THE only thing Jiang Yongmei had wanted before she stabbed to death the lover she had met on a blind date was to be part of a happy, cozy family.

But all the passion and hopes of the twice-divorced 36-year-old Shanghai woman had ended in despair.

"I had not known he was still a married man until we started to plan our marriage," Jiang told judges in Shanghai No. 2 Intermediate People's Court last week before she was sentenced to 15 years in jail for murder.

In June 2002, Jiang met Pu Gang (not his real name), 36, on a blind date arranged by a local matchmaking agency. "In the agency, he registered as a divorced man," Jiang told the court.

According to the prosecution, Pu had lied to the agency when he had registered as a divorced man and the agency had not made any checks or attempted to verify that he was really divorced.

The two fell in love and planned to marry. Jiang even went back to the matchmaking agency and withdrew their registration forms.

However, the romance did not last long. In March last year, she was shocked to find out that Pu was not a divorced man.

"I proposed to part from him because I did not want to be a destroyer of a family," she said. "As a divorced woman with a boy, I well knew the hardship a woman faces in raising a child alone."

Failed marriages

In court, Jiang described her past life as "miserable" because of two unfortunate marriages. In 1988, Jiang met her first husband when she was 20 and they had married two years later when she became pregnant.

The marriage did not last long and when her husband left home a month after the baby was born, he took almost all their money with him. Jiang divorced him and shouldered the responsibility of raising her son alone.

In 2000, she met her second husband, a doctor, who was also a divorcee and who worked in a hospital of the People's Liberation Army in Shanghai.

The marriage lasted only a year before the doctor divorced her. He had been told by the hospital that he could get Shanghai residence after he retired from the army if he married a local woman. As soon as he got his residence permit, he divorced Jiang.

Her two failed marriages made Jiang determined not to marry again "It was my mother who begged me to go to the agency," she said. "She hoped I could find happiness like other women."

However, she found no happiness with Pu even after he promised to divorce his wife.

"He knelt down before me and my mother, and promised that he would divorce within a month," Jiang said in evidence before her sentencing.

Pu's wife had got to know of her husband's affair with Jiang and he had assured her that he would leave Jiang.

Pu's wife said her husband had told her that "Jiang pestered him and he needed some time to get rid of her".

When Jiang realized that Pu's promises were only words, she tried to end their relationship but he refused to stay away from her.

"He continually came to my home and made trouble," she said. "He always said I was a good woman, and he could not separate from me."

Tortured love

Gradually, their quarrels escalated into fights and Pu began beating Jiang to force her to continue their relationship.

To end the torment, Jiang had to change her telephone number and twice attempted suicide.

"It was torture and I did not want to be reviled as a woman who was ruining another's family," Jiang said.

Criminal plot

When Pu broke his promise to divorce his wife by the beginning of October last year, Jiang said she was in total despair.

"I did not want to bear his rudeness and insults any longer and wanted it all to end," Jiang said. She felt it was her weakness that was encouraging Pu. "If I were a fierce and tough woman, he might leave me," she said. "I decided to give him a lesson."

On October 14 and 15 last year, Jiang obtained more than 10 sleeping pills from a community hospital. She then poured the sleeping powder from the pills into some vitamin capsules.

On October 20, Pu called her and proposed a date. Jiang went out and bought a knife and a roll of adhesive tape.

On the morning of October 21, Jiang met Pu and persuaded him to take the capsules.

Soon after they entered a room in a local hotel, the medicine took effect and Pu became helpless.

"However, he did not lose consciousness, and I bound him up with tape from head to feet," Jiang said. "He started to curse me and I put the tape over his mouth. Then, I taped over his eyes because I was afraid of his fierce expression."

Police later found that Jiang had used 15 metres of tape to immobilize Pu.

Replying to questions from the prosecution, Jiang said that she had only meant to teach Pu a lesson and not to kill him.

"I used the sleeping pills and tied him with tape because I was a weak woman compared with him," she said. "I was afraid if he could manage to break loose, he would kill me."

However, Pu's curses and struggles made her panic.

She said she could clearly remember Pu shouting that "I deliberately philander with you. What will you do?"

Anger and fear made her draw out the knife and stab the man she loved and hated.

"I dared not look at him," she said. "I only know I put all my energy into my fourth stab and blood spurted out."

Then, she returned home and confessed to her mother. Accompanied by her mother, Jiang surrendered herself to the police, who went to the hotel and found Pu had bled to death from his wounds.

Jiang's lawyer, Wu Qinglian, told the court: "Jiang was a victim as well. She was a victim of the match-making agency which, to some extent, should be held responsible for the tragedy which resulted from loopholes in their registration process."

Pu also could not avoid some of the blame for his own death because of his cheating and philandering.

"If Jiang had felt like being his lover, why should she have tried to kill herself? All this would not have happened." Wu said. "It is lamentable that the defendant has to pay such a disastrous price to be an upright person."