Xiao Fengzhen–Lijia relationship

The relationship between Xiao Fengzhen and her daughter Lijia is shown through both practical separation and inherited hurt. Xiao’s work meant that her mother cared for the child, while An Wenjiang, whom Xiao’s mother identified as Lijia’s father, was said never to have visited her. In the investigation, this family history gives an individual shape to the lives at risk of being reduced to bodies and forensic evidence.

Family and Daily Life

A music-school colleague recalled that Xiao had a child but no husband, and that her mother looked after the child. The arrangement followed the demands of Xiao’s work: people in the business kept unusual hours and could be away touring. The account makes the grandmother’s care central to Lijia’s daily life, while leaving the child’s own experience of that arrangement undescribed.

Xiao’s personal life was largely private to her colleagues. They knew little about the child’s father, and the colleague described Xiao as someone who kept to herself and left her private affairs outside the workplace. Her daughter was therefore part of a life that was present in others’ recollections but not openly shared by Xiao.

An Wenjiang and the Missing Mother

Xiao’s mother described An Wenjiang as a man who beat Xiao and called him a monster. Despite that violence, she said Xiao seemed to love him. Xiao later went to his apartment for the weekend, telling her mother she would return on Sunday night. When she did not come back, her mother first wondered whether the couple had reconciled; by Tuesday, worried by Xiao’s continued absence from the music school, she began searching for her.

An Wenjiang told the police that Xiao had never come to his apartment and that he thought she had simply changed her mind. Xiao’s mother rejected that account, believing he knew Xiao well and had power over her. Her testimony conveys not only suspicion about his account but also the uncertainty surrounding Xiao’s disappearance: the expected return did not happen, and the explanation offered by the man she had gone to see did not satisfy her family.

A Daughter and an Absent Father

The anger in Xiao’s mother’s account extends to Lijia’s relationship with her father. She said An Wenjiang worked on tourist cruises on the Huangpu River, or had done so the last time she heard, and that he had never once visited his daughter. She even expressed the wish that he might fall overboard and drown, a bitter measure of how completely she believed he had failed Lijia and harmed Xiao.

The child also became a painful reminder of the man her grandmother blamed. She said that when she looked at Lijia, she saw An Wenjiang rather than Xiao. That reaction does not erase the grandmother’s care for the child, but it reveals how grief and resentment had entered the family bond: Lijia was both the person being looked after and a living reminder of the violence and absence associated with her father.

The Relationship as Evidence

Li Yan and Mei-Ling Nien’s questions bring this private history into the murder investigation. What emerges is more than a family connection: Xiao had a child, relied on her mother’s care, and was last expected home after a visit to An Wenjiang. The account gives investigators a lead to pursue, but the available testimony does not establish what happened to Xiao or resolve the uncertainty surrounding her disappearance.

The story of Lijia also sharpens the investigation’s attention to the women behind the evidence. When Margaret Campbell learns that another victim, Chai Rui, had a young child, the detail brings the victims’ intimate lives into focus and prompts her to reconsider what the accumulated information may reveal. The parallel does not make the two women’s circumstances identical; it underscores that each missing or murdered woman belonged to relationships and responsibilities that outlasted her disappearance.