"Officer Hu, have you received the blood sample?"
At around 2:30 pm on December 28, 2021, a phone call entered Hu Xiangyu's office. This was the third consultation number for relative search after lunch that day.
Hu Xiangyu is the instructor of the first brigade of the Criminal Investigation Detachment of the Mianyang Public Security Bureau, Sichuan Province. In 2021, in order to increase efforts to fight against trafficking and seek family, the Mianyang Municipal Public Security Bureau established an anti-trafficking and seek family studio named after police, and Hu Xiangyu is one of them. Over the past year, Hu Xiangyu Studio has helped 152 separated families reunite.
Hu Xiangyu, 42 years old this year, is a native of Mianyang people. When speaking, he always talks about "you have to do it". He is regarded as the "last straw" by many seekers. He has been working in searching for relatives for two years, and what he saw was more of the "live individuals behind the searching for relatives".
December 30, 2021, Mianyang Municipal Public Security Bureau, the scene of the Recognition Conference. Photo provided by the interviewee
39 years later
On December 30, 2021, 44-year-old Chen Zhonglin (pseudonym) came to the scene of the Mianyang Municipal Public Security Bureau's kinship recognition conference with his suitcase alone.
Chen Zhonglin was abducted by human traffickers when he was 5 years old. He clearly remembered that it was a winter, and when he woke up in a daze, the sound of a train hitting the rails came to his ears. The mountains outside the window are continuous, and the trees are covered with frost or snow, and they are covered with white areas. The train passed through tunnels after tunnel, and the light flickered - the green trees, white snow, and the rumbling sound of the train tracks were the last memory of his connection with his hometown.
Forty years have passed in a flash, he has become a family, works as a plumber in Shandong, and has opened his own building materials store. But he always had a question mark in his mind: Where did he come from?
When he was fifteen or sixteen years old, Chen Zhonglin thought about finding his biological parents, but he did not dare to report the case, "I was worried that I would let my adoptive parents become criminals." He searched for "whether there were mountains and tunnels in China in the early 1980s", hoping to use this to position the location of his hometown. Unfortunately, the scope was too large and he had no idea how to start, so he had to give up.
There is a 4-cm long scar on Chen Zhonglin's left clavicle, which is still rosy and shiny until now. In his opinion, this is the only connection with past life. The older he is, the stronger the idea of finding a relative in Chen Zhonglin's heart. "If one day his parents are gone, and if you think about this feeling of not seeing him, you will really regret it for the rest of your life."
In May 2021, Chen Zhonglin went to the public security organs of Zibo, Shandong to collect blood tests. In November of that year, Hu Xiangyu, a policeman from Mianyang, Sichuan, who was 1,600 kilometers away, called and his blood collection result was successfully compared with a local couple in Mianyang - he found a home, and his biological parents were alive.
It turned out that in May 2021, Chen Zhonglin's parents learned through the media that the public security organs were carrying out a "reunion" operation, so they took the initiative to seek help from Hu Xiangyu Studio of Mianyang Public Security Bureau. During the massive data screening and comparison, Hu Xiangyu found that the data of a Shandong man named Chen Zhonglin was somewhat similar to that of a missing child. He immediately sent a cooperation order to the public security organs of Zibo, Shandong and contacted Chen Zhonglin.
On December 25, 2021, Hu Xiangyu confirmed through the "National Public Security Organs Search for Trafficking/Missing Children's DNA Information System", Wang Mouhai, Anzhou District, Sichuan Province and Chen Zhonglin from Pingyuan County, Shandong Province, have kinship .
Chen Zhonglin remained silent after hanging up the phone. Until that night, dreaming that his biological mother died of illness, Chen Zhonglin woke up from the dream, and tears soaked the entire pillow.
The desire to return to my hometown is getting stronger and stronger. "I don't know what the place where I was born is now. Even if it is demolished, I want to go back to my original place and see the hometown I lived in."
Chen Zhonglin realized his dream.
On the afternoon of December 30, 2021, Chen Zhonglin stood alone on the rostrum in the conference hall of Mianyang Municipal Public Security Bureau, and an old man wearing a pink cotton jacket walked slowly into the door. After seeing Chen Zhonglin, she ran up two steps and pounced on him.
Hu Xiangyu, standing in the corner, had red eyes.
On this day, four families from all over the country attended the recognizing marriage and found their relatives.
December 27, 2021, Hu Xiangyu and his family search studio. Photo by Zhou Siya, reporter of Beijing News
Helps 152 families reunite
Hu Xiangyu, 42 years old this year, has a round face and a tall nose. She is more than 1.8 meters tall, and she walks with great strides.
