Man mistakes dead woman for wife, plans funeral

An elderly man in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province who confused someone else's dead body with that of his wife made funeral arrangements for her before realizing his mistake。

The man, surnamed Zhou, was receiving a medical treatment in a hospital for age-related illnesses when he received a phone call from his nephew, who told him his wife had been in a traffic accident and that he needed to come identify the body。

Zhou rushed to the scene, where he found a woman who he suspected was his wife leaning over a tricycle, dead。

"She had the exact same figure and looked to be the same age as my wife," Zhou said. "The face was a bit swollen, though, so I couldn't see clearly, and in a bit of a daze from the medication, I told authorities it was her."

Zhou then plowed 5,000 yuan ($792) into the funeral preparations for his "wife", all the while unaware that his actual wife was simply busy working in the poultry farmhouse owned by the couple, and that her cell phone had simply run out of battery, rendering her unreachable for a spell of time.