Shah Tian, a Chinese citizen, lived to be 92.

“A lot of people say I’m dead,” he told reporters in 2009. “My family doesn’t want me to go.”

Tian, who was born in Canton and became a U.S. citizen more than 30 years ago, said he was working and enjoying a normal life until authorities started to investigate him in the late 1980s.

He said he was taken out to the front yard of his home in the village of Yixi with a bag over his head.

“They wanted to ask me if I had lived the old life,” Tian recalled. “I said no, I didn’t, and they started punching me in the head.”

He said he had no idea what was happening at first, but soon began to hear howlers as he and other villagers slept.

Tian said the torture lasted about two weeks. The beating he endured was unlike anything the family had ever experienced, he said.

“I saw my teeth fall out,” he said. “They twisted my neck and broke my collarbone. I know pain, and I think about the suffering of my family during this time.”

He said he asked the village elders for help in the late 1980s to protect his family. However, they told him his family would not suffer after he died, he said.

“So I decided I wanted to kill myself,” he said.

Tian said that after he took the steps for suicide, he spent a month alone watching television and doing nothing. Eventually, he decided to seek help through religious leaders and authorities, he said.

“I wanted justice and I wanted to ask the world why in the world does it happen to foreigners like me?” he asked.

Despite his fears, he said he didn’t ask anyone for help for a while before he left town.

“Once my pain was under control in the U.S., I went back to China. I wanted to do everything to stop my suffering,” he said.

His daughter later told CNN, “I would just want to die a peaceful death in paradise.”

She told CNN that her mother’s death didn’t make her feel like any more of a burden.

“I feel like she’s back with me now. My dad never really left, except for one year. I didn’t know