A Chinese love story

Press, 10 November 1980, Page 8

A Chinese love story

NZPA-Reuter Pekin? The parents of a Chinese factory worker who committed suicide with her Arab lover seek a posthumous marriage for the two, Third World students in Peking said yesterday. The parents, who were not identified, wanted a marriage certificate for 22-year-old Mao Mao — her nickname — and Adam Nasser, aged 25, an architecture student from South Yemen. The two died on Monday night after drinking insecticide in Adam’s single room at Qinghua University, a prestigious technical institute.

“Save my husband, don’t let him die,” Mao Mao screamed as she

rushed into the corridor after the two drank the poison, friends said. The case is under investigation. There was no comment from the University police, campus officials, the Chinese Foreign Ministry or the South Yemen Embassy. But student sources revealed new information about the two lovers who met two years ago and sought without success to marry. They said Mao Mao, the comely, clever daughter of a middle-class family in Tianjin, had been living with Adam in his tiny drab dormitory room for the last month.

They reported that Mao Mao was fired a year ago from her Tianjin factory job because she was caught going out with

him. But she continued to see him frequently, taking the train to Peking and staying with him, often for a week at a time. She wore worker’s Chinese clothes and a student pin and slipped into the campus unnoticed, the students said. Then she donned blue jeans and westernstyle clothes and the two kept to themselves, they said.

Sometimes when Chinese visited his room Mao Mao would hide in the wardrobe until they left. Only Third World students who lived in the same corridor knew what was happening. Contrary to- an earlier version of the story by Yemeni students, other foreign students reported that Mao Mao had asked

the Chinese Government a year ago for permission to marry. J Adam, they said, asked his embassy for permission eight months ago. They never received an . official refusal but the South Yemeni Embassy discouraged the marriage, students said. ,

Earlier, some students said they could not imagine why the two took their lives, saying that they only asked for permission to marry two months ago. Mao Mao left suicide notes for her family and the Chinese Government, friends said.

Adam left notes to his Government, his embassy, his family and friends. He asked to be buried in China next to Mao Mao.