A grandson of Luo Meizhen looks at her picture in her home in the village of Longhong, in southwestern China's Guangxi province yesterday.
LONGHONG, China: A woman who Chinese officials said was 127 has died, relatives said yesterday.
Official documents said that Luo Meizhen was born in 1885, which would make her the oldest person to have lived, but she died at the weekend after months of illness, her son Huang Youhe said.
“She was 127 when she died, it wasn’t unexpected,” her grandson Huang Heyuan said.
Luo’s declared birth date means she may have been the oldest person in the world when she died, ahead of Japan’s Jiroemon Kimura, who records say is 116.
According to Guinness World Records, the oldest person to have lived was Jeanne Calment of France, who was 122 years and 164 days when she died in 1997.
Luo’s birth date was quoted on her official residency permit and identity card, both issued in recent decades, and confirmed by a state-sponsored research institute in 2010.
China’s official Xinhua news agency ran reports of her 127th birthday celebrations on its website in October, describing her as the oldest person.
Luo gave birth to five children and is survived by several great-great grandchildren in the remote village of Longhong, in China’s southern province of Guangxi.
Agencies