Hu Xiangyu is an instructor of the first brigade of the Criminal Investigation Detachment of Mianyang Public Security Bureau. He has been engaged in anti-trafficking and seeking relatives for two years. In 2021, the Mianyang Municipal Public Security Bureau established a family search studio under the name of Hu Xiangyu.
Hu Xiangyu's relative search studio is located on the second floor of the Mianyang Criminal Investigation Brigade Building. The windows are bright and clean. One wall is leaning against the bookshelf, and there are several rows of criminal investigation books neatly arranged on it. Hu Xiangyu's desk was placed on the other side, with four computers on the table: one for accessing information on the public network, two for internal systems, and one for high-definition displays he bought at his own expense for portrait comparison.
In the past year, in this office, Hu Xiangyu has helped 152 separated families reunite. Before Hu Xiangyu took over the job of seeking relatives, the average number of families found in Mianyang was only about 10 lost relatives every year, "equivalent to completing ten years of work in a year."
He said that in 2021, the "Reunion" campaign helped tens of thousands of families find their families. "Ten thousand reunion families" are just a number for the public, but for a family looking for relatives, reunion is as important as life. Those who respect him called him "Police Officer Hu", and those who were familiar with him called him "Uncle Hu".
Before being transferred to the Criminal Police Brigade to engage in anti-trafficking and searching for relatives, Hu Xiangyu worked in the police dog team for twenty years. He had experienced experiencing rocks on the edge of a cliff to search the suspect's traces, and often rushed to the front line of the crime scene under the danger. But he gradually "lost his freshness".
In 2019, he took the initiative to apply for transfer from the police dog team and was transferred to the first brigade of the Municipal Criminal Investigation Detachment, responsible for the anti-trafficking and searching for relatives.
"The results of anti-trafficking and seeking relatives should be more direct." Hu Xiangyu said that after receiving the clues, in-depth investigation may be effective immediately, "It will help others soon." He likes such straightforwardness and simplicity.
Hu Xiangyu's studio is mainly responsible for the search for relatives by three police officers and one auxiliary police officer. On weekdays, a large amount of information about finding relatives poured in from various platforms. After clues appeared, Hu Xiangyu and other police officers had to go door to door to inquire about the information of the abducted children and search for all clues related to children's families. Sometimes it takes two or three months to investigate a village.
Every time I receive a call to look for a relative, Hu Xiangyu will record it with a pen. The paper lists the serial number, address, name, ID number, contact number, and whether the blood sample has been collected. On the back of each piece of paper is an outline he sorted and divided, and asked questions during the process of recognizing his relatives. This includes personal information, family situation, abducted experience, as well as who is abducted, where he was abducted, who was sold to, and whether he was illegally infringed.
What impressed Hu Xiangyu the most was the first relative search case he took over.
A 27-year-old girl who was abducted since childhood rented a house in Beijing. Her roommate had a dispute with someone. The girl was summoned to the police station as a witness, and the police station took blood samples for all three people. On the other hand, it was already 23 years since a couple in Anzhou District, Mianyang City searched for their daughter. After reporting the case to collect blood samples at the Public Security Bureau, there was no news again. After the blood sample of the girl was put into the warehouse, it was immediately highly consistent with the blood sample information of the couple in Anzhou District on the national public security organs' search information system. The system issued an order: The girl in Beijing and a pair of parents in Mianyang City are highly suspected of parent-child relationship and need further verification.
Hu Xiangyu remembered that after he told the parents that the DNA comparison was successful, they drove over with the milk powder bucket, calcium tablet box that the child used when he was a child and the clothes he had worn when he was a child. He fell to the ground and cried non-stop in his office. From then on, Hu Xiangyu made up his mind to make the "most perfect" thing he could do.
In 2021, the Mianyang Municipal Public Security Bureau established three relative search studios in the name of police.Photo provided by the interviewee
details of "experts"
Hu Xiangyu is also a master in portrait comparison.
He said that his long-term work in criminal police team has cultivated his keen investigative ability: he has participated in the comparison of unknown corpses several times, and many times, the computer system and colleagues who were specifically responsible for the comparison of portraits were helpless. He successfully locked his identity information through the microscopic characteristics of the deceased's face.
And portrait comparison is an important means in the process of seeking relatives.
Hu Xiangyu usually needs to verify the details of the face of the relatives, and compare which part is injured and which part has moles.
"The computer can only provide you with one range, and other details must be manually identified." Hu Xiangyu said.
