**Cold Cases of the Bamboo Curtain: Where Are My Hands?**

**Everyone knows the infamous names — Jack the Ripper, Ted Bundy, the Green River Killer. Their crimes dominate books, documentaries, and public memory. But beyond the Western spotlight lie countless tragedies just as haunting, just as devastating, buried in the towns, villages, and cities of China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. *Cold Cases of the Bamboo Curtain* explores those lesser-known histories — crimes that shook families, scarred communities, and sometimes slipped quietly into rumor, folklore, or silence. Because violence, grief, and human darkness recognize no borders, no language, and no race — only the fragile lives left in their wake.**

**Many of the cases in this series were originally documented only in their native languages and received little presence in English-language media. Records are often fragmented, archived in print, or preserved through community memory rather than modern digital reporting. As a result, these entries are not presented as courtroom transcripts or forensic reconstructions, but as narrative retellings grounded in available facts and cultural context. In the spirit of the old Chinese storytelling phrase *“聽而言之，言耳聽之”* — to hear and pass on what is heard — the aim is not to claim every moment unfolded exactly as told, but to acknowledge that these events did occur, and that their human impact still lingers.**

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In June 1981, **Tse Choi-han**, a 29-year-old housewife from Ping Shan Village in Hong Kong’s New Territories, left home to attend her sister’s wedding. She planned to stay two days. Before leaving, she placed her household — and her three children — in the care of her 13-year-old younger brother, **Tse Chi-keung**. Two of the children were hers. The third, six-year-old **Mo Ya-lun**, was her stepdaughter.

Ya-lun’s father, **Mo Wei-chung**, was thousands of miles away in South Africa, working to support the family and rarely able to return home. His absence left a fragile domestic balance — one adult gone, another temporarily away, and a teenage boy suddenly responsible for an infant, a toddler, and a school-aged child.

Then the phone rang. Ya-lun was missing.

Tse Choi-han rushed back, panic tightening with every mile. Her brother told her he had taken the girl to kindergarten that morning, bought her breakfast, and later gone to pick her up — only to be told she had already left. He claimed he searched the streets and waited at home before finally calling her in fear. Neighbors joined the search. By nightfall, the family reported her missing to police. It was treated as a routine disappearance. Children wander. Children come back. Or so everyone hoped.

A week passed. Then investigators returned to the kindergarten. Teachers and classmates delivered a simple, devastating contradiction: **Mo Ya-lun had never come to school that day**. The story of the morning drop-off collapsed instantly. It was a lie.

Police searched the home more closely. In the backyard, they noticed disturbed soil and freshly turned grass. A bamboo pole probed the mound. What surfaced first was small, unmistakable, and horrifying — **the decomposed head of a child**, hair still clinging, insects swarming. Nearby lay the rest of her remains and the charred fragments of a burned schoolbag. **Her hands were never recovered.**

Under interrogation, Tse Chi-keung confessed. He claimed he had bathed Ya-lun as instructed. During the bath, he admitted to touching her inappropriately. She resisted. He said he pushed her; she fell and struck her head. Believing her unconscious, he left her. Hours later, he found her dead. Panic took over. He tried to burn the body but failed, then buried it. To prevent identification, he cut off the head and hands, burned the hands, and destroyed her schoolbag to fake the appearance she had gone to school.

But the autopsy raised a chilling contradiction: the skull bore a **deep puncture wound**, possibly inflicted by a sharp, hammer-like object — not a simple fall. The injury suggested deliberate force. The “accident” narrative no longer fit.

Questions multiplied. Could a 13-year-old truly plan dismemberment, burning, burial, and staged deception alone? Why had he not attended the family wedding? Why entrust three young children to a teen?

More disturbing whispers surfaced. Ya-lun’s grandmother later claimed the girl had often cried during phone calls, reporting mistreatment. Teachers said she had fainted twice at school, possibly from malnutrition. Behind closed doors, the home may not have matched its outward image. Police investigated Tse Choi-han as well but could not break her alibi. Suspicion lingered, proof did not.

In court, the case unraveled further. Severe decomposition and burning meant the exact cause of death could not be conclusively determined. Murder was reduced. Then even manslaughter failed to hold. **Tse Chi-keung, age thirteen, was acquitted and released.** No one else was charged. The truth — accident, murder, or something more complicated — slipped beyond the reach of law.

And so the story did not end in a courtroom, but in whispers. In the forests near **Da Gu Ling**, villagers began speaking of a little girl without hands, asking strangers, *“Have you seen my hands?”* Folklore filled the silence left by justice. The horror people could not resolve in life transformed into a ghost story — easier to tell children than the truth of what can happen inside a home. 

Mo Ya-lun’s father learned of his daughter’s death from afar, across oceans. The case closed. The questions never did.

Read the account of this story in Chinese.

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