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A funeral procession, most likely in Tientsin - online sources

Plight of the Twin Paragon Sisters

By C.S. Hagen

TIENTSIN, CHINA – Ligu and Chungu never lingered at market, like other girls their age, hoping to get noticed. When the Zhang sisters grew hungry, they tightened their clothes. Too poor to have their feet bound, they contended themselves with helping mama embroider lotus shoes and trinkets for copper pennies. During a time of near anarchy, as the Qing Dynasty succumbed to Sun Yat-sen’s Republic in 1911, Tientsin’s streets teemed with gangsters, prostitutes, foreign merchants, and revolutionaries, but the Zhang sisters held true to their family’s Confucian values, keeping the “door wind” (门风), or bad reputation, at bay.

The Zhang sisters, Ligu (丽姑), the eldest, and Chungu (春姑), stayed home, as virtuous young girls under the Confucian order. They adhered to the “four virtues,” practicing proper speech and jealously guarding their chastity; they worked diligently, and strived for modesty. Their family was among Tientsin’s poorest classes living in the Heping hutongs, but they didn’t complain even when their father, a rickshaw puller, couldn’t earn enough to put rice on the table.

A maobi painting done by C.S. Hagen in 1987

Innocent of the prostitutes and gangsters around them, the Zhang sisters blossomed into young teenagers, catching the eye of a local wealthy mawang, or pimp, Dai Fuyou (戴富有). Dai was more than a pimp, however; he was a “white ant,” a trafficker of young girls sold, tricked, or kidnapped then forced into the prostitution trade, known in Tientsin as the Land of Broken Moons.

Dai schemed. He plotted how to tempt the Zhang sisters into his “wolf’s lair,” according to a November 20, 2013 documentary broadcasted by China Central Television Network (CCTV12), and didn’t find an opening until baba, Zhang Shaoting (张绍庭), lost his rickshaw.

And then Dai set his trap.

The Twin Paragon Sisters (双烈女案) case is documented in part through an unnatural death records book dating to the Ming Dynasty. The book is thick, revealing more than 36,000 women who met grisly ends in attempts to keep their chastity, and reads, according to CCTV12, like a “King of Hell’s Death List.”

The Zhang sisters’ case is also known as one of Tientsin’s “Eight Strange Cases of the Republic.”

Baba

Every time Zhang Shaoting found a little fortune, disaster followed. Much like Old Testament Job. The two men could have been bosom buddies.

In the late 1890s, Zhang, at 19-years-old, fled his hometown of Nanpi in Hebei Province and took refuge in Tientsin’s Old Xikai District, a 4,000-acre strip west of the old “Celestial City” under French control. (Present day Xikai Catholic Church, Isetan, and Binjiang Road area). He found gainful employment in a ceramics shop, worked hard, and won the shopkeeper’s daughter’s hand in marriage. He was a cautious fellow, submissive, sometimes talkative, according to Nanpi Government reports. Being raised as a devout Buddhist, he was careful to protect his family’s “door wind.”

Lao Xikai Church, or St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, in the Lao Xikai area – Tianjin Archives Museum

When Ligu was one-years-old, the first disaster struck.

In June 1900 approximately 120,000 Righteous and Harmonious Fists mauled Tientsin, declaring war on colonial foreign powers of the United Kingdom, France, Japan, Germany, Russia, Hungary, Italy, and the United States in what came to be known as the Boxer Rising. Supposedly impervious to bullets through magic charms pasted on their chests and Plum Flower Boxing, the Boxers attacked embassies in Peking, beheaded missionaries across the provinces, slaughtered opium dealers at the port cities, and joined forces with Qing Dynasty Imperial troops to sack the Tientsin Foreign Settlement, an area along Tientsin’s Hai River given to the eight foreign powers through the Unfair Treaties of 1860.

Read more about Boxers here.

The Eight Allied Nations’ response was harsh. Naval cannons aboard the H.M.S. Terrible and H.M.S. Fame flattened Tientsin’s ancient walls and city, including the ceramics shop in which Zhang worked. Jin Lao, the proprietor, died days after the siege, leaving Jin Shi, his wife, and young daughter stranded.

An uneducated man, Zhang turned to the rickshaw. Grueling work in Tientsin’s hot summers and bitter winters. Lacking money to purchase the vehicle, Zhang was forced to rent. Costs weren’t cheap, according to Michael T.W. Tsin in a book called Nation, Governance, and Modernity in China: Canton 1900-1927.

