Image source, BEIJING NEWS / WEIBO
Li Jingwei, who was sold to a child abduction gang at the age of four, reunited with his mother on January 1st.
A Chinese man who was abducted 33 years ago has been reunited with his adoptive mother after drawing a picture of the village where he grew up.
When Li Jingwei was four years old, he was abducted from his home and sold to a child abduction gang.
On December 24, he shared a hand-drawn map on a video-sharing processor called ‘Telain’ (Diktok’s Chinese name). Police found that it was compatible with a small village. Also, they found out that there was a woman who had lost her son.
After DNA testing, they reunited in Yunnan Province on Saturday.
Video footage showed the two meeting for the first time in three decades. In it, Li Jingwei carefully removed the corona virus mask his mother was wearing and looked at his face. After that, she broke down in tears and hugged him.
“Thirty-three years of waiting, nostalgia for countless nights, a map that has finally been drawn. This is the perfect moment to happen, 13 days after the map was published,” Li wrote before the meeting on his Telein account.
“Thanks to everyone who helped me reunite with my family,” he said.
Li was abducted in 1989 near Jadong, a city in southwestern Yunnan province. Later, he was sold to a family 1,800 km away.
Image source, JIMU NEWS / WEIBO
Li Jingwei recalls a map of the village where he grew up and shared it on the Internet.
Now living in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, he had no success in asking his foster parents or examining DNA data about his origins. So he sought the internet.
“I’m a kid who finds my house. In 1989, when I was four, a neighbor took me to Henan,” he said in a video. It has been shared thousands of times.
“This is a map of the area where my home is, which I drew,” he said. He was holding a rough map of the village. It contained the building he believed to be the school, the bamboo forest and a small pond.
Child abductions are common in China, a society that considers the presence of a male child important.
Many children are abducted at a young age and sold to other families. In 2015, it was estimated that 20,000 children were abducted in China each year.
In 2021, after a long hiatus, there are plenty of examples of young people reuniting with their adoptive parents.