verdict was pronounced in court. But now for Jiang Qiulian, the verdict obtained on January 10 is of even greater significance. The judgment pointed out that Jiang Ge's selfless help should be praised, and Liu Nunxi's behavior was contrary to common sense and should be condemned.
After the verdict came out, Jiang Qiulian said she no longer needed Liu Nuanxi's apology.
Liu Nuanxi's only apology to Jiang Qiulian occurred in August 2017 when they met in Japan. "Auntie I was wrong, Auntie I will come to see you again." Liu Nuanxi said. But then Jiang Qiulian realized that Liu Nuanxi was not feeling guilty for Jiang Ge's life, but for her own life not to be disturbed. A week after that apology, Jiang Qiulian found that Liu Nuanxi began to change her name on the Internet to attack her and Jiang Ge, and many times even malicious personal attacks and slander.
From the murder of Jiang Ge to Jiang Qiulian's public search for Liu Nuanxi's address on the Internet, Jiang Qiulian and Liu Nuanxi communicated on WeChat for 200 days, and have been asking her to tell her the whole truth, but Liu Nuanxi has hardly replied. Liu Nuanxi's father even called and threatened Jiang Qiulian.
Later, a neighbor of Liu Nuanxi told her the address of the community, and Jiang Qiulian found that it was only 10 kilometers away from her home. "But I hesitated for half a day and still didn't go, feeling that I had gone to meet her, and she wouldn't say anything." Jiang Qiulian gave up the idea of confronting her head-on and decided to directly sue Liu Nuanxi. "If she had been brave enough to admit her mistake, there would be no case today."
Jiang Qiulian always believed that Liu Nuanxi was at fault in the process of Jiang Ge's harm, and his fault was enough to cause Jiang Ge's life to be infringed, and he should bear civil compensation liability. On October 28, 2019, Jiang Qiulian's lawsuit against Liu Nuanxi's life dispute was formally filed at the Chengyang District People's Court of Qingdao City.
In the first-instance judgment, the court found that Liu Nuanxi, as Jiang Ge's friend and rescued person, did not truthfully inform and remind Jiang Ge of the danger of infringement introduced by him, and when faced with the imminent danger of Chen Shifeng's unlawful infringement, he disregarded the safety of others' lives for self-preservation, and blocked Jiang Ge from being killed outside his own door, which was obviously at fault.
At the forum, lawyer Huang Leping once again played a video of the restoration of the incident that jiang ge had submitted to the court 10 hours before he was killed at the opening of the trial last year. It clearly proves that Liu Nuanxi, on the day of Jiang Ge's murder, knew that Chen Shifeng had used threatening language against her, but did not inform Jiang Ge and invited her to accompany her, putting her in a potential danger; and liu Nuanxi, when Chen Shifeng followed the two to the apartment, only cared about his own safety, entered the apartment alone to lock the door to avoid danger, left Jiang Ge and Chen Shifeng outside the door, and cut off Jiang Ge's escape channel.
When playing the video, Jiang Qiulian took the initiative to leave the table, and she wanted to avoid the detailed image of Jiang Ge's murder, "I can't stand it, if I watch it, I may go crazy." ”
Summer, a photographer who photographed Jiang Qiulian for 4 years, recalled a detail about Jiang Qiulian. On Mother's Day 2019, Jiang Qiulian walked into the theater alone for the first time in her life and watched a movie called "A Mother's Revenge".
Jiang Qiulian said that she was impressed by a sentence in the film - "God cannot be everywhere, so he created a mother, where justice cannot go, and there is a mother." ”
Jiang Qiulian has always called herself a "rural woman", but there is always a momentum forcing her to change, she said: "In order to get justice for her daughter, from a finger full of keyboards to find letters, to quickly find the location of 26 letters ... The song was killed, I was forced from a computer idiot to know what a word document is, to know the difference between word and pdf, to learn to extract text from pictures with QQ... Although I have learned so much knowledge, I feel very sad..."
On January 11, 2022, Jiang Qiulian was interviewed by the news media at a symposium organized by the plaintiff.
In the judgment of the first instance, the court expressed the following paragraph: Jiang Ge, as a female student studying in a foreign country, gave help to compatriots in distress, gave sincere care and assistance, and lost his life because of the unlawful infringement, and his selfless act of helping others embodied the traditional virtues of the Chinese nation, which was in line with the core socialist values and public order and good customs, and should be praised, and he was illegally infringed upon and deserved legal remedies.
"I think the most important thing about the court's judgment is to play a leading role in social morality, and it also has the role of a bellwether for social value judgments." Huang Leping said.
Some netizens left a message mentioning that if Jiang Ge's mother wins, she will have the courage to teach him kindness when she educates her children.
