It's every parent's absolute worst nightmare — you look away for a moment and your child is gone. That's what happened to parents Li Jingzhi and Mao Zhenjing 35 years ago in the city of Xian.
Mao Yin, who is now in his thirties, was headed home from school with his father, Mao Zhenjing. When the boy's father stopped to get him some water at the entrance of a hotel, he looked away from his child. In just a moment, the boy was taken.
According to the BBC, Mao was eventually sold to a childless couple for the equivalent of around $840. But his parents would spend years searching for him, dedicating their lives to finding their missing son. After three decades spent desperately looking for Mao, they were finally reunited with him on Monday.
A video captured the outpouring of emotion that took place when the family finally came back together after 32 years apart.
This story first appeared on LittleThings in May 2020.
Mao would spend his childhood with a new family. They raised him as their own and gave him a new name. He went by the name Gu Ningning for his entire life. But Mao was reunited with his real parents on Monday at a press conference organized by the police. It was also shown live on the state broadcaster CCTV.
In late April, police in Xian received a tip-off that a man in Sichuan province had bought a child from Shaanxi in the late 1980s. From there, police were able to use modern facial recognition technology to examine old photos of Mao from when he was a child. Those photos helped them develop simulated images of what he would look like as an adult.
The photo that was developed was then compared with photos in the national database, according to CCTV. Then police tracked down a man in the city of Mianyang who resembled the image of Mao, before confirming his identity with a DNA test. It all sounds so cut and dried, but of course, the family had been searching for their son for decades.
While after years and years, you'd think they might have given up hope. But that couldn't be further from the truth. Li and her husband dedicated their lives to tracking down their son. She quit her job to focus full-time on the search. She even appeared frequently on Chinese television shows, asking for anyone who might have leads to come forward.
She said she hoped that her son would see her on TV and find his way home. Miraculously, the adult Mao Ling said that he actually had seen Li talking about her missing son on TV before. He just didn't realize that he was her son, CNN reported.
But at long last, the family is finally back together. On Monday, the 34-year-old walked into a room surrounded by police officers. When he saw his parents he ran to them. Instantly, everyone burst into tears in a deeply emotional reunion.
It's something most families can't even imagine. But amid tears, the family was smiling and filled with joy. "I don't want him to leave me anymore. I won't let him leave me anymore," said his mother, Li Jingzhi. Surely, there were many feelings happening at once, but it seemed like the overwhelming one was happiness.
Clearly, there are still a lot of questions that need to be answered, such as, will anyone pay for the crime? More details are sure to come out now that Mao has finally made his way back to his family. But for now, it's a story with a long-awaited happy end.
The family members have a lot to catch up on. Mao now runs a home decoration business, though, he says he wants to be close to his parents. He plans to move back to his home town — the one he was abducted from all those years ago — so that he can be close to them.
In China, there is a huge ongoing problem with child abductions. There are more than 51,000 families registered on Baby Come Home, a popular platform used by parents to share missing child notices, according to CNN.
Perhaps this story will help to raise awareness of a massive problem that creates such heartache for so many families.
