Healed by Love!
Keeping Tabs Weekly, Winter 2018
(Source: China People’s Daily Evening News translated from Mandarin Chinese)
Beijing Aviary Park and Beijing Bird Conservatory tell us about the previously unreported loss of two birds and two avian veterinarians, one each from their respective zoos, in a tragic series of misunderstandings.
The birds were very mysterious.
Fang xxxxxxx of the Aviary Park and Jin xxxx of the Bird Conservatory were in love. Fang was 26 and an orphan; she had been at the Aviary Park since graduating from Peking University on a scholarship. The Aviary Park described her as a logical, reasonable veterinarian. Jin was considered strong in character and morality. His family said he took his career very seriously, even working through holidays instead of traveling to Guangdong to see his kin for the New Year.
The two met through an online research site where they learned they were each caring for unique birds with similar deformities. Yet none of the other caretakers in the zoos were aware of these birds. Where were they? In the spring, the two met in person to travel to each of their zoos, combining their skills to treat the two birds in question.
Fang’s notes indicate she was treating a red-feathered duck with a single eye. The bird was incapable of flight, as it possessed a single wing. Among her descriptions of the bird, she wrote, “When I am in its presence, I feel safe from any distress. When its eye is upon me, I feel encouraged to take risks with my heart that I would never have considered before. What an odd bird!”
Similarly, Jin’s reports from the Bird Conservatory indicate that he was treating a bird that might have been from the same species, although his duck had blue feathers. It also only had one eye and one wing. Jin’s notes included a similar description of unusual feelings that he attributed to the bird: “I love my work…but I would love to meet someone, too. I think the bird is so unusual that I feel more positive about myself. We should find a way to sell this feeling!”
Jin’s supervisor reported that Jin often called Fang as if he had questions about the birds he was treating, “but he was actually wooing her. He told her she looked especially beautiful today, even though he hadn't even seen her yet! It was not very dignified.”
The trouble began when, after seeing her reports, Fang’s supervisors went to inspect her mysterious bird. They could not find it. Therefore, Fang was accused of taking her one-eyed, one-winged red duck from the Aviary Park’s grounds without permission. (The Park supervisors said they were unaware of her involvement with Jin or the presence of a similar duck at the Bird Conservatory.) She had gone to great lengths to conceal her activity, they said, and she was only discovered because of an unexpected change in the facility's cage cleaning schedules and her supervisors’ inspection of her reports. Given the uniqueness of the duck, as described by Fang, the Aviary Park dismissed Fang from her post.
But the Park insisted Fang xxxxxxx left of her own volition, and they denied ever having any such duck. Their ducks, they said, were perfectly normal ducks. No one at the facility would confirm or deny that any duck made people feel romantic. They also told reporters there was no one else to talk to who had been in contact with the bird, as no one else had ever seen it.
On that same day, Jin xxxx came to the Aviary Park to see Fang socially. When he learned she had been dismissed, he became angry on her behalf. This escalated into a scuffle with Fang’s immediate supervisor, whereupon the Park called in public security officers. Jin was arrested by the People’s Police and was held at the Beijing State Security Bureau Detention Center.
In an arresting statement, a public security officer noted that they discovered an empty cage that Jin said had “a very sick bird in it” mounted to Jin’s bicycle at the park’s employee entrance. This bird, Jin claimed, was a blue-feathered, one-eyed, one-winged duck. No one else observed this bird. The empty cage was taken to the Beijing State Security Bureau Detention Center as well.
A lone officer’s report included a sentence that was quite personal and suggested he, too, had seen a bird in the empty cage: “I would like to take his bird home to show my wife. I think we can change our minds about divorce if I do.”
