Son reunited with parents after 32 years
A Chinese man who was abducted when he was two has been reunited with his family thanks to technology
AS SHE threw her arms around her son she was overwhelmed with emotion. It had taken 32 long, pain-filled years for this moment to happen and she could barely believe it when she gazed up into the face she’d desperately longed to see.
Mao Yin was just two years old when he was abducted in 1988 and his parents, Li Jingzhi and Mao Zhenjing, never gave up hope of finding him.
In fact, Li quit her job to search for her son, chasing some 300 false leads in the three decades – without any success.
Mao Yin was reunited with his parents on 10 May, Mother’s Day, and Li could hardly believe the 34-year-old man entering the room at a police media conference in China was her long-lost child.
It was nothing short of remarkable, and as the young man wept and hugged his parents the emotional scene softened even the hardest of hearts.
Li couldn’t hold back tears as her son wrapped her in a bear hug.
“I don’t want him to leave me anymore,” she told reporters, gripping Mao Yin’s hand tightly. “I won’t let him leave me anymore.”
IT’S thanks to modern technology that police were able to establish Mao Yin’s true identity after all this time. In April this year they received a tip-off that a man had brought a child from Shaanxi to Sichuan province in the late 1980s. Authorities then used a childhood photograph to create an image of what Mao might to look like today. Using facial recognition software, they compared the simulated image with pictures in the national database. A potential match was found and a DNA test was ordered. The results proved that the man was indeed Mao Yin.
It was the end of more than thirty years of heartache for Li and Mao Zhenjing.
Mao Yin, described by his mom as a “clever, cute and healthy” toddler, had been walking home from nursery school with his dad one afternoon when they stopped to get something to drink.
‘I don’t want him to leave me anymore’
They stood at the entrance to a hotel in the Chinese city of Xian, in Shaanxi province, waiting for the bottle of warm water they had to cool down.
Mao Zhenjing turned his back for a split second and Mao Yin was snatched.
Child kidnapping is a big problem in China. Minors are stolen to be exploited in criminal gangs or the sex trade, while others feed the insatiable market for adopted children, especially among Chinese couples who want kids.
A devastated Li dedicated her life to looking for her boy and in 2007 started volunteering with Baby Come Back Home, a charity for families looking for their kidnapped children.
Over time, Li helped 29 families find their children again but it was bittersweet. Although she found fulfilment in reconnecting families, she yearned to find her own.
It turns out Mao had been sold to a childless couple in Sichuan province, about 600km from Xian, for 6000 Yuan (then about R3 600).
Mao Yin, whose adoptive parents renamed him Gu Ningning, runs a home décor business in Sichuan province. He plans to move back to Xian to live near his biological parents.
His adoptive parents haven’t been identified but the abduction is under investigation, police say.
Meanwhile, the reunited family have years to catch up on.
“I’d like to thank the tens of thousands of people who helped us,” an emotional Li said.
“This is the best gift I’ve ever received on Mother’s Day.”