Man arrested after eating child's brains

It has often been joked that the Chinese will eat anything that has four legs, except perhaps the table and chairs, everything that flies except airplanes, and anything in the water, except of course boats. But one man in the south-western Chinese province of Yunnan has taken things too far, even for the Chinese.

A village near Baoshan is in shock after the arrest of a man who now stands accused of murdering two children and eating their brains. Wang Zhaoxu (王朝旭), 29, a resident of the village of Xianqi, is awaiting trial in a local detention center for the grisly murders of a three-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy earlier this year.

According to media reports, Wang took to eating children's brain after becoming convinced it would help cure his epilepsy. One villager reportedly discovered the man crouching over a boy's corpse in a field [pictured] on January 23rd. Zhang Huansheng told local media that when he approached, Wang began shaking the child's body and said, "My child has passed out and I'm trying to wake him up. Baby, wake up, wake up."

Wang Zhaoxu was arrested later that day and soon after a girl's body was found in another part of the village. Both children's skulls were opened, their brains missing, reports say. According to the local media Wang was attempting to cure his severe epilepsy by eating a mixture of children's brains and earthworms, which is reportedly a local folk treatment for epilepsy.

The names of both victims were not immediatly released, although some western media named the boy as Li Xuetang [pictured]. His mother Yu Chaohu, said she had become anxious after her son did not return home. 

"It was getting dark, but I couldn't find my son anywhere in the village. I even asked the village head to broadcast on the radio to ask my son to come back home for dinner," she told reporters After the discovery of her dead son she said, "I can't bear to think about what happened to him. I have nightmares thinking about it." One report said the girl had been found in a public toilet with "knife wounds" to the head and that police were still trying to establish if the two deaths are connected [The Sun / Herald Sun / China News (Chinese)/ Danwei / GoKunming].

tvnewswatch, Beijing, China