Zhu Ling, the victim of an infamous case of poisoning in China that has been unsolved for 30 years and counting, passed away at the age of 50 last year after suffering from a brain tumour for several months. For most of China, an old wound was peeled open with her death, as people demanded justice for the once-gifted chemistry student and talented musician who was poisoned during her sophomore year at Beijing's prestigious Tsinghua University in 1994.
Zhu Ling was the daughter of Wu Chengzhi, an engineer at the China Earthquake Administration, and Zhu Mingxin, a senior engineer at China Ocean Shipping Company.
On December 11, 1994, Zhu Ling, then 19, was particularly stressed as she had to deliver a solo performance at the Beijing Concert Hall for the Tsinghua Chinese Orchestra. Despite having suffered from blurry vision and severe abdominal pain throughout the week, she played the Guqin, a traditional string instrument, flawlessly, according to The China Project. She had to wear spectacles during her performance due to her vision problem, and it was also revealed that she felt excruciating pain in her eyeballs.
Zhu Ling had initially shrugged off her symptoms, thinking they were a result of stress before the concert. Tsinghua is one of the top universities in China, and students being under extreme stress is not that uncommon.
However, a day after the concert, she was admitted to hospital after she noticed that fists full of her hair were falling off, and her abdominal pain had become more intense. She was admitted for a month, but the doctors couldn’t pinpoint the cause of all these symptoms. After she began to feel a little better, she was discharged in January of the following year.
But, not long afterwards, she was back in hospital again. This time, her condition had worsened and her parents admitted her to another hospital, Peking Union Medical College Hospital. During her second hospitalisation, she suffered acute abdominal pain, leg pain, loss of muscular eye control, and partial facial paralysis, and developed Mees lines – horizontal white lines across her fingernails, a hallmark sign of Thallium poisoning. A high school friend of Zhu Ling, named Bei Zhicheng, visited her at the hospital, but found her a shell of a human being, unable to speak, and just staring at him.
Since the doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her, he decided to use the internet to understand his friend’s condition.
In the early 90s, the Internet was still just developing, and there weren’t any social media platforms to reach out to people. There were, however, public forums dedicated to different topics. Bei translated Ling's symptoms into different languages and posted them on different medical forums, and received responses from doctors and medical experts very quickly, with almost all of them saying that this seemed to be a case of Thallium poisoning.
Thallium is a highly toxic, silvery-white metal. Historically, it was used as rat poison or insecticide, due to its odourless, nearly tasteless, nature. It was also used to poison people when it was sold unregulated. However, thallium was not used as a rat poison in China in the 90s, and wasn’t sold in the market.
In March 1995, Zhu Ling slipped into a coma while her family and Bei tried to tell her doctors at Peking Union Medical College Hospital that she had been poisoned by thallium, based on the information they had gathered from online forums. But the doctors dismissed this theory. Tsinghua University also said that they did not have any thallium on the campus, a statement that was later retracted, according to The Boston Globe. Meanwhile, between April and May 1995, Zhu Ling’s personal items such as shampoo, cups, lotion, contact lens case and lipstick went missing from her dormitory.
At the time, the only antidote for thallium poisoning was a commercial dye known as Prussian blue, The Atlantic reported.
According to The Boston Globe, after treatment for her symptoms, Zhu Ling regained consciousness but she wasn’t the charming, bright young woman that everyone remembered. Ling had suffered severe brain damage and was paralysed. She had also nearly lost her sight and the ability to speak. Her faculties had reduced to that of a child, and she required round-the-clock care.
All fingers pointed to her best friend, Sun Wei, with whom she shared a room. Coming from a well-connected and wealthy family, Wei was a chemistry student like Zhu Ling. However, unlike the latter, she was not considered academically gifted and was an average student. According to The Boston Globe, during the initial police investigation, Sun Wei was questioned for eight hours but was released due to lack of ‘definitive evidence’. This is despite Wei having authorised access to thallium at the chemistry laboratory and her close association with Zhu Ling.
While there was no official case against Wei, it is widely believed that she was responsible for Zhu Ling’s poisoning. It is speculated that Sun Wei had grown jealous of Zhu Ling as she excelled at everything from studies to music. Local reports said the doctors later explained that Zhu Ling was given small doses at regular intervals, and not a large dose at once.
As per The Boston Globe, it was alleged by Ling’s father that the police did not want to pursue Wei because her family had powerful political connections: her grandfather, Sun Yueqi, who had died by that time, had been a high-ranking Chinese official, and one of Wei's father’s cousins, Sun Fuling, was a former vice-mayor of Beijing.
In 2005, Wei proclaimed her innocence and said she was a victim of hostile public opinion. She further said the security at the lab was so lax that anyone could have taken the thallium. Later, Sun Wei reportedly moved to the US and changed her name to Jasmine Sun.
Zhu Ling was left with severe neurological and physical damage, and was cared for by her elderly parents until her final days.