The rickshaw puller taking a break – Virtual Shanghai

“Most companies charged a daily deposit of C$5 [five Chinese dollars] plus a rental fee of about C$1 for each rickshaw. The amount was paid by the contractor, who assumed full responsibility for the vehicles. A puller had to pay the contractor a commission for his service, in addition to the cost of leasing the rickshaw.”

In Tientsin, contractors formed guilds to protect their interests, and zealously guarded their rickshaws and fiefdoms on which they moved people and goods.

“The transport workers and the guilds that controlled them, with a history of more than 200 years, were among the oldest and most important participants in the making of the Tianjin [Tientsin] working class,” according to Gail Hershatter in her book The Workers of Tianjin, 1900-1949.

“Tianjin [Tientsin] lived by trade: it was the meeting point of five rivers, an important juncture on the Grand Canal, the loading point for sea shipment of goods from North and Northwest China, the entry point for foreign imports and Shanghai goods, and the major northern station of two railroad lines,”

Freight haulers, rickshaw pullers, and three-wheeled carts all worked for the highly organized guilds frequently fighting each other for turf. Tientsin’s guilds were among the most feared and despised organizations, according to Hershatter.

A puller, such as Zhang Shaoting, was usually charged 60 Chinese cents per shift, which varied from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m., or from 2 p.m. until midnight. Naturally, rickshaw pullers labored at the bottom of Tientsin’s social order, and were affiliated with Dark Drifters, hunhunr, and gangs, such as the Qing Bang and the Green Gang.

“Carters, boatmen, innkeepers, transport workers, brokers – even if innocent, they deserve to be killed,” was a common Tientsin folk rhyme in the early 20^th century.

The copper cash strings Zhang brought home were hardly enough for three mouths, and when Chungu was born three years after her elder sister, mama turned to embroidery to make ends meet. Later, she also gave birth to a boy, ensuring the family’s name, but forcing her husband to work longer hours, deteriorating his health.

In the spring of 1916, Zhang’s rickshaw was stolen while he napped. A rickshaw in those days would take a year’s wages to pay for, and Zhang, now nearing 40, became desperate.

Wang Baoshan (王宝山), a Dark Drifter lackey of Dai Fuyou, hurried to his “elder brother” with the news, according to CCTV12. When Dai heard of Zhang’s plight, he sprang his trap. He knew all he needed about the Zhang family, after all, they did not live far away; they were practically neighbors.

Read more about Dark Drifters here.

“Give your daughters in marriage to my two sons, and I will more than settle your score for the stolen rickshaw,” Dai said, according to CCTV12 and Xinhua News. “I can have the marriage contract written up immediately.”

Seeing no way out of his predicament, Zhang agreed, and hurried home with the good news. His daughters were to be wed to wealthy landowners. The Zhang’s family fortune had taken a good turn.

True to his word, Dai soon brought the marriage contract, but found excuses not to sign. “What’s the hurry? We’re all one family now. Listen up, I can do you one better. Since your daughters are now my daughters, and my sons your sons, and because you are not wealthy, why not let your daughters live in my mansion? They will be treated like my own blood, or my name is not Dai.”

Once again, Zhang agreed, and Ligu and Chungu, filial daughters, left with Dai to live in his mansion.

The Wolf’s Den

Not long after the Zhang sisters arrived, Dai hired a middle-aged woman to teach the sisters how to sing crude songs, fit only for a teahouse brothel. Daily, men came to listen to the lessons, and Ligu noticed the men speaking excitedly to each other in hushed tones.

In the Qing Dynasty’s twilight years, teahouses were community centers, nests for gossip and news, but were also podiums for talented artisans, courtesans, and prostitutes to tell stories, recite poetry, sing songs, and tempt possible lovers. Such establishments were hounded by the so-called “mosquito press,” local tabloids who rated the performances, and gave helpful “tips” to anyone wanting to enjoy the “Flower World,” more appropriately known as the Land of Broken Moons. The comings and goings of strange men and heavily painted women at Dai’s mansion increased Ligu’s fears she and her sister had been tricked, according to CCTV12 and Tianjin Museum Archives.

Early one morning Ligu and her sister fled Dai’s mansion, returning home. Ligu found baba sick, too weak for work, but when he heard the news, he was livid.

When Dai discovered his sons’ fiancées had ran away, he too was angry. Having such tasty meat so close to his lips could not be forgotten, according to CCTV12. But Dai had laid his trap, and was not deterred. Having in his hands the original unsigned marriage contract, he made a counterfeit document, with all parties’ signatures, and promptly sued Zhang for breach of marriage contract in the Zhili Province Supreme Court.

