Old woman found in Pudong home two years after death

What would have been a 60-year-old woman was found dead in her Pudong home last week - after rotting there for roughly two years.

According to XinMin, she was found by workers who went to fix a leaking water pipe in the building. Because she had been left there for so long, her bones had calcified and become bonded to her apartment's floor.

A woman who lived nearby claimed that she was the last person who had seen the deceased, Mrs. Hu:

"It was around the spring festival in 2007. Her heart was not good so I went to make some dumplings for her. But when I went to her home again to give her the dumplings, no one answered the door. Since then, I have never seen her."

No word why she didn't call the police when Mrs. Hu still hadn't shown up two days, two weeks, two months, or two years later. That duty was left to the repair people who found her last week. The body was taken away by Long Hua Funeral Home technicians.

After hearing about the incident, many were angry with Mrs. Hu's children had not taken good enough care of their mother and had not questioned why she was gone for two years. Apparently, Mrs. Hu had been married twice, and the children of either husband did not consider themselves very close to her. One of the sons said he had called his mother many times, but had not thought to go look for her when she didn't answer.

China's population is rapidly aging thanks to the one child policy - According to one study in Shanghai, 96,700 babies were born in Shanghai last year, while 107,000 people died.

We're guessing that as the population continues to grow older and kids continue to move out of more traditional extended-family-one-house arrangements, we will see more cases like Mrs. Hu. We'd better start outfitting repairs people with hazmat suits!