While Jin was being held, Fang arrived at his workplace, the Bird Conservatory, along with an empty cage allegedly containing her red-feathered duck, to see Jin. One of Jin’s technicians, who had only heard about the Conservatory’s own unusual duck but had never seen it, encountered Fang and, hearing her description of a one-eyed duck in a cage, erroneously assumed it was the duck that belonged to the Conservatory. When he confronted Fang, she tried to explain the misunderstanding, but as the technician called for security, Fang was alarmed and fled the Conservatory on foot—directly into the flow of traffic outside the Conservatory’s entrance. She was struck by a bus.
She was taken to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army General Hospital, where she was placed in a temporary surgical waiting room. The empty cage with her imaginary red-feathered duck was placed in the room with her. Her intake notes included the following: “Patient claims her surgery will go well because love heals all wounds. We have requested a toxicology report.”
Jin was released from Beijing State Security Bureau Detention Center after an emotionally charged plea to the deputy director, who allegedly said, “Jin xxxx is in the incorrect profession as a veterinarian. He should be a poet. He truly understands that all of life is saved for love. I weep with joy for the one he loves.”
But Jin’s love was in great peril. He returned to the Bird Conservatory, where Fang’s accident with the bus was still being investigated and discussed at great length, and so he immediately raced to the Chinese People's Liberation Army General Hospital to find her. There, one elderly caretaker claimed his duck began to frantically guā [quack —Editor], and Fang’s duck responded guā guā. (No supporting witnesses claimed to hear the same sound.) But in this way, Jin located her surgery room, but Fang was not there. Only the cage for her red-feathered one-eyed duck remained.
Jin found a nurse, who, by checking the charts, told him that the room’s patient had died.
Devastated by his loss, Jin forced open the window in the room and threw himself out. He left his empty cage behind.
The nurse, whose name has been suppressed by the hospital directors, did not know that Fang had been temporarily placed in a room previously occupied by an older woman who was awaiting an operation. The older woman died before she was taken to surgery, and Fang’s intake forms were sent directly to the surgical unit instead of registering her as the room’s new occupant.
So, in fact, at the time Jin jumped out of the window to die, Fang was just being released from surgery. She was awake and was asking repeatedly about her duck.
Jin’s fall was from a third-story window in the hospital, however. It was not high enough to kill him.
He broke one of his legs and dislocated one shoulder. So, he was admitted to the hospital immediately, where he was kept overnight for observation and questioning regarding his mental state.
The following morning, however, he was gone from the hospital, as was the cage for his so-called blue-feathered, one-eyed, one-winged duck. Fang was also reported as having checked herself out, despite the hospital’s warning that she was not fully recovered from her accident and her subsequent surgery.
“I am healed by love,” she allegedly told staff.
She was last seen getting into a taxi with a dark LED “flag,” indicating it was already booked with a passenger. One witness said that the original passenger “looked like he had an empty cage on his lap.”
Just after the taxi left the hospital, Nurse Ushi Cheung said she saw both birds, joined, in the sky above the hospital. But, she said, she could see no reason to report this odd occurrence. She was reprimanded for making up stories. That very night, two main pipes burst on the hospital’s records level. Flooding destroyed medical reports dating back decades, if not longer.
Neither Fang xxxxxxx nor Jin xxxx has been seen since leaving the hospital. But what of their invisible ducks?
Multiple people have claimed to see biyiniao (bird-like creatures —Editor), also known as the Manman, flying over the skies in Guangdong Province, southern China. It is said the Manman is the coming together of two birds, each with only half a body, to form a whole—it is a popular cultural symbol indicating devotion and committed affection. It is also considered a harbinger of floods, and many who see it recognize the necessity of acting on its warnings. Residents of Guangzhou, the province’s most vulnerable and frequent victim of flooding, were quick to recognize the symbol in the sky. It is estimated more than five hundred people were spared becoming casualties as a result of the sight of the Manman.
One young woman in Guangzhou said, “The Manman knows two people have found a unique love that the Manman made possible. There must be two lovers in Guangzhou who are very happy people, thanks to the Manman. And we in the city hope they stay in love—and in Guangzhou! We need them!”