Upon seeing the signed forged document, and recognizing a man of means, court officials wasted no time in siding with Dai, and ordered the Zhang sisters to return home with Dai to be married to his sons. Dai’s lackey Wang and his two sons also testified the marriage document was authentic, according to CCTV12.

“Dragons breed dragons; a phoenix gives birth to a phoenix. A mouse’s son can dig a hole,” CCTV12 reported, meaning Dai’s sons were as wicked as their father.

Zhang, barely strong enough to walk, spewed blood across the courtroom floor after a coughing fit.

“Zhang’s sudden loss, followed by the elation from arranging his daughters’ marriages, and then the consequent anger at being cheated was too much for Zhang to bear,” CCTV12 reported.

“He became deathly sick and died two days later,” the Xinhua News and online records from the Tianjin Museum Archives reported.

Suicide

After nearly 100 years, a memorial stone dedicated to the Zhang sisters still bears their tragic story. The massive stone was spared the ravages of war and the Cultural Revolution, CCTV12 reported, because a former viceroy of three northeast provinces, Xu Shichang (徐世昌), wrote the story, and a famous politician and calligrapher, Hua Shikui (华世奎), painted the characters.

The Twin Paragon Sisters memorial stone still standing in Tianjin’s Zhongshan Park – online sources

The Zhang sisters were distraught, characters in the stone read. No one could help them. Their father was dead; their mother was a simple seamstress.

With Tientsin law on their side, lackey Wang and Dai’s two sons pounded on the Zhang family door, demanding that the sisters report to the Dai household the next morning. If not, both would be sold to a brothel, CCTV12 reported, which was a fate the sisters already suspected.

All night long the Zhang sisters cried to the heavens and to the earth, with no response, the memorial stone read. Nearing dawn on March 17, 1916, Ligu, who was 17-years-old, turned to her 14-year-old sister.

“The life of a whore is no life for us,” Ligu said. “It is better we die than to let the door winds befoul the Zhang family name.”

Choking on her tears, Chungu agreed.

Ligu procured three packs of red phosphorus matches from under the bed. One by one, she cut the tips off and placed the match heads into a pile. She poured two cups of kerosene and dumped the match heads into the cups, creating a powerful poison.

“You must drink this.” Ligu handed her younger sister a cup. “The fate of a whore is worse than these few minutes of discomfort. If we must die then that is our fate, but we must not ever slight the Zhang family’s name.”

Ligu drank down the poisonous concoction. Chungu hesitated.

“I heard those who commit suicide will go to hell and be tortured,” Chungu said.

“Do not be afraid,” Ligu said. “Even in death we will leave behind our innocent bodies.”

Chungu raised the cup to her lips, obeying her big sister and crying as she gulped kerosene and match heads down.

A picture broadcasted by CCTV12 about the Zhang sisters before their suicide pact

A picture broadcasted by CCTV12 portraying the Zhang sisters before their suicide pact.

Pain didn’t set in for two minutes, the memorial stone read, and then the sisters’ stomachs began to roil. Both fell to the ground, screaming in pain, waking mama and neighbors who hurried to discover the commotion.

Mama urged the girls to drink water. Both refused. Ligu convulsed. Blood leaked from her eyes and mouth. And then she lay still.

“Even in death, we will leave behind our innocent bodies,” neighbors reported Chungu said. And then, with a final, weak cry, Chungu followed her elder sister into the afterlife.

The Aftermath

The Zhang sisters’ tragic story spread like wildfire through Tientsin, alerting young and old, rich and poor, alike. Thousands took to the streets in protest of the court’s decision.

News of their double suicide soon reached the ears of Xu Shichang, a future Nationalist president during the Warlord Era, and Hua Shikai, a Tientsin native, and former military minister for Qing Dynasty princes. After the revolution in 1911, Hua retired to Tientsin, bought a house in the Italian district, and became a renowned calligrapher.

One of the four famous ministers of the late Qing Dynasty, Zhang Zhidong (张之洞), also heard of the Zhang sisters’ suicide pact, and was moved, not only because they shared the same surname and hometown, but because of the girls’ adherence to Confucian principals in a time when most Tientsin natives could not afford to.

