STANDING in pyjamas in a chicken lot with a rusty chain and a metal gate, this Chinese man has been kept imprisoned by his mother for 13 years.

She claims she was forced to lock up her son Tang Shuangqiang, 46, after he became depressed when he was abandoned by his girlfriend, and was diagnosed as suffering from mental problems when a short while later his father died.

“He was depressed and he was also violent to a neighbour, and because I couldn’t afford proper care for him we had to lock him up,” his mother Cheng said.

And although locals in Yangliu village in Shaoyang city in south China’s Hunan province knew about the man’s imprisonment, nobody did anything about it until recently when his former friends from school decided to stage a reunion.

Tang was the only one that didn’t turn up, and several of his former friends decided to visit his mother and find out what had happened to him.

Guo Hsiung said: “We had not seen him for 28 years but still wanted to find out what had happened to him, and were shocked to find him locked up in the henhouse.

“He is confined in a space of this just six square metres and apparently has been there for 13 years. His mother thinks he is suffering from schizophrenia but the fact is he’s never had any help.”

They said they had taken these snaps posted them online in the hope that there might be a solution for their old school mate.

But his mother, now aged 66, said: “I am too old now to stop him if he is still violent and my husband is no longer here, and I don’t have any solution other than keeping him locked up. Of course it will be fantastic if there was another alternative, but I’m simply not capable of paying anything as my pension is the only money I have.”

She added: “I sometimes wonder what’s going to happen to him when I die, and there will be no one left to take care of him.”