RedHanded - Episode 375 - The Poisoning of Zhu Ling

Episode Date: November 14, 2024

In 1994, Zhu Ling – a brilliant chemistry student at China’s most prestigious university – fell mysteriously ill. A desperate SOS call by her friends on the fledgling Internet brought a chilling discovery: Zhu had been poisoned with thallium.And despite the evidence all pointing in one direction, the investigation ground to a suspicious halt, and nobody was ever charged. Join us for a story of jealousy, digital manhunts and seriously toxic friendship.Exclusive bonus content:Wondery - Ad-free & ShortHandAmazon Music - Ad-free & ShortHand (available with some Prime accounts)Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesFollow us on social media:YouTubeTikTokInstagramWebsite & Sources:redhandedpodcast.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hannah.

I'm Saruti. And welcome to Red Handed, where we're going to China. Uh-huh. A friend of mine is in China right now, and she was sending me pictures of what I can only describe as some sort of cult ritual. I would agree. Haven't seen the pictures. I was like, Sijin, what the fuck are you doing?

I was just waiting for some sort of Asian Jared Leto to appear. And she told me, we were talking a lot in New Zealand about living many lives. Seijin Zhang has lived more lives than I have ever, ever, ever fucking come across. She's now working for the Chinese Centre of Culture. Okay. Whatever that means. Fuck it up. She was like, I'm doing research.

And I was like, okay, just, you know, grow eyes in the back of your head. Anyway, we're taking you back to 1995, where in Beijing, things were starting to change. A canto pop star, Fei Wong, had just released the defiantly tongue-in-cheek Decadent Sounds of Fei, a cover album of Taiwanese music that had previously been banned for beingek decadent sounds of Fei, a cover album of Taiwanese music that had previously been banned for being too decadent. Western imports like McDonald's and Pizza Hut were starting to pop up like mushrooms all over the capital city. After decades of cultural repression, China was slowly starting to wake up to the world. But for 21-year-old student Zhu Ling, life had ground to quite a sudden halt. While Fei Wang's voice floated out of the radio, Zhu Ling lay unresponsive on a cold ward

at Peking Union Medical College Hospital in a coma. Her once-long dark hair had fallen out over the past few months, and her declining health had put a total halt to her studies at China's most prestigious learning institution, Tsinghua University. Zhu Ling now lay immobile, breathing through a respirator, seemingly struck down by a mysterious illness, while her parents kept a desperate vigil by her side. But what had happened to Zhu Ling was not natural. She had been poisoned.

And what had begun as a medical mystery soon turned into a shocking case of attempted murder, playing out against the backdrop of a prestigious university nicknamed China's Harvard. Zhu Ling's story became one of the first ever cases to go viral on the Chinese internet, and the search for answers continues to this day, spanning White House petitions and doxing efforts

all the way across the Pacific Ocean. With the investigation plagued by accusations of incompetence and corruption, Zhu Ling's case has come to highlight the cracks in the Chinese justice system, and also to act as a rallying call for millions of online vigilantes. This is the story of Zhu Ling, the poisoning victim a nation will never forget. Zhu Ling was born on the 24th of November 1973 in Beijing itself, into a well-educated but otherwise pretty ordinary middle-class family. Her dad, Wu Chengji, and her mum, Zhu Mingxin, met in 59. They were both

studying geophysics in Beijing, and they went on to work as engineers. After they got married, they had two daughters. The eldest, Wu Jin, was given her father's surname. And then we've got Zhu Ling, who took her mum's surname. And like we said, the family seemed to be pretty normal. Parents made decent money and they had good jobs. But they weren't what you would call politically connected, which will become important later on. Tragedy struck in 1989 when the family's eldest daughter, Wu Jin,

died under sudden and strange circumstances. Wu Jin was a biology student at the elite Peking University. Wu had been visiting the beautiful Yesanpo National Park with friends for spring break, and on the last morning of the trip, Wu Jin's friends couldn't find her anywhere. So they just assumed that she'd travelled back to Beijing already, so they left without her. But days later, Wu Jin's broken body was found at the bottom of a cliff in the national park. Since she had been keen to see a particular scenic spot before they left, it was assumed that perhaps she'd gone back there alone without telling anybody, and that she'd fallen to her death. Mystery solved. Kinda.

Because there were some weird things about the accident. For example, Wu Jin's clothes were apparently still neat, and her palms were apparently spotlessly clean. Not exactly what you'd expect from someone who'd fallen accidentally. So, questions began swirling. Could Wu Jin have been pushed? Or perhaps her death had been staged to look like she'd fallen? These are questions that would haunt her family for the rest of their lives.

But the incident was officially ruled an accident. And the case was closed. National parks, man. Fucking death traps. Stay out. Also, like, if you're there on holiday in a national park with your friends and one of them goes missing, don't just assume she went back to Beijing without telling you. Check. I know it's 1989 and, like, you know, mobile phones, etc. And they're kids. I get it.

But, like, that's scary shit. Woojin's parents found it pretty difficult to accept that their brilliant eldest daughter had died in such an odd freak accident. But they just had to get on with it. They had no choice. And so did Wu Jin's little sister, Zhu Ling. All of her parents' hopes were pinned on her now. Education has always been a key part of Chinese culture, rooted in Confucianism. But it felt especially important back in the 90s when China was attempting to establish itself as a global superpower.

Every middle-class family dreamed of sending their children into higher education to secure a prosperous future, and Zhu Ling's family were no different. Zhu Ling did as she was told, she kept her eyes on the prize, and she got into the best university there was. And off she went to Tsinghua University in Beijing to study physical chemistry and instrumental analysis. What's figurative chemistry? I think it's more like chemistry of things you can touch. I believe that's what it is.

Physical chemistry is a branch of chemistry that includes the physical and chemical properties of matter and how matter changes. Oh, okay. So she's trying to figure out if we can actually run through a wall. Yes. I think all the brightest brains in Tsinghua University are working on that particular question. Now, getting into Tsinghua was a huge huge deal for Zhu Ling in terms of prestige Peking and Tsinghua University are like China's Oxford and Cambridge so needless to say it's not exactly a walk in the park to get accepted and while the university is definitely a bit slacker when it

comes to foreign students who pay the big bucks, much like our universities, the acceptance rate for Chinese mainland applicants is between 0.3% and 2%. So Zhu Ling being accepted was a huge deal. And it's reported that she was a 92-grade student, which puts her at the very top of that cream-of-the-crop cohort. And not only was Zhu Ling incredibly academically gifted, she was also a talented musician. She was proficient at the gu qin, an ancient Chinese stringed musical instrument, and she even won a coveted spot in the folk orchestra at Tsinghua

University. And as if that's not enough, Zhu Ling was also an athlete. She was a star member of the swim team. So, needless to say, Zhu Ling's classmates described her as attractive, intelligent and talented. She's the all-rounder. Yeah, she truly is the all-rounder. It seems, it reminded me of when we did Jennifer Pan and I was reading up about tiger parenting. I remember reading that, yes, your parents will definitely want you to play a musical instrument, but what kind is very important. Piano and violin are favoured.