Hua, Xu, and Zhang Zhidong publicly damned the Tientsin courts, and demanded Dai’s arrest, according to Tianjin Museum Archives. The fragile Nationalist government, in only its fifth year since the revolution, grew fearful of unrest. All attempts to arrest Dai failed; the white ant escaped. Protesting crowds grew larger.

Before the third day after death, when the spirits return to collect monies for heaven, Yang Yide (杨以德), the Zhili Province police minister, scripted province-wide arrest warrants for Dai, and tried to appease the populace by collecting monies from local merchants and gentry for a proper burial, according to the Tianjin Museum Archives.

Yang Yide (杨以德)

“Funerals, like weddings, could be a ruinous expense,” Hershatter wrote in her book The Workers of Tianjin, 1900-1949. “Families went into debt to buy burial clothes and to rent a burial plot for the deceased… ; to do otherwise would violate the codes of filial piety and invite bad luck and the scathing judgment of the neighbors.”

When the burial day arrived, more than a thousand people joined the funeral parade. Musicians were hired. Professional criers wailed at the parade’s tail. Soldiers in full military regalia cleared the streets. Relatives from Nanpi, now known as Dongguang County, made the journey, and the largest, most extravagant coffins were hoisted by eight pallbearers each. The funeral parade started in the western part of old Tientsin, circled the city, and ended on present day Xiguan Avenue. The sisters were laid to rest inside a Female Paragon Temple, or temples for strong women.

Before 1911, Female Paragon Temples, Lienv Ci (烈女祠), were reserved primarily for female martyrs defending piety and chastity. Tientsin’s Paragon Temple at one time housed more than thirty graves, including the Zhang sisters, and held sixty-one tablets honoring those who died while defending their innocence.

On May 4, 1919, the wife of the future first premier of communist China, Deng Yingchao, declared women’s equality across China, consequently abolishing thousands of years of feudalism and Confucian thought. Tientsin’s Paragon Temple was destroyed to make room for a movie theater soon after the declaration, according to the Tianjin Museum Archives. A hutong sprouted around the theater, and became known as the Female Paragon Temple Hutong (烈女祠胡同). Most, if not all of the hutong, is now gone.

According to the Tianjin Museum Archives, the Zhang sisters’ remains and their headstones were relocated to Nanpi before the theater was constructed. Monies left over from police collections were used to provide for widow Jin and their brother, who also returned to Nanpi under Zhang Zhidong’s protection.

In later years, the Zhang sisters’ tragedy was featured in numerous Peking operas and plays across the nation. The stone monument telling the sisters’ story sits in Tianjin’s Zhongshan Park, protected under a small, grey-roofed pavilion to this day. How the stone survived Tientsin’s warlords and revolutions isn’t important. Its facade has smoothed with time; the characters are chipped, and difficult to read, but it remains as an affirmation that goodness, sometimes, is stronger than evil.

Chuanyechang wood plaque, characters written by Hua Shikai - online sources

Chuanyechang Bazaar on Binjiang Road wood plaque, characters written by Hua Shikai – online sources

Photos by C.S. Hagen - 74 Munan Road, formerly Hong Kong Road, Li Baowu's house, presently Goubuli restaurant. From 1997 - 2000 was known as Broadway Cafe.

Crate Ripper Case

February 16, 2014 / CSHagen / 0 Comments

By C.S. Hagen

TIANJIN, CHINA – Twisted love triangle stories from time immemorial outnumber the flakes of a winter’s snow, but there is one instance, especially appalling, that occurred in Tianjin. This true story, called the “Crate Ripper Case,” takes place in the old English Concession area in October 1947, and is listed in historical records as one of the “Eight Strange Cases of the Republic.”

Gather closely. Add a log to the hearth. Light and good jasmine tea will scare the demons away. Listen in; you don’t want to miss a single word.

Fifteen months before Mao Zedong’s communist troops stormed into Tianjin via the Qingnian Road, the Li family lived in four identical houses at the golden corner of Hong Kong and Glasgow roads, known today as Munan and Guilin roads. Father Li, an industrious entrepreneur, the brainchild behind the Tianjin Zhongtian Electric Factory, passed his legacy to his children, but failed to endow his fortitude to his youngest son, Li Baowu.

Baowu was a loafing playboy, most likely inbred traits inherited from Tianjin’s Dark Drifters. He kept er nais, or concubines, in Tudor houses from the northern-most Austrian Concession all the way to the south, where the Germans and Belgians lived. His wife of twenty years, Dong Yuzhen, daughter of the Kuomintang mayor of Tianjin at the time, Dong Zhengguo, he kept at the corner house on Munan Road with his four surviving children.

