"Another I" in the world. After more than 20 years of separation, the Internet was connected to the front line
New technology helps to find people, allowing more " babies to go home "
Mother (middle) saw his son Chen Jinbin (right), who had been separated for 20 years, and cried. (Photo provided by the interviewee)
The two Chen Jinbin brothers took a photo with their mother when they were young. (Photo provided by the interviewee)
htmlOn February 28, the Lantern Festival of the Xinchou Year of the lunar calendar has just passed two days.At 6 a.m., at Chongqing Jiangbei Airport, a young man was sitting on a plane about to fly to Fujian, holding a boarding pass named "Zhu Renzhong" in his hand. Zhu Renzhong, this is just the name on his ID card. He is about to find the distant but kind real name - Chen Jinbin.
At 11 a.m., in Xialou Village, Xianyou County, Putian City, Fujian Province, the Chen family and his son Chen Jinhong were waiting anxiously at the entrance of the village surrounded by dozens of relatives and neighbors. In previous years, the couple returned to the city to do business after the fifth day of the first lunar month, and this year they have been staying in their hometown and are looking forward to the arrival of this day.
A car passed by, and then another one, and finally, several cars stopped and a group of people got out of the car. Chen Jinhong recognized him immediately, and there was someone with the same face as himself. "Jinbin!" He shouted the name of his twin brother, and could no longer hold back and ran over.
Among the dozens of people coming towards him, Chen Jinbin saw the first thing he saw was his brother who was carved out of the same mold as himself. He quickly stepped forward, hugged the visitor, and whispered shyly, "Brother, is it you?"
This is the first time since his younger brother was abducted and disappeared in 1999, the two brothers hugged each other tightly, just as they were in their mother 25 years ago. At this moment, amid the sound of firecrackers, the mother standing behind them was already crying in disarray.
This reunion of relatives, which has been around for 20 years, starts with a Douyin.
Twin reunion
At around 10 am on February 2, 2021, Su Xin (pseudonym) and her husband Chen Jinhong were working in the company and received a message from a friend: "Look at whether this person looks the same as your husband!" The friend then sent a screenshot of a Douyin video. The man in the picture looks very similar to her husband, but he is a little thinner. This is a search video, and the text below lists some clues.
Su Xin knew that her husband, born in 1995, had a twin brother who was lost in 1999. The family has been searching hard for more than 20 years. She felt "scalp numb" and immediately told her husband. Chen Jinhong saw the message in the screenshot that read: "I got lost under a bridge, my parents sold shoes, and there was a child of the same age?" "These information is right, it must be!" Chen Jinhong said, "I was confused at that time, and ran out to call my mother in tears."
Lin Xiaoqin (pseudonym), who was selling shoes in the stall in Putian urban area, staring at the screenshot forwarded by his son Jinhong, with tears in his eyes. Beside her, her husband, who had always been silent and tolerant, remembered that he had experienced too many failures in finding a child before, and did not want to be disappointed and failed. He said lightly: "I can't see it." Lin Xiaoqin could no longer hold it back and cried to her husband, "I bet on your life, this is the child I gave birth to!"
At the same time, Su Xin immediately contacted the publisher of the video. It turned out that the person who posted this video was Liu Hongtao, a volunteer from the charity organization "Baby Going Home". In September last year, he found a search notice online, so he took the initiative to contact the young man named Zhu Renzhong, and used clear photos and concise information to create a search video for him, and also helped him find the Chongqing Public Security Bureau for DNA sampling. Since then, Liu Hongtao posted this message on his Douyin account three times in a row, until the third time the number of views reached more than 1.3 million, and was finally seen by Chen Jinhong and his wife.
In order to avoid secondary emotional harm caused by admitting mistakes, people engaged in family search services usually recommend that both parties contact further after DNA comparison and confirmation. "You don't need to test it!" Su Xin sent him a photo of her husband in response to Liu Hongtao's suggestion. "What a coincidence!" Liu Hongtao also saw the power of genes at a glance.