If you want to play the drums, that means you're going to be a drug addict. But anyway, in spite of her family's past heartbreak, the future was looking pretty rosy for Zhu Ling. By 1994, a couple of years into her degree, she was a shoe-in for an elite club of alumni known as the Tsinghua Clique, which counts many high-ranking politicians, scientists and business leaders amongst its members.

Xi Jinping, who is of course the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and Saruti's boyfriend, and essentially the leader of the nation since 2012, went to Tsinghua. So if Zhu Ling could keep her head down until her graduation, she was going to have the world at her feet. On YouTube, you can find a rather grainy video of Zhu Ling from December 1994. In this video, you can see her playing the guqin at a musical recital held at Beijing Concert Hall. It was an exclusive event attended by the city's most elite citizens.

Now, as you would expect, she's not performing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Zhu Ling was playing an ancient piece of music called Guan Ling San, meaning Guan Ling Melody, after the historic name for the city of Yangzhou. It's the longest and most complicated guqin arrangement there is, and you have to be a virtuoso to be able to play it, which unsurprisingly, our girl Zhu Ling was. Under the bright lights of the stage, this attractive and talented young woman represented everything that modern China aspired to be,

whilst embracing its rich history. She finished her performance to thunderous applause, took a slight bow, walked backstage, and then passed out. Those in the crowd would struggle to see that despite her calm performance, Zhu Ling was not OK at all. Around two months earlier,

she'd started to experience strange symptoms. It all started with an unexplained blurring of her vision and that sent her off to the university clinic. But still, nobody really thought too much of it. blurring of her vision, and that sent her off to the university clinic. But still, nobody really thought too much of it. Being a student at a university like that would be enough to put anyone under strain, even someone as competent as Zhu Ling. Maybe it was just stress, or one too many night-time cram sessions in the library,

but by the 24th of November 1994, which happened to be her 21st birthday, things had only got worse. Juling's dad visited the campus to take her out for dinner, and later he said that she could hardly eat because her stomach was cramping so badly. All through December, Juling's tummy issues got worse, and most alarmingly, her hair started to fall out in clumps. I mean, you would just get fobbed off with stress, wouldn't you? But Juling put a brave face on and suffered privately all the way through that recital on the 11th of December. I'm Jake Warren and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now, exclusively on Wondery+.

In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health.

This is season two of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to light some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history. Presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space aboard

the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes. And in the tragedy's aftermath, investigators uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA and its contractors that led to the disaster. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery+. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Start your free trial today. But eventually, the illness got too much, and Zhu Ling was admitted to Beijing Tongren Hospital on the 23rd of December.

The doctors there were absolutely baffled. While Zhu Ling had strange white markings on her nails called Mies lines, which might suggest some sort of poisoning, tests showed that her arsenic and mercury levels were normal. The doctors quizzed Zhu Ling about any potential chemical exposure she might have had as a chemistry major, but she insisted that she'd never been in contact with anything dangerous. So with no reason to suspect foul play, staff at Tongren focused on treating her symptoms. I haven't been anywhere near any nasty chemicals because I've been working on running through walls. Yes, exactly. There's no need for anything there.

So they're just focusing on basically treating what's wrong with her rather than figuring out the root cause. Zhu Ling was given nutritional support and traditional Chinese medicine and whatever they were doing seemed to do the trick. Because Zhu Ling's hair began to grow back quickly and her stomach pain subsided. Zhu Ling was soon discharged from hospital in January 1995 with a clean bill of health, although her parents, understandably, were still very worried about her since they hadn't actually figured out what had caused all of this. Fearing that perhaps her studies were causing stress-related illnesses, they encouraged Zhu Ling to take more time off.

And you know it's bad if you've got a couple of Asian parents telling you to stay home. But Zhu Ling insisted that she was ready to go back to school, keen not to miss out on graduating on time with the rest of her class. So Zhu Ling's parents supported her decision. But sadly it would be one that they would go on to regret forever. Zhu Ling's symptoms struck again almost the moment she stepped back on campus in February 1995. But this time they were even worse. By the 27th of February, Zhu Ling was experiencing excruciating pain in her feet and her legs that spread all the way up to her waist. It was so bad that she could barely let anything touch her. Then her hair fell

out again and her fingertips and the soles of her feet were bright red. She started missing class and falling behind with her schoolwork and soon whispers of Zhu Ling's strange illness spread among her classmates. Everyone was trying to answer the question, how had this star student, athlete and talented musician fallen so far from the top? By March, Zhu Ling was in such agony that her parents took her to Peking Union Medical College Hospital in a panic.

And this time, the doctor there, Professor Li Shenwei, had an alarming suspicion that Zhu Ling could be suffering from thallium toxicity. It's like an episode of House. Yeah, except in this, everyone ignores House. And they're like, shut up. House famously loves that. I've never watched it. What? No.

I just feel like I'm bored of those formulaic shows where like every episode is the same and they just slightly change what's going on. But it's Hugh Laurie. Yeah. I just never got around to it. Never got around to it. This is enough.

This is enough House for me. So yeah, let's get into our episode of House done by Red Handed. So this doctor is saying, I think it's thallium toxicity. So what are we talking about here? Basically, thallium is a soft, heavy metal that's grey or bluish-white in colour. And it's found in trace amounts in the Earth's crust and can be used in electronics and glass manufacturing. But it's also incredibly toxic.

And until 1972, when it was finally banned in the United States due to concerns about its harmful effects on humans, it was commonly used as an ingredient in rat poison and insecticides. But by the 1990s, it was even more heavily restricted, and basically was only allowed for lab usage.