Lucky, lackadaisical Baowu, being an educated chap, a Tianjin College of Business graduate (now the Foreign Language Institute on Racecourse Road), was naturally a curious fellow, for his sexual escapades and frivolous parties were the talk of the town.

Baowu could not be tamed. Under his stretched belt he had three wives, a host of concubines and saltwater girls who lived in boats along the Hai River.

Saltwater girls came from sampans like these, throughout history they were denied the chance to live on land and became brothels on the water

Saltwater girls came from sampans like these, throughout history they were denied the chance to live on land and their homes became brothels on the water – photo by C.S. Hagen

Not until 1945, days after the Japanese left in defeat from Tianjin, did Baowu find his perfect match and fourth wife. A half German, half Chinese beauty named Shi Meili, English name Marion Sze, winner of the Miss Beidaihe Beauty Pageant. Before she met Baowu she was a secretary with round, wet eyes, a pointed chin, and eyebrows arched like silkworms, the Tianjin Republic Daily reported in 1947.

Love fell on Baowu. Meili agreed to become his fourth wife and he bought her a house at Number 53 Dali Road, or perhaps it was the other way around: Baowu bought the house and Meili agreed to marry. Either way, the love struck couple married in secret and Baowu spent most his nights with her in carnal comfort on Dali Road, leaving his quieter, rounder first wife alone with his children at 74 Munan Road.

Life was grand for Baowu, a notorious do nothing and mouse-hearted villain of this true story. He spent thirteen thousand US dollars on a coat, ordered catering service from the renowned Kiesslings for lunch. He bought Meili a Buick, hired her a chauffer, and insisted his first wife, mother of four surviving children, take rickshaws to the market. When he was feeling especially energetic he beat his first wife, sometimes bashing her head against a coffee table or kicking in her pregnant stomach, killing his fifth and sixth unborn children.

On October 25, 1947, Yuzhen, the first wife, traveled by rickshaw to Dali Road, insisting that her husband accompany her to buy a new coat. When he refused, they argued.

(Bad picture, only one taken from internet) Number 53 Dali Road, where the heinous murder was committed – online sources

“You give me money so I can buy myself another day,” neighbors reportedly heard Yuzhen say.

Not wanting to disturb the neighbors more than necessary, Yuzhen accepted an invitation from the fourth wife to come upstairs and enjoy lunch and some wine. The argument continued. A bottle was thrown. Baowu naturally protected himself with a hammer, striking Yuzhen across the head. When Yuzhen fell, Meili pounced. She held the first wife by the legs until Baowu exhausted himself by smashing her head in with the hammer.

For four hours after the heinous murder, Baowu and Meili sat and watched Yuzhen’s body, perhaps hoping she would wake, or somehow magically disappear. When the first wife neither awoke nor vanished, they rolled her up in the bloody carpet and placed her in the bathtub.

According to the Tianjin Republic Daily later that afternoon Meili faked a loud, fond farewell out her bedroom window. “Zou hao, zou hao, Wu Nainai,” farewell, farewell, fifth grandmother. She called out Yuzhen’s pet name. The loyal couple then proceeded to clean the house, taking care not to leave a trace of their bloody deeds. Baowu made one trip outside to buy a whicker crate, which cost him ninety thousand francs.

Long after the city slept, with only the harvest moon as a silent witness, Baowu and Meili took a butcher’s knife to the first wife’s corpse.

They hacked. Thwack, thwack! They sawed. Gzzz, gzzz! Chopped her into three pieces and then burned her face so she could not be recognized. Carpet and Yuzhen fit perfectly – a bug in a rug – into the crate. When they finished they rested from their labors, and saw that it was good.

Now, Meili was not just a porcelain vase. She had a head of fine brown hair and a brain to go with her pale beauty. She contacted a Latvian friend, Naylor and Maleina, who were involved in the shipping business. Thinking if there was no corpse there would be no crime, she asked to store the whicker crate in the Latvian’s warehouse, and equip it with an address to be shipped to Germany.

“Dearest Maleina,” Meili wrote in a note on October 26. “I need to place with you this carpet and possessions because my husband’s number one wife is bothering me. I am afraid and cannot live here on Dali Road any longer. I also don’t want my husband to know about this and I will explain at another time.”

A second note quickly followed, hand carried by a servant girl.

“Beloved Maleina, sorry for the disturbance. I will prepare the crate immediately and make sure it is wrapped securely. I’ve already told my husband, who will come by soon to take measurements.”

