Featured Image Credit: STR/AFP via Getty Images
Topics: China, World News, News, Parenting, Crime
Niamh Shackleton
Topics: China, World News, News, Parenting, Crime
A heartwarming moment between a mother and son was caught on camera, and it's enough to bring a tear to the eye of even the hardiest of people.
Li Jingzhi's young son, Mao Yin, was kidnapped in 1988 and sold onto another family in China.
While she the odds weren't looking good in ever being reunited with her son, Jingzhi never gave up.
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Jingzhi was working at a grain exporting company when she received an alarming telegram telling her that there was an emergency at home.
It was then that she received the heartbreaking news through her manager that her two-year-old son was missing.
"My mind went blank," Jingzhi recalled to the BBC.
"I thought perhaps he had got lost. It didn't occur to me that I wouldn't be able to find him."
Her then-husband Mao Zhenjing had left their son unattended for a couple of minutes, and returned to find that he'd disappeared.
Jingzhi was confident that her child would soon be found, but over 30 years passed until they were together again.
In May 2020, Jingzhi finally got the call she'd been waiting for: Xi'an's Public Security Bureau called her up and confirmed that Mao Yin has been found.
The month prior, she'd received information about a man who had been taken from Xi'an - where she lived - many years ago. Jingzhi was given a photo of the man and police used facial recognition technology to identify him as a man living in Chengdu City, in neighboring Sichuan province, about 700km away.
Tracking him down and convincing him to take a DNA test, the results found that he was Mao Yin.
"It was when I got the DNA results that I really believed that my son had really been found," Jingzhi said.
Then, on May 18, 2020, she was finally reunited with her son.
In photos taken at the time, Jingzhi is moved to tears as she embraced Mao Yin.
His father was also present at the reunion. He and Jingzhi divorced four years after Mao Yin's abduction.
Once they were together again, Jingzhi quickly realized how much in common she had with her son.
"My son's personality is very similar to mine. He thinks of me a lot and I think of him a lot," she said.
"After all these years, he's still so loving towards me. It feels as if we hadn't been separated. We are very close."
It just goes to show that there's nothing stronger than a mother's love.