- A young family seeking surgery for their baby was on board the China Eastern plane that crashed on Monday.
- The family was meant to take an earlier flight that morning but it was canceled, China Youth Daily reported.
- No survivors of the tragedy have been found, and the cause of the crash remains unknown.
According to Chinese state media, a young family seeking medical treatment for their baby daughter was among the passengers aboard the China Eastern Airlines plane that crashed on Monday.
The family's story was among several reported in the media in recent days and adds to the picture of the 132 people traveling on flight MU5735, which went down en route from Kunming to Guangzhou.
In an article published by China Youth Daily on Wednesday, a man writing under the pseudonym Wang Baiyang said that his sister Gu Hanyu, brother-in-law Guo Zengqiang, and 18-month-old niece Yumo were on the aircraft. Gu was 26 and her husband Guo was 28.
Wang wrote that it was the first flight the family had ever taken, and they had been on their way to Guangzhou to seek surgery for the girl, who had a parotid fistula on her neck. The family was meant to board an earlier flight that morning, but it was canceled, he said.
Before the Boeing 737-800 took off, his sister sent her family two videos of her daughter, he wrote. One showed Yumo jumping around in the airport's boarding lounge, while the other was of her giggling and playing peekaboo with her mask.
"For the past two days, I felt like I was in a dream. I always felt that I would wake up the next day, and my sister would call me," he wrote. "Sister, didn't we say that we would always be there for each other? Who gave you the permission to leave me and this family?"
Wang added that his sister had been born deaf. "My cousin and I were afraid to imagine that as the plane crashed, would it affect the normal use of my sister's hearing aid? Would my sister have a headache?"
His sister met her husband on a blind date and tied the knot in a "simple" ceremony with only a few dinner tables set up, he wrote. "My brother-in-law is honest, says little, and is especially good to the child and my sister," Wang added.
For now, Wang hopes to receive more information about what caused the crash.
"When my dad learned about the plane accident, he fainted immediately and woke up only a few minutes later. Our family has not closed their eyes for three days, and we all want a conclusion as soon as possible — to know what happened to them," he wrote.
MU5735 crashed on Monday afternoon in the southern Chinese city of Guangxi. Data from flight-tracking website FlightRadar24.com showed that the plane entered a deep dive while it was at around 30,000 feet.
No survivors have been found, and the cause of the crash remains unknown.