So no ordinary person could ever have come into contact with thallium. Including Zhu Ling Ling who insisted that she hadn't knowingly been exposed and despite Professor Li's suspicions the hospital didn't actually have the necessary equipment to test specifically for thallium in her bloodstream so she was never tested and for some bizarre reason

the doctors seemed to move on from the thallium theory pretty bloody quickly, considering that they never actually ruled it out. So Zhu Ling's condition continued to worsen, and she was moved to the neurology ward. The new theory now was that Zhu Ling was suffering from Guillain-Barre syndrome, an autoimmune disease

where the body attacks its own nervous system. And throughout March that year, Zhu Ling got rapidly sicker. She was in agonising pain all over her body. She had distorted facial muscles and slurred speech. And she would choke even if she tried to drink just water. Despite doctors throwing a whole load of treatments at her and hoping that one something would stick, Zhu Ling did not respond. And on the 20th of March 1995, she fell into a coma.

Zhu Ling's parents watched in horror over the next few weeks as the medical team fought to keep their daughter alive. She was put on a respirator, given a series of plasma transfusions that left her with hepatitis C, and several of her organs effectively shut down. Throughout all of this, doctors were still searching for answers. Zhu Ling was put through countless tests, lumbar puncture, MRI scans,

immune system evaluations, chemical poisoning assessments, anti-nuclear antibody tests, HIV and Lyme disease tests. You name it, Zhu Ling was checked for it. Except for one thing, obviously. Whilst Zhu Ling clung to life, the hospital staff explicitly told her family multiple times that thallium poisoning had been ruled out, even though they never actually tested Zhu Ling for it. There was no diagnosis, not even close. And Zhu Ling was dying. By April, one of Zhu Ling's high school friends, named Bei Ji Cheng, was sick of waiting for answers.

Now, this was the 90s, in China. There were only a handful of places in the entire country that could access the internet. But as a student at the rival Peking University, Bei was one of the lucky few who could get online. So along with classmate, itsaiquanching, Bei sent out an SOS The message they posted on a medical forum on Usenet said the following in broken English

Docs in China unable to diagnose this disease help Within hours thousands of medical experts from around the world had responded with the overwhelming consensus that this indeed did sound like thallium poisoning. And this would come to be known as one of the earliest cyber crowdsourcing telemedicine trials conducted via the internet. That's so cool. And the World Wide Web, as it turned out, would save Zhu Ling's life. And also like

I love Bei and its eye-watching because there's no doubt they could definitely have got in trouble for doing that. Oh big time. And yeah I love that. I love that they take house to the world wide web. So good news but it wasn't going to be easy.

Whilst Zhu Ling's family and friends begged her medical team to follow the overseas expert's advice, they were stubbornly resistant to accepting input from foreign forces. And doctors flat out refused to sign off on getting Jueling the thallium test that she so desperately needed. Even though a doctor in their own hospital had already said this is probably thallium poisoning. So was it a case of doctors' egos not wanting to admit that they were wrong? Possibly, but I think it's more likely China being like, we don't need you, West. We're fine.

Our doctors are perfect. But whatever the reason, Zhu Ling's family didn't have time to argue. Their daughter was slipping away with every precious minute that passed. But more good news. A sympathetic doctor, Chen Jianyang, and Zhu Ling's parents secretly snuck out samples of Zhu Ling's urine and her hair and they sent it off to the Beijing Institute of Labour Health and Occupational Disease Prevention and Control. They love long titles for things, don't they? The results from these squirrelled wee tests came back on April 28th, and they were very conclusive.

Zhu Ling was carrying a thallium dosage thousands of times greater than the normal limit for healthy people. So this wasn't a mystery disease. It was poison. So cornered, the doctors at the Union Hospital were forced to do a U-turn, and they began treating Zhu Ling for thallium toxicity.

And they administered the one known cure for this kind of poisoning, a strange concoction known as Prussian blue. I've heard of that. Yeah, I was going to say, I think most people will have heard of Prussian blue. And if you're perhaps wondering why this sounds more like a Crayola shade rather than a medicine, well, that's because it's not far off the truth. Prussian blue is a natural pigment that actually has origins in the art world. So I think the reason most people have heard of it is

we probably at some point all had an oil pastel or a paint with the name Prussian blue. It was discovered actually by accident in 1704 by a German painter named Johann Deisbach. And he discovered it when he was trying to create a new red dye colour. He was mixing up crushed beetles in an effort to produce a reddish hue when he found himself instead gazing at a royal blue shade instead. Later realising that unintended insect blood in the mixture had caused the iron to react with potassium to create potassium ferrocyanide which had

a blue color back then Johan didn't realize that he just stumbled across a miracle drug to cure metal poisoning but he did know even then that he was sitting on a gold mine and LSD because at the time blue dye was incredibly expensive in Europe costing in some places even more than gold. So Johan marketed this shade as a lower-cost alternative for artists. And after the Prussian army adopted it to dye their uniforms, well, the rest is history. It wasn't until the Cold War rolled around in the 1960s the Prussian blue's other uses were discovered. When administered in capsule form, it can flush out metals such as thallium and cesium from the blood, making it a

vital treatment for radiation exposure. Today it's only available by prescription in the most serious cases, and today is actually one of just several medicines that are stockpiled by the CDC in case of a dirty bomb emergency. But let's leave art history where it is and get back to Jueling. After she was given Prussian Blue, Jueling miraculously began to respond and woke up from her coma in August 1995. But it was quite clear that she was never going to be the same again. The Prussian blue might have saved her life, but it couldn't undo the catastrophic effects of the toxin that had been slowly seeping through her blood for months.

Zhu Ling was left wheelchair-bound, with multiple organ damage and severe brain injury as well, which left her with the intellectual capacity of a six- or seven-year-old child. It's just so cruel. I think the whole case is just so unbearably cruel, because Zhu Ling is so young. She's so talented. She has so much. And I'm not saying this would be in any way acceptable if that person didn't have an incredibly bright future. But she has so much going for her.

And it is just stripped away from her in the cruelest way possible. The person who does this, the situation that's led to this, that person intended to kill her. But they've left her completely with nothing. That's what they've left her with. And look, I'm not saying that people with disabilities can't lead a full life, but to be left in this situation where she has the intellectual capacity of a seven-year-old

after having gone to one of the most prestigious universities in the world, being able to do all of the things that she did, I just can't even imagine. So the girl who was set to be the ace of Tsinghua's class of 97 was gone, and in her place was a shadow of her former self. As Zhu Ling's family struggled to come to terms with what had happened to her, three simple questions emerged.

The first, how? How had this poison got into Zhu Ling's body? Yes, Zhu Ling's body? Yes, Zhu Ling was a chemistry major, but she didn't have access to thallium and would have had no reason to be exposed to it naturally as part of her studies. It was quickly deduced that somebody else must have deliberately exposed her to it. Which brings us on to the second question. Who? Who had tried to poison Zhu Ling? And then, walking hand in hand with that question, comes the third.