On the same afternoon, when I learned the good news from Liu Hongtao, Zhu Renzhong was picking herbs on the mountain near his home in Youyang County, Chongqing.He looked at the forwarded photos and looked at the twin brother Ku Xiao’s own face. He didn’t care about picking medicine. He sat on the mountain and cried for an afternoon, and did not go down the mountain until dark.
From that day until the DNA comparison results came out on February 25, Zhu Renzhong had been chatting with his brother and sister on his mobile phone. "Brother, do you still remember the five-year-old?" "You see, I am fat now, but I am as thin as you in the past few years." "Our family misses you very much, and grandparents often ask you." After more than 20 years of separation, the three siblings often talked until the early morning with just these simple family routines.
For Zhu Renzhong, the chat with his brother and sister even started with some basic questions: "Brother, what is my name?" "What is your name?" "When were we born?"
parallel years
name, age, hometown? From childhood to adulthood, Zhu Renzhong knew nothing about that native self. The only clear scene in my memory is also the scene that often wakes him up when I dreamed at midnight: under a bridge, four or five years old, he was playing with a child of similar age, and suddenly he was picked up from behind by a stranger; he struggled hard, crying at his parents, but no one heard it.
"For so many years, I have always remembered this overpass, and only that overpass." Zhu Renzhong said. Later, whenever he arrived at a place, he always had to look for overpasses everywhere, which was comparable to his memory.
Maybe Xiao Renzhong was thrown to the side of the road because of constant crying and making trouble. After a few days, he was thrown to the side of the road and sent to the Quanzhou Welfare Home. Here, he was adopted by a family surnamed Zhu. The Zhu family is good to Xiao Renzhong, but they discipline them quite strictly. Perhaps it is relatively easy to give up something that does not belong to you. One day in the third grade of elementary school, Xiao Renzhong, who was unbearable for discipline, found an opportunity to escape from the Zhu family.
The year after that was chaotic. Xiao Renzhong wanders on the streets, asking for leftovers and picking up scraps. Fortunately, he met a boy whose parents worked in the local area, and was later adopted by the boy's parents and brought back to his hometown in Chongqing. After graduating from junior high school, Zhu Renzhong chose to return to Fujian to work with his remaining memories of Quanzhou.
Over the years, although I have met my kind adoptive parents twice, Zhu Renzhong often cried secretly in his pillow at night. "When seeing other people's happy families, they will always be envious and jealous, and I don't know why I have such a fate," he said. However, finding your own family seems to be a luxury. "I really want to look for it in my heart, but I don't know how to look for it, but I feel that I just can't find it."
It was not until four or five years ago that Zhu Renzhong learned about the national "anti-trafficking" DNA database of the public security department for the first time with the help of others. He ignited a glimmer of hope and entered his own blood sample. Some friends around him also helped him continue to post family search information online after learning about his life experience.
Following the vague memory, Zhu Renzhong walked back step by step from the other side of the mountain. And on this side of the sea, Chen Jinhong, who has the same face as Zhu Renzhong, is also growing up.
Since Chen Jinhong remembers, this lost brother has always shrouded the family in a shadow. Relatives and friends often ask Xiao Jinhong: "Have you found your brother?" Every time he feels very uncomfortable.
When my younger brother was just abducted, my parents were busy looking for my younger brother and worried about the safety of my eldest son, so they sent Xiao Jinhong back to her hometown in Xianyou to live with her grandparents. Because he was neglecting his parents' discipline when he was a child, his mother always complained that he was too naughty at that time.
In the first few years, my mother didn't care about selling shoes with her father, and she focused on finding her younger brother from morning to night. She hung a sign with the message written on her body, searching from street to street, printing leaflets, and sending advertisements.
