Poet hangs himself after killing wife

AUCKLAND - A leading dissident Chinese poet, Gu Cheng, murdered his wife with a tomahawk, then hanged himself, police said yesterday. Gu, 37, was found hanging from a tree on Waiheke Island, near Auckland, on Friday. His wife, Xie Ye, 35, had been beaten on the head, and was found lying on a track leading to a remote house. The couple, parents of a five-year-old boy, had been having marital trouble, the police said. Gu, who left China in 1987, was a widely read 'misty' poet, meaning that he did not refer directly to his subject. AFP