Why? In 2018, tests conducted on hairs collected from Zhu Ling's pillow back in 1995 confirmed that she had been gradually poisoned over a period of at least four or five months in two separate stints. And this tallies with her first illness in late 1994, recovery over Christmas and then relapse after she got back to university in February. Thallium, interestingly but not particularly imaginatively, is called by some the poisonous poison.

It's tasteless, odourless, colourless, and the effects get worse over time and get worse with an increased dosage as well. It's the perfect choice if you want to poison someone without them realising over a long period of time. And whoever had poisoned Zhu Ling had done exactly that. Since nobody else had fallen ill at Tsinghua University, it suggested that Zhu Ling had been specifically targeted. Crucially, the perpetrator would need close access to Zhu Ling and her personal

effects, notably things she ate, drank or introduced into her body in other ways, like cosmetics, for example. So the poisoner had to share close proximity with Zhu Ling either by being on the same course or living in the same quarters as Zhu Ling, or perhaps both. So we are looking for somebody who is also trying to run through walls. Possibly. So Tsinghua University has always maintained that the security of its students' housing was incredibly strict. Boys were separated from girls in the dorms,

and there would be no way of accessing any dorm room apart from your own. Now how true exactly this is in practice is definitely up for debate. It feels like Randy Uni students would probably find a way of getting around this rule. But if we go with the facts as presented to us by the university, that leaves us looking at Zhu Ling's fellow dorm mates with a healthy dose of suspicion. So with that in mind, let us introduce you to the girls of Dormitory 114. We've had to dig real deep on Chinese gossip blogs to get to this information, so we can't totally confirm everything we're about to tell you, and of course quite a lot has been lost in translation.

However, some sources claim that Zhu Ling stood out among her dorm mates in ways that the rest of them weren't particularly happy about. Zhu Ling lived in dorm 114 with three other female students who were slightly younger than her. One's called Wang Qi, and then there's Jin Ya, and also Sun Wei, who was the same age as Zhu Ling. Some people have claimed that Zhu Ling's three roommates jokingly described themselves as the piglets, because they were short and fat. And that description certainly couldn't be applied to Zhu Ling, because she was tall and thin and pretty.

Sun Wei, in particular, was said to be nakedly jealous of Zhu Ling. People, especially young people, comparing themselves to each other like this is pretty standard, but in the case of Sun Wei and Zhu Ling, the rivalry was next-level toxic. Pun intended. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant.

When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.

You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness.

And inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada

on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favourite podcasts. Born just a few months before Zhu Ling, Sun Wei was also a chemistry major. And similarities didn't end there. Both girls also played traditional Chinese musical instruments. As well as the

guqin, Zhu Ling was skilled at the zhongra, a sort of old-timey Chinese banjo, which Sun Wei also played. In fact, Zhu Ling recommended for Sun Wei to join her in the folk orchestra after she'd initially failed at the auditions. Oh, that's going to sting. Yeah. Now, by all accounts, Zhu Ling liked Sun Wei and tried to help her out. But their friendship began to sour over time, as Sun Wei apparently grew more and more envious of Zhu Ling's accomplishments. Now, while Zhu Ling came from a more modest background than Sun Wei, whose family were prominent in Beijing

society, she seemed to have been beaten in every area, from academics to aesthetics. The final straw allegedly came when Zhu Ling beat Sun Wei in a student council election. Oh, God. But all of this is gossip, and it doesn't necessarily mean anything. Or does it? We already know that the perpetrator needed close access to Zhu Ling and also needed a motive to want to hurt her. But also they needed access to thallium, which, as we have told you, is very difficult to get. It's a restricted chemical. Only 200 people in Beijing were supposed to have authorised access to thallium in 1995, which considerably shrinks the suspect pool.

Of those 200 people who were allowed to get their hands on thallium, only seven were either faculty or students linked to Tsinghua University. And even as a chemistry student, Zhu Ling wasn't on that shortlist. But guess who was? Zhu Ling's closest frenemy. None other than Sun Wei. Invoices were later found for thallium purchases by Sun Wei's research group, and she had allegedly taken books out on the toxin prior to the onset of Zhu Ling's strange illnesses. But that does feel a little bit too easy, doesn't it?

From those earliest days, Sun Wei was in the frame as the prime suspect. But the investigation, or lack of one, into Zhu Ling's case will make you want to scream. Because despite it seeming incredibly obvious that Sun Wei warranted further scrutiny, a series of blunders and bizarre oversights meant that she avoided any sort of police contact for years after Zhu Ling's poisoning. The moment thallium poisoning

was confirmed on the 28th of April 1995, Zhu Ling's parents requested for the university to report the incident as a crime. And like we said, there's only seven people that could have got their hands on it in any sort of official capacity. It really wouldn't have been that hard for them to figure out who had thallium and who had a motive. But for some reason, the university didn't follow through on this request until a week later on the 7th of May. And that might not sound like a long time, but a lot went down during that week because, surprise, surprise, a robbery took place in dormitory 114. The only objects that were taken all belonged to Zhu Ling. Surprise, surprise, a robbery took place in dormitory 114.

The only objects that were taken all belonged to Zhu Ling. And they included her contact lens case, lipstick, shampoo, shower gel and a water cup. I'm sure you can all see where this is going. From everything we know now about Zhu Ling's poisoning, it's almost impossible to believe that the object stolen didn't play a role in making Zhu Ling ill. Especially considering that blurred vision isn't a typical symptom of thallium poisoning. But it certainly would be if your contact lenses were spiked with it. That's horrific. And that's her first symptom. That's absolutely horrific. This person is not fucking about. They are like, I am putting it in every single thing.

I also feel like, I know they just had to find some way to deliver it to Zhu Ling, but it really does feel like putting it in her shampoo, putting it in her lipstick, putting it in her... It's like attacking all of the things that they hate about her. Oh, absolutely absolutely and just the eyes the eyes and it really even when you said it makes me cringe and it reminds me this horrible story I heard the other day oh my god before we went on tour went out for drinks with some of Sam's friends and there's another couple there and one of them was talking about when they'd been on holiday and they'd been a bit drunk and they came back in from a night out and I'm trying not to use

their names but it's very hard and basically the guy was like to the girl don't put that in your eyes and she was like I'm putting these eye drops in my eyes and he was like don't put those in your eyes it's like I'm putting these eye drops in my eyes and she was like don't tell me what to do and he was like okay and he was like I just went into the bathroom and i got a big container of water and just stood there and watched her and she put it in her eyes it wasn't her eye drops it was vape juice i know and he was like i told you not to put it in your eyes and i was like was it worth that oh my god was she all right yeah she alright? Yeah, she was fine. She was laughing about it. She was like, at least the pocket was there ready for me to dunk my head.