"Paranoid" mother
One night in late 2021, Jiang Qiulian received a call from a strange young man who muttered on the phone: "Can I call your mother?" ”
"No, you can't!" Jiang Qiulian answered without hesitation. "You have your own mother, why should you call me mother?"
In the comments, someone wrote: Perhaps the man himself has no malice, but in the wrong way. But Jiang Qiulian replied: Only Jiang Ge can call himself "Mother". She emphasized: "Jiang Ge is irreplaceable! Don't harass me so childishly! ”
Jiang Qiulian once wrote a sentence in her WeChat personality signature: refuse all kinds of persuasion. But there are still people who add her WeChat friends to persuade Jiang Qiulian to "put it down", And Jiang Qiulian said that she patiently replied at the beginning, "Thank you for your kindness, I know you are good for me, but I am really sorry..." But day after day, she gradually stopped paying attention to what others said.
She posted a public statement: "No matter how I choose to live, I have not hindered anyone's life, I am more than half a hundred years old, how to live, I think very clearly!" Please don't come and be my life coach!!! ”
In fact, not everyone sympathizes with the mother who lost her independence. In the years when Jiang Qiulian pursued legal responsibility from Liu Nuanxi, the online violence against Jiang Qiulian on the Internet has never stopped. At first, Jiang Qiulian just swallowed her anger, but after she learned some legal knowledge in 2018, she decided to sue these defamators, two of whom have already been sentenced. "In fact, every time I go to collect evidence of their online violence, it is to pour salt on my own wounds, and I am very uncomfortable." But Jiang Ge's life is gone, and I want to maintain her dignity. Jiang Qiulian said.
In December 2016, when Jiang Qiulian went to Japan for the second time, a volunteer helped Jiang Qiulian apply for a WeChat public account "Jiang Ge Mama", which later became an outlet for Jiang Qiulian's heart. In the public account, there are many short articles that are the dialogue between her and Jiang Ge. Most of these articles are published late at night and in the early hours of the morning. I always involuntarily find the connection between the items and Jiang Ge: clothes, some kind of food that Jiang Ge liked before he died, and even beans that suddenly sprouted after 3 years.
Although her daughter disappeared, she was the only support for Jiang Qiulian to live a good life. Late one night, Jiang Qiulian wrote, "Classmate Jiang Ge, you have not praised your mother for 1832 days. Mom wants to praise herself, I have experienced more than five years of inhuman torture, and I have not yet fallen, these tortures have formed layers of thick scabs in my heart, wrapping this broken heart tightly inside, only the deepest and deepest little softness holds your love! Mom loves you! ”
Jiang Qiulian did not want to let herself be overwhelmed by hatred, she said: "Once I was in Beijing to catch a car, and I fell down and couldn't move. A young man lifted me up, I couldn't speak at that time, and he dared to help me. What if the people around you are Liu Nuanxi? Or be good. ”
On her WeChat public account, many young people who are in trouble in life are willing to talk to her about what their parents are unwilling to say. Jiang Qiulian always advised these young people: in addition to life, everything else is a small matter. But whatever happens, protect yourself. Your lives are not only your own, but also part of those who love you.
She was particularly concerned about the situation of girls studying abroad. An international student in the United States confided in her about the nearby school shooting. Jiang Qiulian warned the girl to protect herself.
When a girl who Jiang Qiulian enlightened met with her, she hugged her and said, "Auntie, I am the girl who lost love, and I just want to tell you that I am getting better." At that moment, Jiang Qiulian felt a rare sense of relief.
Jiang Qiulian wants to help more young people, but she knows that her ability is limited, and she will also fall into the pain caused by Jiang Ge's death from time to time.
She once helped these helpers set up a media relief group. She invited reporters to join in politely and sincerely: "Hello, disturb you!" I often receive some help messages, my WeChat friends have some media friends, I want to set up a WeChat group, there are messages I posted in the group, to see if everyone can help, I want to invite you to enter..." At that moment, Jiang Qiulian has forgotten her victim identity.
At the media symposium on January 11, 2022, the short video of Jiang Ge's murder was played again, and Jiang Qiulian left the scene.
Beyond livelihoods
Jiang Qiulian is not very satisfied with the amount of compensation currently awarded by the court, and these compensations cannot cover the various expenses she has spent for the Jiang Ge case in recent years, and there is no way to measure Jiang Ge's life.
The lawyer has calculated that jiang Qiulian's spending vouchers over the years has been more than 1.2 million yuan.
In 2017, Jiang Qiulian asked the society for help once and received nearly 300,000 yuan in social donations. At that time, some people accused Jiang Qiulian of using her daughter's affairs to sell misery, and since then, she has not taken the initiative to ask for help, nor has she accepted donations again.
