Editor's note: This article, taken from wenxuecity.com and originally reported in the Modern Express Times, reports a story about a retired engineer in Nanjing liquidating her family's assets and also going into additional debt, then giving away all of the resulting proceeds to underprivileged school dropouts. She was prompted to do so by a belief that December 21 marks the end of the world (according to the Mayan Long Count calendar)..Her actions may be extreme, but her convictions are not entirely uncommon!

 

With the rumored Mayan Apocalypse fast approaching, questions such as "Could the Mayans have been right?" have been trending on Weibo and other social networks. Many netizens have used these Mayan prophecies to frame their own wishes and desires, perhaps using the predictions as motivation to finally accomplish all the things they've never quite had the courage to do, but always wished they’d had.

Nanjing woman takes the Mayan prophecies too seriously

Lao Luo, who lives in Nanjing, has been on the verge of collapse in recent days. The bizarre activities of his wife Jiang Mou have turned their whole household upside down—most notably in an incident where, unbeknownst to the family, she secretly took the deed to their home and sold it to a real estate agent for over 1,000,000 RMB. Facing an interrogation upon her return, Jiang Mou left her family speechless with her reasons: 2012 marks the impending apocalypse, which makes it imperative that she donate all of their assets to charity immediately.

Even though frequent calendrical predictions of this kind have yet to ever come true, she is not at all alone in her beliefs this time around. The theatrical release of the movie "2012" certainly helped fuel anxieties over a "2012 Apocalypse Theory" among the public. Experts throughout the world have denounced the idea, making assurances that no such disaster is in any way scheduled to arrive. Don't panic, and go about your day as you normally would!

 Spouse mortgages family home & borrows large sum of money

A university professor with a respectable income, Lao Luo turned 57 this year. His wife Jiang Mou is 54, a graduate of a prestigious university, and until her recent retirement had held a high-level position as an engineer. Their daughter is currently studying for a doctorate. This kind of household ought to make anyone envious, but Jiang Mou's recent change of behavior might give you pause.

Earlier this year, Lao Luo received a phone call from one of Jiang Mou's colleagues demanding the repayment of a loan, which Lao Luo discovered amounted to 70,000 RMB. His wife had taken the money claiming that she would pay it off by December 25th of the same year. This set Lao Luo on a trail to discovering still more shocking information: his wife had mortgaged their 3,000,000 RMB home without her husband's or daughter's knowledge, netting 1,040,000 RMB in the process. Combined with the family's savings, an amount totaling roughly 2,000,000 RMB promptly disappeared. Because Luo had left managing the family account entirely to his wife, he had no idea of the state of their household's assets. Now, everything was gone overnight.

Jiang Mou is shy and introverted, and had apparently never told her husband or daughter about the fears that led her to carry out these acts. Lao Luo asked pointedly where his wife had managed to spend the money, but she would not respond. Luo decided that the best hope for getting help was to make a case to his district's civil mediation committee.

 Simple logic: the end is nigh, so give away all you have

Lao Luo came before the committee with his wife and daughter, and Jiang Mou was silent and expressionless. Interrogated by the mediators about where the money had gone, she parried all of their attempts at getting her to divulge any information.

Then, Luo took out a receipt for a loan that had been made to Jiang Mou by a coworker as proof. His wife suddenly began to talk: doomsday was looming at the end of the year, and she had simply wanted to do something meaningful in the face of it. She had decided to give all of her money away to children who couldn't go to school, to allow them to spend a few carefree and happy days. The committee suddenly understood why she had set her loan repayment date as December 25th. The Mayan calendar's cycle ends on December 21st, and some people interpret this as an apocalyptic date. She wasn't planning on paying the money back at all.

Vexed: how to dissuade an end-of-the-world believer?

Lao Luo and his daughter eyed each other, wondering just how a woman as well educated and intelligent as Jiang Mou could have so easily been persuaded to believe in the modern sensationalization of an ancient calendrical twist. A committee member thought Jiang Mou's reason for mortgaging her property was clearly absurd, and advised Lao Liu to find the agency that purchased the deed and to discuss the matter with them.

Shortly afterwards, with mortgage contract in hand, Lao Luo did just that, and was relieved to find that the mortgage amount hadn't yet transferred to his wife's account. After hearing of Jiang Mou's condition, the agent agreed to return the deed to Lao Luo, but the contract still required him to pay a 10% fee for damages. Lao Luo couldn't help but want to cry. The fee was on top of 70,000 RMB his wife had borrowed, and now that their savings were gone, where could the money possibly come from?

After lengthy negotiation, the agency agreed to reduce the fee to 20,000 RMB. But as Lao Luo's daughter went home to gather money, she couldn't stop worrying that her mother might do something even more outrageous before the date of the impending "apocalypse" passed. Her father was also hardly at ease. After all, he still had to convince her, before it was too late, that "doomsday" would be a day like any other, and that they would need to plan ahead much further than December 21st.

Source: wenxuecity.com

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Keywords: 2012 apocalypse End of the World