Profiles

Girl willing to stay with pigs for 14 years

By Xiao Guo (www.chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2006-07-12 16:07

Yu Ping, 17, a girl from the western province of Sichuan, lives in a damp four to five-square meter-room filled with a terrible stench, flies and mosquitoes.

Bespectacled Yu Ping, 17, a girl from the western province of Sichuan learns in a pigsty with pigs - her roommates. The Sichuan native has stayed there for 14 years, the Beijing News reported.[Beijing News]

Her room is a literal pigsty and she has stayed there since she was three years old.

What's beyond imagination is that she is not forced to stay in the shabby room. Instead, she lives there willingly.

"My parents are old and my family is too poor to give me a room. As a daughter, I can't complain," the Sichuan native says.

What the girl does have is her 54-year old father, 43-year old mother, one mu (0.0667 hectare) of land and several pigs.

"My father makes a living slaughtering chickens on the market for others and he brings home 11 to 12 yuan a day. My mother has retired due to heart problems," says Yu.

According to Yu her tuition fee is paid by selling the pigs, her roommates, on the market.

When Yu was eight years old, she began to live with her grandmother. But worrying that her late-night studying would keep her grandmother awake, she moved to her 'room' again half a year later.

Media reports say the girl is a modern King Gou Jian of Yue, a legendary figure noted for his stubborn courage and a spirit that never gave up. Gou, an ousted king during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States period (770-221 BC), claimed his revenge and regained his throne after staying in a firewood stocking room and daily sucking an animal's bitter gallbladder to remind him of the bitter taste of his defeat, and his desire for revenge.

The girl denounces the reports, saying she never intended to stay with pigs.

"I have no other choice, " she says, adding that "if there were a big and nice room available, I wouldn't stay with pigs.

Yu never feels that she is losing face even when compared with other modern 17-year-old girls.

"I don't like makeup. I like reading," she says.

"Some of my classmates are dyeing their hair but I won't do that."

Suspicions and rumors have risen as Ping's plight starts to make headlines about whether or not she is treated badly by her parents, or whether the story is a hoax to raise money for herself. An anonymous netizen posting on sina.com, one of China's online news portals, says it is a little suspicious.

"It is ridiculous and impossible for a young girl to live with pigs for 14 years. Two or three years would be acceptable. Is there any kind man to help her out with her troubles? It will take time to decided whether it is a hype or not."

"I dislike these suspicions and rumors because I know that my parents love me, " Yu says.

"They have even asked me to move out of the pigsty and they will move in, " says Yu, " But I can't let them do that because they are getting older.".

Yu says her father often tells her that her parents are sorry about her situation and the fact that she has lived with pigs since childhood.

"My mother always says they don't take good care of me," Yu says, adding "they never ask me to work. Only to study."

Her father also defends the situation.

"We are sad that our diligent daughter lives with pigs but we have no other choice. We don't have enough rooms," he says.

Her father says there are three rooms in the house.

"One is for me and her mother, one is a kitchen room and one is a central room which no one can live in according to tradition."

"It is not convenient for her to live with us as she is growing," he says.

In Chinese tradition, the central room is used to pay tribute to ancestors and living people can't sleep there.

"What a kind-hearted girl. As a resident from an urban area, I feel many outsiders don't really know about her situation and it is sinful start rumors about the poor girl and her family," an anonymous comment posted on sina.com says.

 

To contact the reporter on this story:
Guo Qiang in Beijing at guoqiang@chinadaily.com.cn