A Chinese father has been reunited with his son 24 years after he was abducted by human traffickers in front of their home in Shandong Province at the age of two in 1997.
Guo Gangtang (郭剛堂) spent 24 years crisscrossing the country, traveling more than 482,800km on a motorbike, with two banners each showing a photograph of his son, Guo Xinzhen (郭新振).
After nearly a quarter-century odyssey, the tearful reunion on Tuesday — held in front of camera in a police station — captured the imagination of the nation. On Tuesday, the Guo family’s moving reunion was reported across the country.
On social media, related hashtags have been read hundreds of millions of times, with many people sending well wishes to them.
In 2015, the story of Guo Gangtang’s search for his son also inspired a movie, Lost and Love (失孤), starring Hong Kong star Andy Lau (劉德華).
Lau said that he felt “extremely happy and inspired” to learn of the news, while pleading with the public to support the government’s anti-human trafficking campaign.
“Now that my boy has been found, everything can only be happy from now on,” Guo Gangtang told local media, adding that he would regard the couple who eventually raised his son as “relatives.”
Child abduction has been a problem in China for decades, with thousands of children being snatched by traffickers every year. However, with the help of new technologies and bioscience, more and more families are being reunited in the past few years, authorities said.
Last week, a mother in Guangzhou finally met her son, 26 years after he was kidnapped at a railway station.
Guo Gangtang’s journey to find his missing son was bumpy, too. Shortly after his son was abducted 24 years ago, he began to travel across more than 20 Chinese provinces to look for clues. He suffered broken bones in traffic accidents, and damaged 10 other motorcycles.
“Only by hitting the road looking for my son did I feel I am a father,” he once told Chinese media.
His perseverance drew media attention and won the public’s respect. In 2012, as social media began to become ubiquitous in China, he helped set up a Web site that assists other Chinese families looking for their missing children.
The Chinese Ministry of Public Security said police eventually helped trace Guo Xinzhen’s identity through DNA testing. They said they had also arrested two people suspected of abducting him in 1997.
According to local media reports, Guo Xinzhen was kidnapped on Sept. 21, 1997, while playing alone outside his home by a woman only identified by the police with her surname, Tang. She and her boyfriend then immediately sold the two-year-old to a family in nearby Henan Province.
Guo Xinzhen was still living in Henan when the police told him that his father had been looking for him all these years, local media reported. The 26-year-old is now a teacher.
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