Wang Desheng took a job in the city so he could provide a better life to his elderly Dad.
By Wu Yue
On Thursday afternoon, 30-year-old Wang Desheng received an unexpected phone call from a relative back in his hometown. “He told me directly, ‘your father died.’” said Wang. His village, Danping, was one of the worst-hit in last week’s tornado that left 99 dead in Jiangsu province, eastern China.
Like so many of his fellow villagers, Wang had left Danping long ago to look for work in the city. Many of the dead in last Thursday’s tornado were the elderly parents they left behind. Wang works in Suzhou, a city in Jiangsu more than 200 kilometers away. He stopped work and rushed back home.
“When I first time saw my father’s remains, his face was covered with blood,” Wang recalled. During the tornado on Thursday, Wang’s father, Wang Fufu, 75, ran out of his house to escape. However, he got blown to the riverside, was hit by flying rubble, and died, according to neighbors who witnessed the scene. “He died so suddenly, he didn’t even give me a chance to say goodbye,” Wang said.
As his parents’ only son — he has two older sisters — Wang carries most of the burden of looking after them. His mother died 14 years ago. After graduating senior middle school, Wang landed a job in a factory making remote control devices. “I earned 30,000 yuan (about $4,500) per year,” he said, adding that it is barely enough to send some money back. “I buy good and warm clothes for my father, but he cherished them so much he barely wore them. Now I can only burn them [as an offering] to him, in the hope he could have good clothes in heaven.”
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(Header image: Wang Desheng stands on his father’s damaged house in Chenliang Town, Funing County, Jiangsu province, Jiangsu province, June 25, 2016. Wu Yue/Sixth Tone)
