5 Years Later
ELDERLY CHINESE FARMER DISARMS BURGLARS WITH BLOWPIPE
June 5, 2086118Please respect copyright.PENANAf3LtYkM2jw
Beijing – A farmer in the remote province of Qinghai on the Tibetan plateau disarmed two118Please respect copyright.PENANAVKeI04nJ1y
burglars with a blowpipe. The elderly farmer in his 70s was awakened from his118Please respect copyright.PENANANL7Pw0CT8t
sleep in the middle of the night from sound coming from his kitchen. Using a118Please respect copyright.PENANAGCrAlqTpMX
blowpipe, he disabled both burglars as they were scrounging around his home.118Please respect copyright.PENANAEkLziuSvpK
The darts used had a powerful tranquilizing drug used on animals. When asked118Please respect copyright.PENANAjvtjP1hn8m
how he acquired the blowpipe, he said he instinctively knew how to make the 5-foot118Please respect copyright.PENANA1RyYu3bmkz
long blowpipe out of bamboo. He was not taught the trade. A blowpipe is a118Please respect copyright.PENANAcmiuGixy8I
weapon indigenous to tribes of Borneo, an island in the South China Sea. AFP.
“Did you read today’s report of a farmer in a remote part of China using a blowpipe to118Please respect copyright.PENANASC3OGS3Mpb
knock down two burglars?” Cheng asked Hiang as she came into the office during118Please respect copyright.PENANA9fnghM6NQB
her usual start of the day.
“What of it?” she asked unconcerned.
“It strikes me as odd that this farmer on the Tibetan plateau knew how to use a blowpipe.”
“Tibetan plateau?”
Strange stories always catch her attention. She looked up the piece on her screen.
“I can see why it made the news,” she said. “Anyways, what do we have on our agenda118Please respect copyright.PENANAWncEhxJ7mP
today?”
They discussed the topics of the day that would potentially appear in the paper118Please respect copyright.PENANAPJC6fKtOTr
tomorrow.
But the story stuck in her mind: the blowpipe is a weapon indigenous to Borneo in the118Please respect copyright.PENANAuXR5fEVtCV
South China Sea and the Kadazans, of whom Nur was a member, are from Borneo.
She recalled an interview she had of a Chinese retiree in Malaysia who had called her 4118Please respect copyright.PENANAkTu1NLUcSp
years ago after she had printed an article of Nur in the Singapore Times. The118Please respect copyright.PENANAQ3Sm95rZ47
article was an account of her search of the special forces officer over 6 years118Please respect copyright.PENANAH5Z9zXEnUu
culminating in her visit to the Etajima Naval Academy where she witnessed his118Please respect copyright.PENANAN2mTzqYcER
death on video.
The retiree had a rank equal to a Lt Col in the Singapore Armed Forces when he was with118Please respect copyright.PENANAKRLZzte2R3
China’s People’s Liberation Army. Lt Col Shang claimed he was a captain when he118Please respect copyright.PENANAyCG7oJdmkr
was attached to the Intelligence Department of the PLA. He said he recognized118Please respect copyright.PENANA5MHfadqwx9
Major Nur as the prisoner he was tasked with keeping watch over in 2051. She118Please respect copyright.PENANAhsa0IkaXTQ
had a meeting with him in Johor Bahru in a café in a busy Shopping Mall.
“How sure are you this person was Major Nur?” she had asked.
“He had a strange story. We knew he came from an observation post on an island in the118Please respect copyright.PENANAQdPdzr9X6z
South China Sea. But he couldn’t remember anything from his past. Maybe he was118Please respect copyright.PENANA2zgLsHnWZC
faking it. We couldn’t be sure. So we kept him for 5 months asking the same118Please respect copyright.PENANAQGxv6fLVq4
questions over and over again.”
“How did he survive that episode near Tioman island?”
“Apparently the Japanese had scuba divers in the water as soon as they spotted his body. He118Please respect copyright.PENANA3cRBSmfoaf
was a high priority target and they wanted him alive. They pulled him out of118Please respect copyright.PENANArCYMDbjUoY
the water and applied CPR.”
“I saw he was in the water for 20 minutes his head submerged. How could anyone be118Please respect copyright.PENANAexgbjr4V9D
resuscitated after being in the water for 20 minutes?”
He shrugged. Hiang eyed him as he answered the questions. He seemed sincere. And what good118Please respect copyright.PENANACmIeatngp1
would it do him to create a story like this?
“Where was he sent after the 5 months of interrogation?”
“We did everything, torture, drugs, even changed our tactics by providing him comfort118Please respect copyright.PENANASZRZHpkIJ4
and good food. But he couldn’t remember. After 5 months he was sent back to the118Please respect copyright.PENANA9CRfbC0nE0
POW department. Not sure what happened to him after that.”
“Any tattoos on him?”
“Yes, there was one, the US Navy Seals trident on his left arm.”
Hiang was startled. There was no account anywhere in her article of the trident tattoo,118Please respect copyright.PENANACPUzRYFMHo
nor for that matter anywhere in the internet. And Nur had that tattoo on his118Please respect copyright.PENANAdNjg6ZMJ46
left arm. However most US Navy Seals graduates do this kind of stuff, as a kind118Please respect copyright.PENANAOIDLeQkhR2
of badge of honor. So it wasn’t unique nor conclusive.
She tried to get corroborating evidence from other sources including through Gen Sofi’s118Please respect copyright.PENANATFTD2rRooa
successor. But there was none. It was a dead end. And now this article about a blowpipe in the Tibetan plateau far from118Please respect copyright.PENANAjkCt6rJhZr
its place of origin. If Nur was alive he would be in his 70s, the age of that118Please respect copyright.PENANA0sA0sMyQmf
elderly farmer.
“Let’s send Jenny to Qinghai,” Hiang said to Cheng a month later.
“What for?”
“I am intrigued by that blowpipe story.”
“You think there might be a connection with Nur?”
She nodded. “I was looking for corroborating evidence when the PLA officer claimed to have118Please respect copyright.PENANAUuYglX2oT4
seen Nur after the Tioman incident, and I think this is it.”
“Could someone be alive after been in the water for almost 30 minutes?” Cheng asked.
“Nur was especially fit and at the prime of his life. I wouldn’t discount that118Please respect copyright.PENANAJdsWloSKnV
possibility.”
And Jenny, one of her Senior Journalist, went on a trip to Qinghai.
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