It’s the beautiful story of Christmas … or rather the New Year. This weekend, a 37-year-old Chinese man, kidnapped by a network of kidnappers as a child, was able to reunite with his family.
The magic of the Internet
But how did the man succeed when his country is populated by 1.4 billion people? Li Jingwei used Douyin (the Chinese name for TikTok): from memory, on the evening of December 24, he drew on the social network the village of his childhood in one of his videos … while he had not seen her for over 30 years. And the magic of the Internet has worked.
In the video, the 30-something had also indicated other striking details: a school, a bridge, a bamboo forest … The police were then able to cross-check the information and identify the small village of Zhaotong, where a woman had declared in 1989 the kidnapping of her son.
The moving reunion was filmed
Li Jingwei was kidnapped at the age of four and sold to another Chinese family. DNA tests were therefore necessary to certify a biological link between mother and son.
The 30-year-old, who grew up in southern China’s Guangdong province, 1,800 kilometers from his home village, had previously exhausted all other means at his disposal to find his biological mother, recalls the BBC (in English).
Remember Lion
This story reminds us of the true story told in the movie Lion, released in 2016. An Indian, lost as a child and then adopted by an Australian family, was able to find his family thanks to the beginnings of Google Earth … 25 years later.