I was like, guys, that's like scary, that's like sibling shit. Oh yeah. But it made me laugh and also cringe to death on the inside. I just can't, I can't get the image out of my head when Homer gets laser eye surgery and he's like no add-ons and then his eyes crossed over. I can't I just can't stop thinking about it. No no no I'm very grateful I don't have to wear contact lenses because I honestly don't know how I would do it. I can't go anywhere near my eyes. What? Anyway, moving on from iChat.

If Zhu Ling's room had been sealed properly as soon as her parents had asked for an investigation, this robbery might not have happened. And physical evidence tying the perpetrator to the crime may have been found. And Zhu Ling's family could have had answers years ago. But that is not what happened. The investigation moved agonisingly slowly over the next couple of years, despite Zhu Ling's family and supporters making countless appeals

for updates on the case. Nobody was officially questioned due to a lack of evidence and the police even ended up advising her parents to try guanxi if they wanted results. Guanxi loosely translates to an old boy's network and in essence it's basically using family connections to bypass the law to get what you want. But Zhu Ling's family didn't have political connections to rely on. So they were at the mercy of the official system, where they would be left treading water for years. And it is just so infuriating because this whole thing of like a lack of evidence is why we're not investigating.

It is such a fucking easy set of questions to ask. I know if you're saying there's a lack of evidence, why aren't you investigating the fucking burglary? There's multiple crimes being committed here. Investigate the burglary. And also, I cannot move past the fact that there are only seven people that they needed to start off by questioning, and they question a zero.

So Zhu Ling's family are left out in the cold, waiting for the system to do the work for them. But the same can absolutely not be said for Sun Wei and her family. It was only in 1997 when a new law was introduced that gave Chinese police the power to summon suspects for interrogation without actually arresting them that Sun Wei was finally brought down to face questions about Zhu Ling. Sun Wei was interrogated for eight hours straight and made to sign a document acknowledging that she was a suspect in the case. But that very evening, Sun Wei's family showed up and took her home.

And that was the last time that Sun Wei was ever questioned about the Zhu Ling poisoning case. We are once more dealing with the familiar scent of corruption. Because Sun Wei wasn't just an ordinary student. Her grandfather, Sun Yuqi, had been a high-ranking official in the Communist Party. And her dad's cousin, Sun Fuling, was the former vice mayor of Beijing. Then he was the vice chairman of China's top political advisory body.

Basically, Sun Wei was a big old nepo baby. It's kind of more than that, isn't it? I feel like that's putting it very mildly. It's just the perfect situation of comparison between levels of status in a country like China, which is, yeah, it's not what you've done. It's who you know. And this is the perfect example of it. It's so fucking obvious that Sun Wei did it. And spoilers, we're not getting any justice here. So while Sun's granddad passed away in December 1995 at the grand old age of 102, it's rumoured that he may have made one last request to his personal friend, Zhang Zemin called up the president of China and was just like, look, I'm about to die. We're mates. Can you keep the heat off my granddaughter for this whole poisoning

situation? Now, whether this is true or not can never be proven. But we do know that by December 1998, the police had closed the case and stopped looking for the person who had poisoned Zhu Ling. Sun Wei walked out of the police station a free woman, and has remained so ever since. How she sleeps, I don't know. And it's just like, was it fucking worth it? What was it even for? She didn't like...

And I'm not saying any of these situations would be okay, right? But it's not like she poisoned her to get some material gain that then she got it was just like i fucking hate you i'm gonna poison you it's not like she murdered her so that she could have the man she was with or so she could get the top spot at the folk orchestra she literally got nothing out of it she was just like so filled with hate and envy and obviously is a totally defunct person that she was okay with twice twice so this is the thing it's not like it's just she put something in her contact lenses or in her shampoo and she was like oh fuck maybe i shouldn't have done that but it's too late the cat's out the bag she's

fucking half dead i better just hope i get away with it soon we because yes we're going with the theory that it was her she she does it over months. And Zhu Ling gets better when she goes to hospital and isn't encountering fucking thallium and they don't know what's wrong with her, but she's just, obviously the poison's getting out of her body. She comes back to university and then gets sick again. So Sun Wei is like, okay with taking two stabs at this. There was never a point of reflection where she was like,

okay, maybe I've proven my point. Maybe just back off she wanted zhu ling dead i keep trying to think of because it's such a pure hatred isn't it like oh my god she's beyonce are you sure you want to say that Not behind a paywall? Sunway Beyonce'd her. Beyonce is Scar and Sunway. No, I mean, it's just so petty. That's the word. And it's like this childish hatred, which like we've all hated people. I hate loads of people but just having the next step of i'm not going to just avoid you or maybe move into a different dorm i want you dead and i think it speaks to the knowledge that well she's clearly a deranged personality but sunwe did this knowing full well that she would get away with it. Oh, absolutely.

It was the internet that saved Zhu Ling's life, as we told you, all the way back in 1995. And in the years afterwards, the internet has been the driving force keeping her name alive. Because I am absolutely sure that there's been quite a lot of squashing going on. In a 2024 Boston Globe article, writer Audrey Jilali described how online calls for justice in Zhu Ling's case have surged from time to time, mirroring a hopeful belief that the internet and free-flowing information could turn China into a transparent civic society.

Good fucking luck. Bill Clinton, of all people, predicted in 2000 that attempts to censor the web in China would be like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall. And while it's fair to say that this optimistic statement didn't quite pan out, censorship is still rampant on China's restricted internet. Cyber citizens have kicked up a fuss over Zhu Ling's case over the years, and it's never quite been

swept all the way under the rug. As the noughties brought a boom in the Chinese public's access to social media, whispered questions about Zhu Ling's unresolved fate began to gain traction once more. And the whispers eventually got so loud that even Sun Wei, public enemy number one, chimed in with her two cents. And this is just so unhinged. She basically posts a bizarre rant on social media site Tianiana, entitled Sunway Manifesto.

Jesus Christ. Yeah. And in this video, Sunway directly responds to the rumours that her grandfather had pulled strings for her by reminding everybody that he had died two years before she was even questioned, and saying, quote, the realms of the living and the deceased cannot communicate.

