Grieving widower keeps wife's dead body in ice coffin at home - 5 months after she passed away

A devoted and grief-stricken widower is keeping his dead wife's body in an ice coffin at their home after promising her he would not let her go.

Jiang Maode promised his wife, Huiging, on her deathbed that he would keep her body at home - and he has no intention of letting her go.

Jiang Maode, 53, says he cannot bear to be without his wife, Yang Huiging, so he has kept her in a frozen casket for the past five months.

He even talks to her at their home in south-west China every day.

Huiging died of Leukaemia in December last year.

Maode, who burns incense next to his wife's dead body every day, said: "Just before she passed away I promised her that I would keep her at home.

"She asked me to take her home.

"She couldn't bear to leave me and I could not bear to be separated from her.

"I promised her that I would keep her at home after she passed away and when she heard this she was very happy.

"When I come home I often speak to her for over an hour, talking about everything that had happened that day."

Maode is insisting that he plans to keep Huiging's corpse by his side for the rest of his life, but his son hopes he will have a change of heart.

He wants his father to have his mother cremated in the coming months.

By law, funeral parlours can only hold bodies for five days.

Police have asked the Tian Yuan authorities to investigate.