According to the Beijing News, the two were living together when the elderly woman died in early November.

Her son, a 28-year-old migrant worker, put her body in a bag and, with the help of a friend, threw it in a river.

He felt "like a bad son", he told the daily, because he had not been able to give her a good life or a good funeral.

The bag containing his mother's body was found two weeks later and the body traced back to him.

China's cities house millions of migrant workers, who fill the low-paid, sometimes dangerous jobs that city dwellers do not want.

BBC