A FAMILY was finally reunited in Shenzhen on Friday, 19 years after the son, known as Ye, was abducted while sleeping at home on a stormy night in Guizhou Province.

Ye, who works in Shenzhen, went to the Criminal Investigation Department of Shenzhen Municipal Public Security Bureau in May to ask police for help in finding his biological parents. He told the police that he suspected that he had been abducted when he was young.

The CID took Ye’s blood sample and entered his DNA information into the national DNA database for missing children. They confirmed that Ye, born in January 1992, had been abducted in Guizhou in 1998. Ye’s biological parents’ DNA information was also recorded in the database. Ye’s original surname was Liang.

The police arranged a reunion in Shenzhen for the family. The father said he had never stopped thinking about his son over the past 19 years. “We would put an extra pair of chopsticks on the table during festivals because we firmly believed that he would come home one day,” said the father.

The father recalled that he and his wife were working in Anhui Province when they received his mother-in-law’s call, saying that their son had gone missing. The boy was sleeping at home while it was pouring outside. His grandmother found out that he was missing and called local police, who caught the suspected abductor, but didn’t track down the child.

Over the past 19 years, the Liangs visited many places in China, including Fujian and Anhui, trying to find their son.

(Zhang Qian)