When Li Jingwei was four-years-old, he was snatched from his home in 1989 and sold to a child trafficking ring and then to a family over 1,800 kilometers away.
It’s been 30 years since he was kidnapped.
On 24th December 2021, Li Jingwei shared a hand-drawn map of his village to a video-sharing app called Douyin.
He believed that someone might help him to find his family.
After that, Chinese police cross-checked and matched the hand-drawn map to a small village and a woman whose son had disappeared.
Luckily, the hand-drawn map was matched with a village in the South-Western city of Zhaotong in Yunnan Province.
After DNA tests and other verifications, the man reunited with his family in Yunnan Province on Saturday, January 1st, 2022.
It’s been three decades. The reunion made their eyes tear up.
Mr. Li said in a viral video “I’m a child who’s finding his home.
I was taken to Henan by a bald neighbor around 1989 when I was about four years old.”
“Thirty-three years of waiting, countless nights of yearning, and finally a map hand-drawn from memory, this is the moment of perfect release after 13 days,” Mr. Li wrote on his Douyin profile. “Thank you, everyone, who has helped me reunite with my family.”
In China, many children are kidnapped at a young age and sold to child trafficking rings.
According to estimates in 2015, more than 20,000 children were being abducted each year.
But in 2021, several young Chinese people were reported to have been reunited with their families after a long period of separation.