Map drawn from memory helps man reunite with his family after 30 years
A Chinese man who was abducted in 1989 was finally reunited with his family after three decades, thanks to a hand-drawn map of his village drawn from memory.
Li Jingwei, who was just four years old when he was lured from his home and sold into a child trafficking ring, shared a video of the map of his childhood village to the video sharing app Douyin late last month. From this, police were able to match the map to a small village and a woman whose son had disappeared around the same time.
Following the completion of successful DNA tests, Li Jingwei was reunited with his family in Yunnan province over the weekend. Footage of the reunion showed Li Jingwei and his mother meeting for the first time in over 30 years, with Li Jingwei carefully removing his mother’s face mask to examine her face before breaking down in tears and embracing her.
Ahead of the highly anticipated reunion, Li wrote on his Douyin profile, "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.
"Thank you, everyone who has helped me reunite with my family."
Li was abducted near the southwestern city of Zhaotong in Yunnan province in 1989, and sold to a family living over 1800km away. Now living in Guangdong province, he had little success asking his adoptive parents or consulting DNA databases.
So he turned to the internet. In the video, Li holds up a rough sketch of his childhood neighbourhood, and says, "I'm a child who's finding his home. I was taken to Henan by a bald neighbour around 1989, when I was about four years old. This is a map of my home area that I have drawn from memory.” The drawing included features such as a building he believed to be a school, a bamboo forest, and a small pond.
In 2015, it was estimated that 20,000 children were being abducted in China each year.
Image: Weibo