Oh, get fucked. Oh my God. She's such a fucking dickhead. If you've ever wanted to put someone through a wall, it's some fucking way. Now, you being a normal person listening to this episode might be thinking that she probably, you know, shouldn't have the nerve to be quite so sassy about all this. But there you are. She also made a bid against keyboard warriors in this video,

claiming that people should still be, quote, rational, objective and responsible for their own words and actions online. You couldn't make it up. No. I mean, it is just so demented. Yes, and so obvious that she, because obviously the sensible thing for her to do would just be not just go and live somewhere very quiet.

She tries multiple times, but thankfully in one of the rare times of me being happy with internet hounders, I'm glad that the following happens. And it's so like, I think it drives her to posting because she's like, why aren't the peasants doing as I say? I don't understand. I'm not getting what I want.

And even though Sun Wei attempted to get everyone on the internet to shut up, it didn't work. Online interest in Zhu Ling's case has naturally waned over the years. But it flared up spectacularly in 2013 when another poisoning case hit Chinese headlines. And it had eerie echoes of the Zhu Ling incident. A graduate student at Fudan University called Lin Senhao spiked a water dispenser with a toxic oil called

N-nitrosodium ethylamine. We're not going to say it again. We're just going to call it N-D-M-A. Not M-D-M-MA. That's a different story. Lin Senhao used NDMA to poison his university roommate, who's called Huang Yang. And the motive was apparently linked to disputes over trivial daily matters. And that's a quote. Wow.

Yeah. Huang eventually died of liver, lung and kidney failure. And despite Lin Senhao claiming that he was only trying to play an April Fool's trick on his friend, the courts weren't having any of it. Right. Okay. And unlike Sun Wei, he clearly didn't have people in the right places because he was executed in 2015. The Fudan poisoning case had irresistible parallels to Zhu Ling,

and film star Yao Chen raised awareness by tweeting about these similarities to her 45 million followers, and just like that a new generation was introduced to the story of Zhu Ling. And this time it went mega viral.

I didn't know they were allowed Twitter. Me either. Now have you thought doxing in the western world was bad? You haven't seen nothing. In China, the term renru soshua means human flesh search. Fucking hell. Yes.

Now, this might sound like something out of a Saw movie or perhaps some sort of disgusting porn situation, but it is not as gory as it sounds. The term actually just refers to the collaborative efforts of online users to bring awareness to a particular person or issue of interest. And sometimes this is for positive reasons. For example, in 2010, a photo of a homeless man in the city of Ningbo got hearts racing with the citizens calling him Brother Sharp or the Beggar Prince or the Handsome Vagabond. I'm sure his life was changed by that

particular human flesh search. I'm gonna look it up. Yeah I think we should. I actually haven't looked at a picture of him because I wanted to do it together. Brother Sharp. I don't know if he's even going to come up because we don't actually have his name. We don't have Chinese internet. No. Oh, here we go. Oh, he does come up very quickly. I mean, he just he looks like a hipster. He looks like he's going to annoy me when I'm trying to get out of Shoreditch. I mean, I don't think he's homeless. He doesn't look homeless in those pictures to me wow handsome chinese vagrant draws fans of homeless chic and when you google it it's like the the thing under brother sharp is internet celebrity oh he's he's got suits now oh has he well there you go i guess

i suppose it's probable connection i'm not implying that Brother Sharp was some sort of felon, but the closest comparison is probably, do you remember when that hot felon, Jeremy Meeks, mugshot went viral? And he ended up bagging a modelling contract. And loads of other things. Yes, lots of other things. And I don't think that the beggar prince is as attractive as the war felon.

No, he's not. But maybe my stupid Western eyes are deceiving me. Anyway. More famously, the human flesh search has focused its efforts on identifying and criticising people for perceived wrongdoings. Like that lady who put a cat in a wheelie bin in the UK. I'd forgotten about that. Well, China has their own. It happened in 2006.

It was actually the first human flesh search to get the attention of Western media. Chinese cyber citizens identified a woman in footage crushing a cat's head with her high heel. That's sick. Even for someone who wants cat assassins on the rota like you. I knew you were going to say that. Just because you're worried the beehive are after you,

they're throwing me under the bus. If I'm going to get human flesh search, you are too. Let's go. I don't know. In a battle between people who slag off Beyonce and people who don't like cats, who's going to get more hate on the internet? Let's find out. I'm just trying to have a nice time. We're both dead.

They're outside the studio right now, waiting for us to emerge to our doom. Can I have a last meal? I'm so hungry. I'm quite hungry, but the only thing I had in my house is pasta and pine nuts so that's what we're having they don't not go together no it's true anyway this cat assassin was dragged over

the coals and forced to apologise and she actually lost her job as a nurse fucking good I don't think someone who stamps on cats head should be a nurse. So she got her just desserts, but the human flesh search doesn't always get it right. In 2013, a taxi driver found himself wrongly accused of spitting on a homeless man after a license plate was falsely attributed to him. That driver had all of his private information posted online, including his social identity number and his mother-in-law's phone number. And he also received threats from people saying they were going to burn his house down.

Scary stuff, scary stuff. And obviously this is, you know, I know I said that I'm glad that Sun Wei was held to account by these internet vigilantes, which does go against what we say all the time. Because this is what happens. Sometimes they get it right. And sometimes they get it horribly, horribly, horribly fucking wrong. And there's no one there to police this situation. But typically, these human flesh searches don't tend to go after just like ordinary people. Typically, they're kind of used to target public officials who people think need bringing down a peg or two. And one of the most famous is the downfall of Yang Daxian, a mid-ranking civil servant who was photographed seemingly smiling at the scene of a traffic accident.

Within days, eagle-eyed users had spotted his collection of expensive watches that appeared to be far beyond his modest government salary. He was eventually found guilty of taking bribes and jailed for 14 years and became known as Watch Brother. So Sharp Brother, Watch Brother, all the brothers. Now according to the China story, the government tolerates human flesh searches directed against lower level local officials as they are punching bags that help relieve popular frustration and discontent. That is all a quote, right? Basically, cracking down on corruption has been a huge part of Xi Jinping's public pledge to clean up Chinese politics. And pylons of this kind are a harmless way to make

it look like they're doing just that. Also makes the average citizen feel like they have some power in a country where they have zero. And there's a weird cognitive dissonance in how ordinary Chinese citizens can raise hell online over small isolated incidents like this, whilst the wider issue of censorship, and freedom of speech obviously, is still so pertinent in Chinese culture. And one blogger put it like this, Chinese people don't care about freedom, but they do care about justice. Yiyun Li argues that for Chinese people,

the biggest of social issues may feel insurmountable, but injustice is more personal. The human flesh search engine lets even ordinary people raise their voices when they feel like they've been wronged. And that means that they feel like they're making small, righteous protests against the oppressive society in which they live. It's kind of like... It's tunnelling out of Shawshank with a rock hammer, isn't it? Yeah. And you come out covered in shit.

