Chinese teen takes his own life after "abandoned by his parents twice"
A teen reportedly committed suicide after his search for his birth parents went viral on social media and they rejected him.
Liu Xuezhou, 17, took his own life at a beach in Hainan province early Monday (Jan 24) morning, after leaving a note on Chinese social media platform Weibo.
Police launched a search for the boy after they were alerted by the public that he could be in danger, and later confirmed his death to the media.
Liu's story first came to national attention when he posted a video on December 6 asking for help finding his biological family.
The teen said in the video he was born between 2004 and 2006 in Hebei province and was sold by his biological parents to his adoptive parents when he was three months old.
According to Liu, his adoptive parents died in a fireworks accident when he was 4. Liu then spent most of his life getting passed among relatives after the accident.
Through help from social media and the police, Liu tracked down his birth parents last month. They had since divorced and started new families.
When Liu was first reunited with them, the family seemed happy, but they began to quarrel after Liu asked his parents for a separate place to live, which they could not afford.
Liu said his parents did not allow him to live with them and refused to let him visit their homes. He said he asked them to "either rent or buy a place for me because I have been homeless".
He said his mother, Zhang, then blocked his number and social media accounts, calling him a "white-eyed wolf" – a Chinese term used to describe someone who is ungrateful and cold-hearted.
Zhang told Chinese media that she cut off contact with Liu to return to her "peaceful life".
"Wouldn't you stay away if he were your child and was being so defensive that he even recorded your conversations? His father has remarried, and so have I. He tried to force us to buy him a home, but we are not well-off enough for that," she was quoted as saying.
In the past week, Liu had publicly argued with his parents. In his 10,000-word suicide letter, he said he had been "abandoned twice by his biological parents".
Liu said the row with his parents triggered an avalanche of online abuse.
"There have been people attacking and cursing me on Douyin and Weibo in the past couple of days," he wrote in the suicide note. "I have been told to 'go to hell' and have been called various curse names, such as 'scheming son of a b****', 'disgusting' and 'sissy'."
Liu said the online attacks became unbearable. He also said in the note he had been bullied and called a "deserted child" by his schoolmates in the past, and claimed that a male teacher had sexually abused him but he had kept that a secret for most of his life.
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