In November 2021, Hu Xiangyu received a request from Li Zixin, a 34-year-old man in Linqing City, Shandong Province: Around 1985, his mother was abducted and married to a family in Linqing City, Shandong Province. When he was one or two years old, his mother fled from Shandong and then broke off contact. At about 10 years old, his adoptive father told him before he died that he might be from Sichuan , and the only clue was a photo of his mother when she was young.
Li Zixin has many questions about his life experience and mother who is vague in his memory: Why did his mother run away alone back then? Has my mother been looking for me over the years? Is your mother okay now? Because of confusion and anger, the yellowed photo of his mother was once torn in half by Li Zixin, and because of reluctance, he still kept the half photo of his mother's appearance.
This is a palm-sized, yellowed photo with stains and spots all over the photo. The woman in the center of the picture stood in front of an orange fruit tree. There is nothing special about the photos. But Hu Xiangyu noticed that the woman's eyes in the photo are of different sizes and there is a light-colored scar at the corner of her right eye.
Relying on this feature, Hu Xiangyu locked an elderly man in Santai County, Mianyang with high eyelashes, scars and photos from more than 100 household registration photos that meet the requirements. Subsequently, through multiple verifications in the countryside, Hu Xiangyu helped Li Zixin find his biological mother.
At the marriage recognition conference on the afternoon of December 30, 2021, Li Zixin also embraced his mother who was only left in memory in the past.
DNA comparison has also become one of the important means of finding relatives in 2021. Hu Xiangyu introduced that the provinces where the relatives of the abducted children are likely to be located through the DNA database throughout China. At the same time, through the investigation of villages and households, the age and generation of the abducted children and their parents are judged, and further confirmed whether there are any abducted or lost children in their homes.
2021, in this way, Hu Xiangyu's family search studio found more than 20 local missing children and helped more than 10 children from other provinces.
On December 30, 2021, at the meeting of the marriage recognition, Hu Xiangyu (the person in the police uniform) looked at the relatives he recognized. Photo provided by the interviewee
Repair the barrier
For Hu Xiangyu, the most difficult thing is not the process of finding a relative, but how to help those who seek relatives repair the barrier that has lasted for more than ten years or even decades.
Not every family’s search results are perfect. Two hours before the marriage recognition conference started on December 30, 2021, Hu Xiangyu received a call: A child suddenly refused to recognize his marriage and ran away temporarily. Things like
are not uncommon. Just like this meeting of marriage recognition, there were people who were originally scheduled to go to the meeting. Although they had successfully compared DNA with their biological parents, they suddenly didn't want to go to the meeting to recognize their relatives.
"They are still guarded. We have never experienced the kind of trauma that others suffer, and sometimes they may not understand it." Hu Xiangyu said, "Behind every child who is abducted and trafficked, there is a broken and sad family."
is like the first case of Hu Xiangyu's search for relatives. After confirming the relevant identity information, he called the girl. According to his recollection, at the beginning, the girl who knew nothing about her life experience was completely surprised, and even questioned that Hu Xiangyu was a liar. Hu Xiangyu provided various proofs, and the girl also confirmed her life experience to her adoptive father. But the girl still hesitated and refused to recognize her relatives.
"She said to me, 'I'm living here, and I don't want to change my current life'."Hu Xiangyu felt that it was normal for him to refuse to recognize his relatives," two strangers suddenly told you that they are your biological parents. What kind of reaction would you have? For many people, there is a process of ideological transformation. "
Hu Xiangyu spent seven months persuading the girl to recognize her relatives.
He noticed the girl's sensitivity to the recognition incident and carefully tested her. During work breaks, he sent a message to the girl, "Have you eaten?" "How are your life these two days? "Is there any change in my mind? "Would you like to recognize your parents? "
The night before the girl finally wanted to recognize her relatives, she was worried that the girl's mentality would still change. He invited the girl to have hot pot at his own expense and saw the girl's reaction to the recognition of her relatives. Due to frequent communication with the recognized relatives, his wife even questioned him: What are you talking about with netizens every day? But in his own opinion, only by gaining the trust of the seeker and letting the seeker put aside their guard can you succeed.
After seven months of persuasion, the girl came to the recognition site. When she looked through the photos of her childhood with her biological parents, she finally showed a "real smile" in front of the pair of "strangers". After the recognition of her relatives, the girl took her family to various tourist attractions in Beijing.
In the photo sent to Hu Xiangyu, the girl and her mother stood together, and the two with similar eyebrows and eyes were smiling brightly at the camera.