Exactly. So Zhu Ling's story, that of an ordinary middle-class heroine wronged by the spoiled child of a corrupt elite class, provided the perfect cause. So in 2013, after the Fudan poisoning case reviewed online interest, revived online interest, the human flesh search dug its claws into the ever-elusive Sun Wei. Online vigilantes discovered that by then she was married and living in the USA, having changed her name to Sun Shi Yan. A White House petition was set up, appealing for her to be deported for investigation in the case of Zhu Ling.

And it got over 150,000 signatures. Chinese people seem to love a White House petition. I'm not surprised. They've rallied against everything, from the censorship of coverage related to the Tiananmen Square massacre to banning imitations of a particular noodle dish called Landau noodles. Leave our noodles alone, you capitalist pig dogs. But despite the popularity of the petition made to President Obama

to deport Sun Wei, nothing officially came of it. And in the flurry of media coverage, she disappeared from the radar once more. Thanks, Obama. So while there was a hell of a lot of jello flying about, the Chinese government tried their very hardest to censor the renewed online interest in Zhu Ling's case. They banned keywords and hashtags linked to her. The police even issued a rare statement

defending their investigation in the 90s, claiming everything had been done properly and slamming any suggestion of corruption. State-backed tabloid, The Global Times, is there any other kind of tabloid in China? It sounds like the fakest newspaper in the fakest fucking comic book or something. The Global Times.

Sure. So, the Global Times managed an absolute beauty of a line they hoped would put an end to any speculation. Here's what they said. Sunway's family background was not distinguished

enough to prevent security organs from investigating the situation. What a smackdown. What a burn. She ain't all that. But she fucking was. Her granddad was friends with the president. You lie, Global Times. Now attempts at censorship have unsurprisingly just fanned the flames of online activism. Surprise, surprise, that's what happens when you try to censor things. When will the government learn? And Zhu Ling's family never gave up on their fight for justice either. In a phone interview with the New York Times in 2013, Zhu Ling's father simply said,

We want what we've always wanted, truth and justice. Off the back of the unsuccessful White House petition, Chinese-Americans supported the family to set up the Help Zhu Ling Foundation to raise awareness of her plight. And Zhu Ling's parents have constantly lobbied the police to reveal the findings of their paltry investigation in the 90s, as the case files have never been open to the public,

which also feels incredibly suspicious. For their part, the police have simply offered the pathetic excuse that they are deeply sorry for not having been able to bring Zhu Ling's poisoner to justice after so long. Or, should we really be saying, poisoners? In 2013, when the online storm was at its peak, Zhu Ling's parents received a typed letter sent from the USA claiming to have the inside story.

The anonymous writer alleged that Zhu Ling was poisoned because of karma and not just by one person, but by the whole dorm collectively. An anonymous writer alleged that Zhu Ling was poisoned because of karma. And not just by one person, but by the whole dorm collectively. I believe this. Really? I believe that it was all of them. Because, hear me out, it's a bit of a legally blonde situation. My theory, that is.

Because when you're living in a dorm, I'm going to guess there's one bathroom with one shower. That's my guess. There's only four girls there. That's not that many. Nobody's taking their shampoo in and out of the bathroom every single time. You're leaving your shampoo in the fucking shower. How the fuck do none of the other girls get any sort of thallium poisoning? You know not to use that shampoo.

And I don't think that they're as good at not stealing shampoo as maybe makes it look like I think they fucking knew there was poison in it. Maybe. That's my theory. The writer of this letter accused Zhu Ling of treating her fellow students badly and affecting the sleep of others for more than two years. They actually claimed it was so bad that Zhu Ling caused intense sleep deprivation in her dorm and it was in a state of semi-collapse. Put the fucking weird old Chinese guitar down and go to bed.

That's what they're claiming. God. The letter claims that the poisoners were just trying to make Zhu Ling a little bit sick. Well, a lottle bit sick, enough to get her to drop out of school so they could resume their studies in peace. And this could have some truth to it. Zhu Ling was known to return to the dorm very late at night because of all of her extracurricular activities. But most online commenters have slammed the letter

as either the work of a cruel hoaxer or maybe even Sun Wei herself, who was living in the US at the time, in a bid to assuage her guilt. But whoever wrote that letter, it does highlight a particularly callous type of victim-blaming. But maybe Saru is right. Maybe the girls of Dormitory 114

callously conspired against the odd one out that they were so bitterly jealous of. I would like to know what those girls studied. Because Sunway's a chemist, right? If we say that they're all in it together, I wonder whether Sunway was the only one

who knew how bad it was. Very possible. Very possible. But coming back into this theory that all of them are there together, or even if it is just Sun Wei, right? Research into jealousy as a homicidal motive, because that is the only motive that we can get anywhere close to in the case of the poisoning of Zhu Ling. Whether it is all of the girls in the dormitory or whether it was just Sun Wei. I think one thing we can be clear about is that it was definitely one of them. And jealousy does seem to be the only motive we can get anywhere near. And research into jealousy as a homicidal motive has tended to focus on sexual jealousy in abusive relationships,

with some studies placing it as the third most common reason for murder. Jesus! I know. I would love it so much if, like, you're just at a boring party and then someone's like, Oh, what do you do? And you go, Oh, I'm a scientist. What's your beat? What's your area? Jealousy. That'd be great.

It would be. And you'd be fucking full of work because everyone is seemingly at it. And we've seen even on this show plenty of times the green-eyed monster driving friends and acquaintances to kill. And there's plenty of stories like this.

In 2012, a 12-year-old Chinese girl brutally murdered her school friend with a kitchen knife because she envied her looks. In 2016, 27-year-old Myrna Sahilip collapsed and died after a coffee date with her old friend Jessica Wongso at an upscale cafe in Jakarta. Jessica was later found guilty of poisoning her friend's coffee with cyanide, with the motive apparently being her resentment over the drastically different trajectories

that their lives had taken since their student days. So was Zhu Ling's fate sealed purely because she had something that others didn't have? Something so precious that it was worth killing for? Maybe. But whatever the motivation might have been, it's petty to say the least, and Zhu Ling and her family have had to live with the consequences. Zhu Ling's health was in tatters after the poisoning. Her lungs had shrunk to a third of their normal size. She was almost blind.