When they arrived with the crate three days later on the afternoon of October 28^thto Suite 16 Tai’an Road, inside the Jingming Apartment Building, the four of them carried the crate to the warehouse. Naylor mentioned the crate was unusually heavy and had a strange, fishy smell coming from inside.

“It’s because my lazy cat peed on the rug.” Meili tossed her auburn hair and threw a laugh into the sky, replying casually and with the lightning-fast thinking processes of a fox demon.

Crate Ripper Case Revisited

February 15, 2014 / CSHagen / 0 Comments

By C.S. Hagen

TIANJIN, CHINA – Sixty-seven years after the Crate Ripper Case was solved, old Tientsin hands remember the mysterious murder like it was yesterday.

Angela Cox Elliott, born in a civilian prison at the Japanese Weihsien Internment Camp, was only a child when Li Baowu and his lover, Shi Meili, otherwise known as Marion Sze, killed, beheaded and dismembered Baowu’s first wife, Dong Yuzhen, sensationally startling the world in the process, and adding its own death nail into the traditions of polygamous marriage. She remembers it was the talk of the city until long after the communist takeover.

Time and gossip have pretzel-ed fact and fiction, but the truth – provided by eyewitnesses who still remember – proves the murder was premeditated, and is more gruesome than anything else reported on the incident since October 25, 1947, the day Dong Yuzhen died.

(Left) A movie produced in Hong Kong late 1947 called “Empty Crate Corpse” (空屋箱尸) featured the heinous crime. (Center) Dong Zhengguo, (董政國) a Tianjin warlord, died May 20, 1947 of illness, only four months before his daughter’s grisly murder on October, 25 1947. (Right) Dong Yuzhen (董玉贞), 35, mother of four, known in the Western press as Chaste Jade, was the victim.

Li Baowu, also known as Walter Li, was the vice general manager for the Tientsin Chung Tien Electric Factory. He enjoyed model cars and women, so much so he kept three wives and a host of prostitutes across the city. Marion was pale-skinned, of Sino-German blood, and a rare beauty – eyebrows arched like a kingfisher’s – who loved her furs and diamond rings. The couple was not married, but Walter Li lived with Marion at number fifty-three Dali Road, often neglecting his first wife and children.

A telephone made by the Tientsin Chung Tien Electric Company

Dong Yuzhen, known in Western media as Chaste Jade, frequently visited her husband at the Dali Road house where arguments inevitably ensued. If Marion received a fox fur coat, Chaste Jade naturally wanted a Siberian mink coat. They argued loud enough to disturb the neighbors.

The Crate Ripper Case was not only reported in Tianjin, known as Tientsin in pre-liberation days, but headlined in international newspapers ranging from Massachusetts to Singapore.

The Lowell Sun splayed the story on November 14, 1937 with the headline Chaste Jade’s Murder Rocks Tientsin.

“A beautiful Eurasian girl, a socially prominent Chinese businessman, and his first wife, Chaste Jade, are the principals in one of the bloodiest triangle murders yet splashed on the front pages of the Tientsin press,” the article written by Al Wedekind began. Dong Yuzhen is named Chaste Jade, her murderous husband’s English name is Walter Li, who was listed as thirty-eight years old, and Shi Meili was named Marion Sze, who was twenty-seven at the time.

“Li had been separated from his first wife several years,” the article continues. “On the morning of October twenty-fifth, Chaste Jade called at his home on one of her periodic guests [visits] for money.

“She did not leave the house alive.”

Story as published by the Lowell Star in 1947

The Indiana newspaper Tipton Tribune also published the story on the same day. The article states Chaste Jade had been mutilated and burned and that the family with whom Marion left the crate containing Chaste Jade’s dismembered body had notified police after noticing a strange smell.

Marion left the crate at her friend’s house as she was planning on leaving, and said it was heavy because it was filled with gold bars. She waved away concerns by blaming a strange odor emanating from the crate on cat urine.

According to foreign Tianjiners at the time, a dog found the crate several days later, and created a ruckus that could not be ignored. Shortly before Marion’s arrest and while carving ham for dinner at a friend’s house, Marion flippantly mentioned it was much like slicing human flesh. No one paid her any attention as their minds were on the supposed gold bars locked away in the smelly crate.

The stories scared Elliott, who was only five years old at the time. She reflected to when she was a child sitting in Victoria Park across the street from the Astor Hotel, watching Marion’s elderly parents.

