China Exclusive: Mysterious human skeleton found in northwest China

Initial investigations may have identified a skeleton recently discovered in a desert in northwest China's Qinghai Province.

Addresses and names in three letters found near the remains helped police in Sichuan Province establish that the skeleton could be that of Li Zhonghua, a man of Bazhong city of Sichuan, who reportedly went missing in Ruoqiang County in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in the 1960s.

Police in Mangya, Qinghai, said Thursday that their colleagues in Bazhong found the clue in less than 24 hours after their request for assistance.

Li's wife, 88, his two daughters and his brother still live in Bazhong, the police said.

Li's brother told police that Li worked on the railway in Guizhou Province in the 1950s, and then in a brickyard. He found a farming job in Ruoqiang County where he lost contact with his family, more than 50 years ago.

"We wrote letters to the farm in Ruoqiang asking his whereabouts, but the farm had gone bankrupt, and they could not reach him either," said Li's brother.

Tang Tuohua, deputy head of Mangya police, said they have to perform more test to fully determine the identity of the remains.

"MYSTERIOUS SKELETON"

Mangya police found the body in the Dalangtan Desert last week, after three tourists spotted a "mysterious skeleton" while picking stones there on Nov. 15. Forensic experts initially guessed that "it could be the body of a geologist" who disappeared in the 1960s.

Mangya is in the northwestern part of Qinghai's arid Qaidam Basin, with thin air, bitter cold and very little vegetation.

"We found the remains near a route to the famous Lop Nur in Xinjiang, surrounded by swathes of desert," said Tang.

According to the police, the skeleton belongs to a male about 30 years old, and about 1.75 meters tall. The man was wearing a navy blue shirt and trousers, and a pair of yellow leather shoes. He also had a light yellow canvas bag, in which police found three letters, a flashlight, a pair of goggles and a piece of newspaper.

"The clothes on the front had been damaged, but the back was in tact," Tang said. "Judging from the post marks on the letters, the date of the newspaper and the features of his clothes, we concluded that the time of the man's death could be somewhere 1960 or 1961.

"At that time, few people entered this area, and those who did often died from the bitter cold and starvation," according to Tang. "The victim could have been lost."

The discovery of the skeleton immediately awakened many people's memories of Peng Jiamu, a famed Chinese scientist who disappeared in Lop Nur Desert without a trace on June 17, 1980.

Peng went missing during a scientific expedition to the Lop Nur, a former nuclear testing site. He told his colleagues he was leaving camp to look for water but he was never seen again.

Li Zhonghua's daughter Li Juran, 67, told Chengdu Economic Daily that she could not believe that the body of her father had been found.

"We never thought he had died," Li said. "We just thought that maybe he did not want to return home."

"It has been so many years, and we finally heard word about him," said Li's other daughter as she wiped tears from her cheek. "We have a big family now, but it is not home sweet home without him." Endi