Finding footing after freedom

Forging new families

Zhang met Wang Guiying, a widow who had retired from the Jinxian transportation bureau, while taking a walk one day about a year ago. He found her to be honest, and she also liked playing badminton, so he began a relationship with her.

Although some neighbors asked him whether he would reconcile with Song Xiaonyu, his ex-wife, Zhang said, "The best thing for us is to live our own respective lives."

Song became well-known among the public after a video captured her weeping when she heard that Zhang's sentence had been overturned. She told the media that he owed her a hug.

She received public sympathy because of her uphill struggles to support Zhang's court appeals, despite the fact that she had remarried several years after he was detained as a homicide suspect in 1993, when the bodies of two boys were found in a reservoir in a village in Jinxian.

In a statement Song posted on her micro blog, she said she was shocked when the police identified Zhang, then a 26-year-old carpenter who was a neighbor of the victims, as a suspect.

"He wasn't that kind of a guy," she wrote, describing him as a loving and responsible husband and a good Samaritan who was always ready to lend a helping hand.

In 1995, Zhang was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve for the crime of intentional homicide by the Nanchang Intermediate People's Court in Jiangxi.

Zhang denied being the killer and appealed to a higher court, adding that he had been tortured by police during interrogations.

The high court sent the case back to the lower court and ordered a retrial due to insufficient evidence, but the original ruling was upheld in 2001.

During that period, Song sought help for Zhang from judicial authorities, even though the mother of two had divorced him and moved to Guangdong province to earn a living.

Soon after becoming a migrant worker, it was discovered that she had noncancerous growths on her uterus.

She remarried in 1999.

"I went to great lengths to justify my decision to remarry, so that my condition would not cause a financial burden on the Zhang family," Song wrote on her micro blog.

Zhang said he respected her decision and thanked her for her efforts to support his appeals. He has not given her the hug she asked for, as he said Song has a new family.

On Feb 14, Zhang and Wang married. Zhang shared the news with the public via Douyin, a popular short-video platform in China.

In the video, he holds up his marriage certificate with a big smile.

"I'll be together with Wang, through all the ups and downs in life," he said in the clip.