It has been a little over a year since Zhang Ronggao, a 56-year-old truck driver from the city of Nanping, Fujian province, sat in the courtroom as Brendt Christensen was found guilty for the murder of his daughter Zhang Yingying.

Still wracked by pain and anger, Zhang has become used to waking up in the middle of the night. Oftentimes, he will head to a local park where he can't help but think about the final moments of his daughter who was murdered over three years ago by Christensen, a former PhD candidate at the University of Illinois.

He could be seen silently shedding tears in court as the atrocity committed against his daughter was recounted in all its gruesome detail.

In April 2017, Yingying, a visiting scholar in the Chinese Academy of Sciences, travelled to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as an exchange student. One day in June, her friends and family became concerned after they were unable to get in touch with her. She was later confirmed to have been murdered by Christensen, who according to the court hearing, knocked her out, raped, stabbed and strangled her before decapitating her dead body. He then put her remains into three separate garbage bags and disposed of them in a dumpster.

Although Christensen has now been sentenced to life in prison, the pain of losing Yingying continues to torture the family every day.

"I can't feel anything except the anguish suffered by my daughter," Zhang said expressionlessly.

Ye Lifeng, Yingying's mother, explained that she still uses the first smartphone she ever received — a gift from her daughter who bought it using her first month's paycheck.

Yingying's monthly salary was more than 4,000 yuan in 2016, and "her salary was even higher than her father's," Ye said.

Despite living far from home, Yingying always kept in close contact with her family. She chatted with her mother every Sunday morning and affectionately called her "big sister."

Yingying's bedroom, on the top floor of the family's four-story house, is just as she left it. The bookshelves are filled with her old high-school textbooks, and the walls are covered with empty picture frames which used to contain her academic diplomas and award certificates which Yingying took with her to the United States.

Every day since her death, her father cleans her room. In order to try not upset him too much, Ye often puts away all the photos of their daughter, only to find they've been taken out and arranged neatly again the next day.

Yingying also had a brother three years her junior who now works in a restaurant. Today, he is married and has a young son.

While raising the toddler alongside her daughter-in-law, Ye often thinks about how much she wished that she could have a granddaughter. In that way, she could devote as much love to the girl as she used to give her daughter.

Despite having sat outside the court throughout the trial, Ye still holds a glimmer of hope that her daughter may yet return home someday. She even sends voices messages and photos to Yingying via WeChat using the smartphone that her daughter gave her.

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