• News
  • Film and TV
  • Music
  • Tech
  • Features
  • Celebrity
  • Politics
  • Weird
  • Community
  • Advertise
  • Terms
  • Privacy & Cookies
  • LADbible Group
  • LADbible
  • SPORTbible
  • GAMINGbible
  • Tyla
  • UNILAD Tech
  • FOODbible
  • License Our Content
  • About Us & Contact
  • Jobs
  • Latest
  • Topics A-Z
  • Authors
Facebook
Instagram
X
Threads
TikTok
YouTube
Submit Your Content
Man finally finds his parents 30 years after losing them at train station

Home> News> World News

Published 10:32 5 Jul 2024 GMT+1

Man finally finds his parents 30 years after losing them at train station

Gouming Martens was separated from his parents when he was just three years old

Niamh Shackleton

Niamh Shackleton

A man has tracked down his parents after getting lost at a train station as a toddler 30 years ago.

Gouming Martens, who was three years old at the time, was found by kindhearted locals who sent him to a nearby orphanage.

He was travelling from his parents’ home in China’s Jiangsu province to his mother’s hometown in Sichuan province when he lost track of them in 1994.

Advert

Gouming Martens was just three years old when he lost his parents at a train station (Jam Press)
Gouming Martens was just three years old when he lost his parents at a train station (Jam Press)

He was later adopted by Dutch couple Jozef and Maria Martens in 1996 and was raised in the Netherlands.

His adoptive parents christened him Gouming after the name given to him by the orphanage, Gou Yongming.

His Dutch family was supportive of his 12-year search to find his biological parents, and together, they visited China in 2007 to look for clues, but the orphanage had since been shut down.

Advert

Gouming spent the next five years relearning how to speak Mandarin and revisited China three more times in his university years.

Gouming spend 30 years looking for his biological mom and dad (Jam Press)
Gouming spend 30 years looking for his biological mom and dad (Jam Press)

In 2012, he registered his details with the Baby Huijia Volunteer Association in Tonghua City that helps reunite separated family members.

Around the same time, he completed his studies at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

Advert

Gouming then moved to Canada where he graduated with a PhD in linguistics from McGill University, and he currently works as an AI speech recognition expert in Canada.

In October last year, volunteers informed him that they had matched his DNA with a woman named Wen Xurong.

Wen and her husband Gao Xianjun had never stopped looking for the son they lost at the train station on that fateful day 30 years ago.

Sadly, Gouming’s father passed away in 2009.

Advert

Gouming with his adoptive parents. (Jam Press)
Gouming with his adoptive parents. (Jam Press)

Gao Xianjun’s brother asked Wen to register her DNA with the police in 2017. After the DNA match was confirmed, Gouming was reunited with his mother in February this year.

He visited his father’s grave in Jiangsu and met his half siblings and aunts and uncles.

An uncle even handed him his share of a compensation package his father received for the demolition of his house many years ago.

Advert

The uncle had been saving it for him for over a decade, as reported by What's the Jam.

After launching a successful career in Canada, Gouming said he plans to return to China to see his relatives at least once every year.

Featured Image Credit: Jam Press

Topics: China, News, World News, Netherlands

Niamh Shackleton
Niamh Shackleton

Niamh Shackleton is an experienced journalist for UNILAD, specialising in topics including mental health and showbiz, as well as anything Henry Cavill and cat related. She has previously worked for OK! Magazine, Caters and Kennedy.

X

@niamhshackleton

Advert

Advert

Advert

  • Everything we know as three children 'rescued' after ‘COVID syndrome' parents locked them inside home for 4 years
  • Innocent man freed after spending 30 years in jail for murder he didn't commit as investigators find key piece of evidence
  • Man claims he only sleeps for 30 minutes every day to ‘double’ his life
  • What the Menendez brothers' resentencing means after serving more than 30 years in prison for parents' murder

Choose your content:

9 hours ago
10 hours ago
  • 9 hours ago

    'Fridge cigarette' trend explained as Gen Z ditches traditional smoke breaks

    The new trend is taking TikTok by storm

    News
  • 9 hours ago

    Doctor reveals what you should never do in bed as he explains best way to beat insomnia

    Dr. Matthew Walker has offered some tips to curb insomnia and scrub up on your bedtime habits

    News
  • 9 hours ago

    FBI issues urgent warning to 150,000,000 US iPhone users to delete this text as soon as it appears

    Attacks on iPhones and Androids have surged more than 700 percent this month

    News
  • 10 hours ago

    Surprising meaning behind people who keep waking up at the same time every night

    It's surprisingly common

    News