Shenzhen Woman in Emotional Reunion with Mother 25 Years After Abduction
Posted: 05/21/2014 6:13 pm
Back on January 12, 1989 in Rui’an, Zhejiang, four year-old Li Ruru was stolen away from her own family. Yesterday, over 25 years later, a long journey for a Shenzhen woman named Weng finally came to an end when she met finally met the birth mother she had never known.
Li Ruru was sold to the Weng family that lived in Putian, Fujian, and became their daughter. The family had wanted a daughter to complement the two boys in the family. At eight or nine, Weng was told she was adopted, but it wasn’t until she reached 30 that she decided to look for her birth family.
Then, on May 9 of this year, a positive match was made in a national DNA database for missing and abducted children. It was confirmed that she was the missing daughter of parents Li Mianquan and Cai Juanjuan, born in April, 1984, and their only child.
At 1:20pm yesterday at Shenzhen Bao’an Airport and with dozens of spectators looking on, Mrs Cai and Weng met, grabbed each others’ waists, hugged, and wiped away the tears. The first thing Mrs Cai said to Weng was,
Child, is it really you?
Mrs Cai had brought along her most valuable possession after the kidnapping. For 25 years, Mrs Cai treasured the few and simple photographs that she still possessed of her young daughter. Yellowed with age and protected in laminate, Mrs Cai said that these photographs are what helped her remember her stolen child during all these years.
But now what? We’re reminded of this by the highest-rated comment on the Sohu news report with 4582 upvotes:
浮生如梦1260在搜狐:
Reuniting with one’s own family is worth celebrating. But I hope you won’t forget about your adoptive family. They took you from the traffickers and brought you home to raise ever since you were four years old. Raising and making you part of the family is not easy.
Mrs Cai knows this. While it was the illegal act of human trafficking that landed Li Ruru into the Weng family, 30 year-old Weng is not her daughter by law. As Mrs Cai said herself, she would respect whatever decision Weng may make regarding her choice to take care of either her adoptive or natural parents in their old age.
We’re happy to see mother and child reunited again, and as we said, a bold move.
