Weeping uncontrollably, the widow of Deng Xiaoping has scattered the ashes of China's late paramount leader from a plane above China's seas in a final farewell to the man who molded modern China.
"Daddy, you have returned to the sea, and to nature," Deng Rong, one of his three daughters, sobbed on Sunday as the family scattered the ashes mingled with fresh flower petals from a chute in a Russian-made military transport aircraft."May you rest in peace," she wept as her mother sobbed at her side, state TV showed on Monday.
The emotional farewell to the diminutive patriarch who ruled China for 18 years and who died Feb. 19 at age 92, was in accordance with his last wishes and his lifelong abhorrence for the cult of the personality.
Deng's widow, Zhuo Lin, 81, rested her hands in the casket containing Deng's ashes along with brightly colored petals and fresh flowers for several minutes before sprinkling the remains onto the water, state television showed.
Deng's three daughters and his two sons, including his eldest son Deng Pufang, who has been confined to a wheelchair since he fell from a window after being persecuted by radical Red Guards during Mao's 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, scattered more ashes and flowers out of the plane.