“Why is that dog sniffing around the crate?” Elliott recalls her mother saying about the dog that wouldn’t leave the crate alone. “You would think there was a dead body in it.”

No one would have guessed that there truly was a dead body in the crate. It wasn’t until the fishy smell became too much to bear and a sticky substance bubbled from a crack that police were notified. After all, they were friends.

During the past decade Chinese media ranging from CCTV to the Tianjin Film Studio to the China Daily have electrified the Crate Ripper Case saying it was the “last case of the Nationalists, the first case of the communists.” Reports differ on where Chaste Jade’s body was stored and whether the animal sniffing the crates was a cat named Snowball or a curious dog. Another differing report is that according to CCTV Walter and Marion took the body back to Chaste Jade’s house at seventy-four Hong Kong Road (now Munan Road) to dismember in her own bathtub before hauling her in a whicker crate to a friend’s apartment.

As a third generation expatriate in China, Elliott remembers watching a play about the murder before being banished with her family after nearly a century of calling China their home. Her great grandfather Paul Splingaerd, known around the world at the time as the Belgian Mandarin, arrived in China in 1865. Paul Splingaerd was appointed a mandarin of the imperial Qing Dynasty, working not only as a magistrate, but also as an industrialist for China before his death in Xi’an in 1906.

“There was a reenactment of the play that I went to see with Mum,” Elliott said. “I can still picture it – the scene with Mrs. Li – he hits her, she konks out – she’s loaded into the bathroom and then him coming out and they’re discussing whether they would cut the body up. I can’t remember from then on. It was just a one-room act.”

In Singapore, the case was called the “Tientsin’s Torso Murder Case,” according to November 4, 1947 article in the Singapore Free Press. Tianjin locals became enraged. The president of the Tientsin Middle School, Lu Yi Jen, appealed in a heavily reported speech to all Chinese women demanding an end to polygamous marriages.

“Marion was a very pretty girl, a big show off,” Elliott said. “She bragged about all the items Mister Li bestowed on her. The story goes that his wife accepted the relationship. In those days it wasn’t uncommon for a man to have another girl or sometimes several, except the wife stipulated that whatever he gave Marion, she wanted the same thing.

“I can’t really remember what it was the wife missed out on. A fur coat, or a ring precipitated the final scene when the wife paid a visit to Mister Li ensuring her demise.”

Most media report Walter and Marion decapitated Chaste Jade and burned her face, wrapping her body parts in a rug. But this is not what happened. Not at all.

The night before the murder took place, Walter and Marion played nice with Chaste Jade, expressing a desire to make up for past mistakes. Chaste Jade purchased a typewriter for Marion, as Marion agreed to move to Beijing. Instead of moving, however, she invited Chaste Jade for dinner, catered by Kiesslings, inside her Dali Road house. Wine and liquor was poured. Conversations turned sour. Chaste Jade threw a cup and Walter beat her head in with a hammer, breaking her left arm in the process.

According to the Tianjin Republic Daily later that afternoon Marion faked a loud, fond farewell out her bedroom window. “Zou hao, zou hao, Wu Nainai,” farewell, farewell, fifth grandmother. She called out Chaste Jade’s pet name. The loyal couple then proceeded to clean the house, taking care not to leave a trace of their bloody deeds. Walter made one trip outside to buy a whicker crate, which cost him ninety thousand francs.

After four hours waiting the necessary tools were procured. Chaste Jade’s limp body was put into the bathtub and dismembered. Blood pooled down the drain. Four days later when police discovered the contents inside the whicker crate, her body parts wrapped in towels, they also noticed Chaste Jade’s head was missing. Her severed head was found inside Marion’s oven. Walter filed a missing person’s report on October twenty-sixth, but the couple was arrested on Halloween, October thirty-first. Marion admitted to holding Chaste Jade’s feet, urging Walter to strike harder during the altercation. She later recanted.

The bathtub in which Dong Yuzhen (Chaste Jade) was killed, according to CCTV.

The bathtub in which Dong Yuzhen (Chaste Jade) was dismembered, according to CCTV.

One eyewitness account reports seeing Marion the day she was arrested. She waved helplessly as a police car pulled up next to her. The next day Marion’s parents came asking for help, but there was no help to be had. Marion needed a lawyer.

“Marion’s mother was a portly, old German lady, but so sweet,” Elliott said. “Mister Shi was very thin. It was embarrassing for me to speak with them and I felt very sorry for the old couple. No doubt Marion must have been a spoilt child.”