Jiang Qiulian has no savings around her, she has not worked for 5 years, and she relies on her pension to survive. After her daughter was killed, she went to Japan 6 times, and the cities she traveled in the country, such as Beijing, Shanghai, Nanping, Xiamen, Jian'ou... She couldn't remember the number of times.
However, Jiang Qiulian still decided to donate nearly 700,000 yuan of civil compensation to out-of-school children, and she promised to donate the compensation in the later infringement lawsuit.
Donate to out-of-school girls, or because of Jiang Ge. Jiang Qiulian said: "I can't help all the girls, but I can help one, and I especially hope that girls can have the ability to dominate their own lives." Jiang Ge can go to Japan to study, and I believe that if she is still alive, she will be able to live the life she wants to live. ”
At the media symposium on January 11, 2022, Jiang Qiulian occasionally couldn't help but cry. Photo by Zhu Jianyong
In the past two years, Jiang Qiulian's life has also had other exports: on May 15, 2021, Jiang Qiulian opened a Small Weibo Shop to make money by operating a local specialty online store to maintain her life. She often recommends the nutritional value of various local specialties in the public account, and there are already thousands of transaction orders, but she solemnly explains to everyone: "Buy the things in my online store not because of sympathy, but because of need." ”
Jiang Qiulian said that the opening of the online store is to maintain her life after retirement, and the second is to save a savings that can support her to file criminal proceedings with Chen Shifeng.
At the forum site, Jiang Qiulian has been answering reporters' questions. The only time she asked reporters about the online store.
"Do you like me live selling goods?" Jiang Qiulian smiled and asked a row of reporters on the opposite side, she proposed that those who agreed could raise their hands, "How many people do I see supporting my live broadcast sales?" Can I do TikTok (live streaming)? ”
This question, Jiang Qiulian urgently asked several times at the forum site, she needed the voice of "affirmation". Jiang Qiulian said: "What I am worried about now is that I don't understand anything now, I don't have my own team, who of you will teach me?" She took the initiative to take out her WeChat QR code and invited reporters to add her friends.
Jiang Qiulian has always been afraid that after the rest of her life without Jiang Ge, she will gradually become a person who has been thrown away by the times. She forwarded a video of an elderly person living alone abandoned by the times and his ability to survive declined, with the sentence "All this, because of the murder of Ge'er, I may encounter."
But Jiang Qiulian needs to catch up with this era head-on, earn money through her own ability, at least have enough money to support her to continue to walk the rest of the litigation road.
For her, everything at present is not the end of Jiang Ge's case. In 2037, after Chen Shifeng returned to Japan after 20 years of prison, she was determined to prosecute him again at home.
This idea arose during Chen Shifeng's trial in 2017, when Jiang Qiulian saw an article in the Procuratorial Daily that roughly introduced such transnational criminal cases, in fact, after the convict was sent back to China after serving his sentence, he could continue to pursue his criminal responsibility in China.
"I hope he is sentenced to death, but hope is hope, national law is law ... I still respect the laws of the country. Jiang Qiulian said.
Waiting for that moment to come is a tug-of-war between her and her body. Jiang Qiulian's health has not been very good. At the end of December last year, when she came to Beijing to await trial and judgment, she also took advantage of the gap to run to a major hospital in Beijing. But whenever she talks about her body, she always says that she is not terminally ill, not seriously ill. "I hope to wait for this day, so I also want to take more care of my body for this day." After all, I have 16 years to do. ”
She said: There was Jiang Ge in the past, of course, there were no major events in life. Encountering any problems, Jiang Ge is really the root of the poplar tree, and there she can cross the past in everything. And now, the uprooted mother still has to continue to cross the future life alone.
If the epidemic stabilizes, Jiang Qiulian plans to see Poplar Forest this fall, and "Poplar Woman" is her WeChat name.
From boarding the high-speed train in Qingdao to entering a symposium at a law firm in Beijing's Haidian District, Ms. Jiang's do-not-disturb phone records show 166 missed calls, and she knows that most people are concerned about the next path of litigation.
Until now, Jiang Qiulian still hasn't made up her mind whether to continue to appeal to Liu Nuanxi, she said: "I still need to precipitate my own mood." ”
In the eyes of some people, the murderer Chen Shifeng's fufa is the end of Jiang Ge's case, but for Jiang Qiulian, it is only another starting point.
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An old photo of Jiang Ge and his mother Jiang Qiulian before his death.
Column Editor-in-Chief: Wang Xiao Text Editor: Wang Xiao Title Image Source: Zhu Jianyong
Source: Author: Yang Shuyuan Wang Qian