She needed a wheelchair and her parents' assistance to move around. And also, she had to be supported with the most basic of self-care tasks. Zhu Ling's parents came to refer to the poisoning as the incident. Their lives have been split in two, before and after it. Their apartment stayed stuck in a time capsule of life before Zhu Ling came home from Tsinghua, and it runs more like a hospital than a home. Originally, since Zhu Ling was a student,

Tsinghua University paid her medical bills. But in 1996, so not that bloody long after, they abruptly cut off the funding. After legal battles with the university, Zhu Ling's parents received 3,000 yuan, which is 300 quid in a settlement. Union Hospital ultimately admitted failings in their delay to diagnose thallium poisoning and they paid out about 10 grand. But still, 20,000 pounds won't last forever, Jeremy.

And it didn't. It didn't even last 27 years. And Zhu Ling's parents provided around-the-clock care for their daughter. Now they're in their 80s. And they've spent their twilight years as unpaid carers. As for Zhu Ling, well, in a cruel twist of fate, her family believes that her memories prior to the incident have stayed intact. When asked her age, Zhu Ling would try say that she was 22,

still believing that she was a student at one of China's top universities and unable to comprehend her daily reality. My God. Left with severe brain damage, Zhu Ling couldn't control her emotions and grew frequently frustrated. Speaking to China National Radio in 2013, her mother said, in the prime of her youth, she nearly lost her life

and she's been miserable ever since. If you search the Zhu Ling hashtag on Weibo, you'll find countless eerie AI-created videos showing what her life might have been like if she was never poisoned. Things like graduating from university, getting married, having a baby, that sort of thing. God, why would anyone spend their time making that? That's really unsettling.

Yeah, I know. Why? We all know what would have happened in her life if this hadn't happened. She'd have fucking smashed it like she was. And Zhu Ling's fate is especially tragic when you look at it through the lens of Chinese Confucianist ideals, where grown-up children are expected to fulfil the concept of filial piety. They're supposed to take care of their parents into old age.

But for Zhu Ling's family, it was the other way around. In 2013, Zhu Ling's mum lamented, before the tragedy, all Zhu Ling brought me was joy. Her life would have been so promising if her plans had worked out. But now, all that is lost. There's nothing left. Zhu Ling died from a brain tumour on 22 December 2023, at the age of 50. Her parents say that she died with her eyes open, a haunting reflection of a Chinese spiritual belief that says this represents a lack of justice and peace. Oh my God, 50!

I know. At Zhu Ling's funeral service, they played Guan Lingsang, the piece that she had played so beautifully on the Guchen almost 30 years before. Her death, unsurprisingly, has triggered yet another barrage of online activism. In January 2024, Sun Wei was exposed to be living in a coastal Australian town under a new name, Jasmine Sun. All the controversy doesn't seem to have spoiled things much for her, though, because she's married with a daughter and has a multi-million dollar

property development business with her husband, Shi Fei Yu, also known as Ringo. Have you seen What They Do in the Shadows, the TV series? Bits, yes. Do you know about Jackie Day Turner? The name sounds familiar. So one of the vampires runs away and starts a new life as a normal human bartender, and he calls himself Jackie Day Turner.

He's like in fucking bumfuck nowhere Arizona. Love it. And he's like in like fucking bumfuck nowhere arizona love it and he's just like speaks like a victorian lord love it as like the name of your first teacher plus the yeah town in which your grandma was born so a new petition was hastily drawn up after people found out where Sun Wei was hiding now. And this one was obviously to get her deported from Australia back to China for an investigation. And this petition gathered over 45,000 signatures. But under this latest tidal wave of scrutiny, it's uncertain if Sun Wei is even still living in Australia. And more unlikely still is if the idea that it might bring Zhu Ling's case

any closer to being solved. Almost three decades after the incident, as her parents call it, and a year after Zhu Ling's death, the public are still waiting for answers about what happened to her. But even if those answers never come, Zhu Ling's legacy will live on through the quiet revolution that she sparked on China's fiercely censored online spaces. In her book, Zhu Ling's 45 Years, written five years before Zhu Ling died, Audrey Zhaizha Li sums it all up like this. To help Zhu Ling is to help ourselves.

Her hardship is our hardship, and her misfortune is our misfortune. But for our own sake, in a society where the weak and the wolves rush, there will be no people ridiculing and insulting the mediocre, and no one will be jealous and harmed by the excellent. I would be absolutely amazed if that got published in China. Even our book didn't get published. I know! I've seen the Russian one.

Yeah, we got a thing where it was like, oh, it's going to get translated into simplified Chinese, here as an advance. And I was like, oh, sick, cool. And then it was like, they've read it, they don't want it anymore. I'm amazed Russia took it. I know. Well, that's it, guys. That is the case of the poisoning of Zhu Ling, a long, sad story that's never reached a conclusion or any sort of justice. And my heart just breaks for her parents because they lost two daughters, two daughters who imagine they got into the Oxford and Cambridge of China.

They couldn't have had a better future set out for both of them coming from this very, very average middle class family with no connections. They did it all on their own. And then for the family to lose both of them under such horrible circumstances each time, not that there's ever a good way to lose a child and then to receive absolutely no justice at all whatsoever it's just so devastating and also the fact that they had to not just hope that they had a daughter who could have looked after them in later life they spent the entirety of their later lives looking after their daughter it's just so devastating in some way

wherever the fuck you are you horrible piece of shit i hate you i just it's just astonishing the level of entitlement's not the right word but it's so childish i think entitlement is the entitlement of like how dare she have what i don't have when i come from this sort of family and i should have been the one that had all of this so fuck you and i'm gonna take it away from you in the most callous depraved unhinged way not just once but when you get better and come back to school i'm gonna fucking do it again so there you go. Don't trust anybody. If you're sharing shampoo in a shared dorm, take your shampoo back into your room at the end of the day.

Oh, how much money to move back into student halls? There isn't an amount. The limit does not exist. It's the amount that Russia has just fined Google. just find google um if you haven't seen russia is pissed off at google at youtube specifically for taking down um their state-run media channels on there and they have fined them two undecillion rubles which in dollars is 20 decillion and uh that is 36 zeros or 34 zeros respectively and that is more money that exists in the world so that is how much to make me move back into student accommodation

thank you and good night goodbye He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Cone. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down.

Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment, charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I was f***ed up and I hit rock bottom, but I made no excuses. with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I was f***ed up. I hit rock bottom, but I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry. Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace, from law and crime, this is The Rise and Fall of Diddy. Listen to The Rise and Fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery Plus. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection.

Claudian Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come. This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On the Media. To listen, subscribe to On the Media wherever you get your podcasts.