There are also people who "don't want to recognize relatives no matter what". Hu Xiangyu remembers that a 40-year-old man in Zhengzhou had an electric car stolen by a thief. The man called the police. After the police retrieved the electric car, he investigated the electric car and extracted DNA information from it. The result was surprising that the thief was not compared, but the man's identity as a "missing child" was compared: his parents once reported the case, and the blood sample collected was entered into the local blood bank in Mianyang. At that time, the man's parents had passed away. Before his death, he told his son and daughter to retrieve the abducted child.
Hu Xiangyu contacted the man involved, but the latter was not willing to recognize relatives. His biological brother and sister who were urgently accused of recognizing relatives had to call Hu Xiangyu every now and then, "I ask if I can do a job again. Now my parents are gone, I just want to recognize brothers and walk around. "However, Hu Xiangyu worked for the man for several months, and the other party's response was firm: "I'm doing a good life now, don't call me again, I will never recognize my relatives." "
" I can only comfort the brothers and sisters who are looking for relatives to slow down - people's ideas will change, maybe this mentality is now, and it may be that there will be a change in mentality due to some incident in another two years. Only by slowly guiding and persuading such a job can you see changes. "
"Search for Relatives" will continue
Hu Xiangyu is now a well-known "family search expert" in the criminal police brigade, but there are still many helpless moments.
There are a large number of cases of the search for relatives over the years, and it has been a long time, which has increased the difficulty of finding relatives. "Many photos are photos of age or even months, and decades have passed, and it is too difficult to identify. "Hu Xiangyu said that many relatives have been separated from their relatives for more than ten years, and the clues to search for people may be just a vague place name, name, or even nickname and nickname. Sometimes, the method of finding people is used up and resources are used, and there may not be any results.
"Successful DNA comparison" often only comes to "lucky people". Hu Xiangyu said that among the 500 blood samples collected so far, only one-fifty is the probability of their parents being directly compared through DNA, and one-fifty is the probability of their relatives being analyzed. The rest is an open relative search case.
"You may have made great efforts in some work, and you will only get one point in the end. "Sometimes, Hu Xiangyu and other police officers in the studio went to the village for two months, but they did not get any clues. The work of finding relatives was like "a needle fell into the sea." "
Many relatives look for Hu Xiangyu as the "last straw". They will keep calling Hu Xiangyu for help, and even speak extremely humble. At this time, Hu Xiangyu feels his insignificance. "Many relatives search cases are from other provinces. We cannot file a case, nor can we investigate it in depth."
Hu Xiangyu explained that if he analyzes household registration and reaches a village in a certain province, he can only send an assistance letter to the local area, and he cannot decide what the local authorities do. "If the other party attaches importance to this work, or meets a warm-hearted policeman, he may conduct in-depth investigations for you. "In 2021, Hu Xiangyu sent hundreds of letters of cooperation investigation, but only dozens of them received feedback.
In the two WeChat groups of Hu Xiangyu's studio, more than 700 people are looking for relatives so far. Talking about the plan for the next year, Hu Xiangyu said loudly: "The 'reunion' operation is over, and the search for relatives next year must continue! "
There is a blue-bottomed sign hanging on the wall of studio, which says, "Hu Xiangyu Studio has helped 152 separated families reunite."
On the afternoon of December 30, 2021, after the marriage recognition conference, Chen Zhonglin sat on the sofa in the lounge in a daze. Talking about his feelings after the marriage recognition, Chen Zhonglin smiled slightly and said, "It feels very calm, a kind of down-to-earth peace. "In the long corridor, Chen Zhonglin was surrounded by his parents and relatives and walked out of the hall of the recognizing ceremony. Unlike when he came, Chen Zhonglin was no longer the same person.
At 9:30 on December 31, 2021, Li Zixin, who had been with his mother for a day, called Hu Xiangyu for New Year's greetings. On the phone, Li Zixin told him that he returned to his hometown in Luzhou and met his father. He also had a deep chat with his mother. The questions and sufferings in his heart over the years were finally relieved.
Li Zixin said that when his mother was 70th birthday, he would definitely pass by Mianyang again to see the family search studio that helped him achieve reunion.
"He is also slowly accepting his mother. After so many years, time will fade everything, right? "Hu Xiangyu sighed. "The misfortunes of these families are very similar. Their experiences must be unable to be changed, but people always have to look forward, and they will always get better and better. ”
Beijing News reporter Zhou Siya Editor Yuan Guoli Proofreading Zhang Yanjun
