China mum and son tomb raiders back from the dead

BEIJING, Dec 6 (Reuters) A Chinese woman and her son have returned home to family after living in a four-sq-metre tomb for three years, a newspaper said today.

Zeng Liuying, 48, and her son moved into the tomb in Huizhou, in the southern province of Guangdong, after she was fired from her job at a clothing factory for refusing to marry the boss's brother, the Shanghai Daily said.

Zeng had moved to Huizhou from her hometown Suichuan in central Jiangxi after a quarrel with her gambling-addicted husband, the paper said.

With no work and no money, her son dropped out of school and the two survived by wearing discarded clothing and living on scraps dumped by passengers along a railway line.

The upright, stone tomb was drier than the construction work shed she had been living in beforehand, a Jiangxi newspaper, the Jiangnan City Daily, said.

A railway policeman came across Zeng scavenging for food and contacted her family, who came to Huizhou and took her and her son home.

Last month, a Chinese man in the southeastern city of Fuzhou, wanted by police on gun charges gave himself up after hiding in a cave dug out from the back of his house for eight years.

REUTERS SP BST0927