LEADING a vagrant life for 20 years, a man wouldn’t return to his home in Hubei Province, because he was not brave enough to tell his family that he had not become a successful businessman.

The man was recently convinced by Longgang police to contact his family and said he would go home for the Spring Festival, nearly two decades since he left home without bidding farewell.

The man, surnamed Guo, was found without a valid ID at a construction site in Longgang District earlier this month. He told police his name and age, but could not provide an ID certificate.

With the address provided by Guo, Longgang police contacted a local police station in Hubei and confirmed that Guo was from there. When Longgang police called the family, the man on the other end of the phone began crying and said Guo was his missing son.

Guo told his story. He had been enrolled in a university in Hubei Province in 1993, but he failed to get his degree. As the oldest son and the only child to attend a university in the family, Guo felt ashamed of himself. He decided to try his luck in other places.

He worked at factories in Hunan Province, Huizhou and some other places before coming to Shenzhen to work in a printing factory at the end of 1997. He stopped contacting his family after he gambled away all his savings in 1998.

In 2007, Guo’s ID card expired but he didn’t go back to his hometown to apply for a new one. He has been working casual jobs at construction sites ever since. (Zhang Qian)