10-year-old boy runs away from home to catch snakes to eat in China

10-year-old Chinese boy ran away from home for 24 days, surviving by eating snakes, fish and cheap street food.

Miu and her father at the police station. Photo: Yunnan.cn

The boy, known as Miu, had planned to walk to Chongqing city, about 600 kilometers (370 miles) away from home, after being beaten by his father on June 29. He had walked more than 100 kilometers when police found him in a makeshift house in a remote area of ​​Yunnan province, China.

Miu said she didn't eat anything on the first day she left home but caught a snake two days later and roasted it to eat, according to yunnan.cn.

"I'm so hungry, but it's quite delicious," Miu told police.

Before leaving home, Miu packed a few broken plates and some lighters from a garbage dump in his hometown of Tuyen Uy. He made a makeshift stove and used soda bottles to make fishing tools. In his diary, Miu wrote that he caught three fish and grilled them.

Miu also said that he had caught a cold and cured it by picking dandelions from the mountains and boiling them in water – a trick Miu learned from the adults in his family. He slept in bushes, haystacks, and on an abandoned truck on the road after an accident.

The boy left home with no money but found 30 yuan (nearly $5) on the street, and earned eight yuan by selling the newspapers he found. He used the money to buy fruit and cheap street food like dumplings.

Miu's father thanked the police when the boy returned. "My son has been missing for more than 20 days," the boy's father said. "I realized that my educational method had problems. My mistake was using a whip to teach my child."

According to VNE