Being on the run was bitter and lonely, former fugitive says

Yang Xiuzhu, a most wanted fugitive now in jail, said people don't know the bitterness and loneliness she experienced while on the run in foreign countries, according to a program aired by China Central Television.

Yang, 72, former vice-mayor of Wenzhou, East China's Zhejiang province, was number one on the list of China's top 100 fugitives released by Interpol in 2015.

She said "people at home could not really understand the bitterness, and only we who stayed overseas would know," according to the five-episode feature program "Red Noticed" broadcast by CCTV recently.

"The loneliness was overpowering," Yang said. She even worked in Chinese restaurants just to talk with workers there in native dialect of Wenzhou. "I just wanted to speak more in Chinese," she said.

Yang fled China in 2003 and stayed a long time in the Netherlands and the US. She returned and turned herself in on Nov 16, 2016.

Yang pleaded guilty to charges of corruption and bribery. Hangzhou Intermediate People's Court sentenced her for eight years for embezzlement and taking bribes in October 2017.