An eight-month-old baby was stabbed 90 times with a pair of scissors by his mother after he bit her while she was breastfeeding him.
Little Xiao Bao is recovering in hospital after having more than 100 stitches, mostly in his face, following the attack in eastern China.
The child lives with his mother and two uncles, who make a living from recycling rubbish, in Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province.
Xiao Bao was discovered by one of his uncles, lying in a pool of blood in the yard of their home, and rushed him to hospital.
The infant's mother later confessed to stabbing her son after he bit her as she breastfed him.
Neighbors have pleaded with the local government to take the baby away, but they say they will not intervene in the case.
According to reports, local authorities said there was no confirmation the mother was suffering from a mental illness.
They added that the baby still has two guardians in the form of his two uncles.
Mental illness remains a relatively closed topic in modern China. Neither medication nor modern psychiatric treatment is widely used.
In 2009, the British medical journal The Lancet published an analysis of mental health issues in four Chinese province which estimated that 91 per cent of the 173 million Chinese adults that were believed to suffer mental problems never receive professional help.