Elliott was barely five years old when the Crate Ripper Case stole headlines across the world. Having just been rescued by US Paratroopers from the Japanese Weihsien Concentration Camp only two years before, Tianjin was not how she left it and tensions were brewing. The Japanese were gone, but the Nationalists were corrupt; the communists were coming, and Chaste Jade’s murder sparked fury not only against the culprits, but against foreigners as well.

One rumor was that Walter had hired a foreign surgeon to carve up his wife. Another story is that the couple had purchased tickets for Hong Kong to escape, but cold weather and ice floes on the Hai River delayed their route. Most international transportation started on passenger and trading ships navigating the Hai River in pre-liberation days, and then traveled south to Shanghai or Hong Kong. Another story, and possibly the strangest, was written in a short story by Tientsin-native Alex Auswaks, a Jerusalem-based crime fiction writer. He reports in 1994 that Marion was a breath taker, had olive skin, high cheekbones, long, straight, jet-black hair from her father and a curvaceous figure from her mother, a German woman named Josefa Hoffman. She was fluent in German, Chinese and English, and had a large crowd of suitors.

At school, Marion was a tomboy, but her mother said she was simply high spirited. When Marion came home once from an opium party, her mother said she had a fever. No matter her curiosities, Mrs. Hoffman, better known as Frau Shi, said her daughter was loyal. Loyal to the bitter end when she helped Walter cover up a murder he committed by himself – perhaps – going as far as to contact a German friend, Adolf Fleischmann, a lover or would-be suitor who would have done anything to help.

She was a model prisoner, adapting readily to the communist’s reeducation programs. Her loyalty is questioned, however, when she was released early from Xiqing District’s Xiaoxiguan Prison to shack up with the warden. Auswaks’ rendition of the story leaves more questions than answers.

(Left) The Dali Road House (25 Dali Road, 大力道25号) where Marion Shi (施美丽) and Walter Li (李宝旿) resided and where Dong Yuzhen (Chaste Jade) was killed. (Middle) The Jing Ming Apartments（景明大楼）on Tai’an Road (泰安道) where the whicker crate with Chaste Jade’s body was kept and later found. (Right) The Hong Kong Road (74 Munan Road 睦南道74号) Li family house where Chaste Jade lived with her family.

For days Walter and Marion avoided the truth and police inspectors. The investigation that followed first targeted rickshaw drivers and the local bandits. Walter told Kuomintang Tianjin Chief Superintendent Xiao that bandits had probably overheard the argument he had with his first wife and that she was robbed for money, all the while sliding a thick wad of bills into the officer’s lap. Walter spent hundreds of thousands bribing police, so much that it was learned later that nearly every Tianjin police officer benefited from his unreserved charity at some time during his incarceration. He eventually cracked under twelve hours of Kuomintang police interrogation, however, and was later sentenced to death, but spent the next two years in luxury at the Xiaoxiguan Prison. Marion was sentenced to life in prison without parole. The couple lacked for nothing while in prison and before the communist forces overwhelmed the Republic. Walter wore his own clothes, slept on a soft Western bed. He even hired his personal chef to cook his meals.

Not until May 4, 1951 was Walter tried and sentenced a second time by a new communist court. He was executed by firing squad twenty days later.

Eliott and her family stayed in Tianjin until 1956, nearly seven years after the communist takeover. The years between 1949 and her departure were bleak. The sparkling clubs lost their luster and once colorful parades down Victoria Street (now Liberation Street) disappeared. Meat, oil and rice were rationed. Coffee was brewed with chicory. Communist officials squeezed remaining families and factories until payrolls could not be met.

Angela Cox Elliott

Elliott’s father worked for the Credit Foncier d/extreme Orient at the corner of Rue de France and Victoria Road, and held out against communist demands as long as he could. Eventually, his company was forced to shut down, its property given up, and her family boarded the Heinrich Jessen ship to Hong Kong.

Elliott waited more than thirty years to return to Tianjin, which she now considers her home. As a child, however, she couldn’t wait to leave and go abroad where English was spoken and the streets were clean and filled with lights. In 1999 Elliott visited the Dali Road house and found the old bathtub. The house was in decent condition, and people still spoke of the gruesome murder. Marion was released in 1954 and was said to be working at the Ambassador Hotel in Hong Kong. Local legend says she returned once to her Dali Road home after the Cultural Revolution and then begged the Li family for forgiveness.

None was given.