A few more years have passed, and hope is getting slim. My mother began to suffer from insomnia all night, her hair fell thin, she lost more than 40 kilograms, and she also suffered from lung disease, stroke, and Parkinson's syndrome one after another.
In Chen Jinhong's eyes, his 50-year-old mother seems much older than her peers. She is superstitious about gods and Buddhas, and always vows to find her younger son, and prays that if she can’t find her, her son will live a better life. She often does good deeds "at all the time". She will pick the elderly stalls when buying vegetables, and sometimes she insists on buying them when the vegetables break down.She also started writing some poems that she didn't understand with her low cultural level. Some were straightforward and narrative styles - "I hope someone picked it up and showed it to me/I promise not to quarrel. It is not easy for you to raise him so big. You don't have to be afraid that I won't take it away." Some were lyric poems to comfort themselves - "Let us all have a tolerant heart/ always smile openly and contented/ willing to help others with kindness/selfless hearts and broad world."
20 years, the Chen family has spent a total of more than 100,000 yuan to find their son. Even though they could afford to rent a house, the Chen couple still stood at the same place to set up stalls and sell shoes. "The child was not found, why are you going elsewhere?" Lin Xiaoqin said.
When he grew up, Chen Jinhong felt that his parents' method of finding children was too old, but he did not think about using new media platforms when he was in e-commerce operations, and the whole family did not go to the public security bureau to enter DNA. "I watch Douyin every day. If I knew this would work, I would have posted it long ago." After reunited with my younger brother, he felt a little upset.
Shanxin Weaving Network
"Tick--" A volunteer colleague from Fujian sent a live video of the Chen family reunion to Liu Hongtao. "The moment when my relatives who have been away for a long time meet, I always make me very excited." The 41-year-old village cadre from Zhongmu County, Henan Province smiled slightly, and then immediately turned to other information for help or possible clues.
In the seven years since joining "Baby Going Home", Liu Hongtao has participated in helping hundreds of people find their relatives. This organization was founded in 2007 and now has more than 300,000 volunteers like Liu Hongtao who do not charge any fees nationwide. From online forums and chat groups to various self-media platforms in the mobile era, the organization has used various channels to summarize and communicate information over the years, and has promoted more than 3,000 family reunions.
Liu Hongtao's mother suffers from intellectual disability. Her long-term experience of taking care of her mother has made him pay attention to the homeless people around him. Since he was young, he has often helped some missing people go home. A few years ago, he learned from the local media that there was such an organization and he was very excited and immediately decided to join. However, because he could hardly operate the computer at all, he was once "fired" by the organization.
With a strong desire to help others, Liu Hongtao kept thinking and practicing. It took seven or eight hours to post a message at the beginning, but now it only takes five minutes. What’s even more rare is that he has opened his personal account on the Douyin platform for more than three years and currently has nearly 400,000 fans, the most popular among all volunteers.
Almost every night, after finishing his job, Liu Hongtao began to respond carefully to every message on his computer and mobile phone, filtering out possible clues, and was often busy until after one o'clock in the morning and didn't bother to talk to anyone. My family is also used to watching him from the side: smiling may be hopeful for success; frowning may mean a hope of losing hope. "I ask myself to process the information I received that day every day and not delay people going home because of me." He said.
Liu Hongtao claimed that he had a bad memory, but he could clearly remember many cases he had dealt with: an old lady who was nearly a hundred years old, after finding her hometown, she could still see a child of similar age; a young man who was lost when he found his relatives only found that both parties had lived together in the same community for many years; an abandoned layman grew up alone since childhood, and only then did he suddenly realize that he was not alone in this world??
"Every case has a unique touching point." Liu Hongtao said, "Especially in recent years, cases like the Chen family in Fujian have made people sigh at the cleverness of the world, and it also makes us believe that by using new media, we can really help more people find their way home."
new technology helps find people, such examples are not uncommon. The Ministry of Public Security launched the "Reunion" system nationwide in May 2016, using the "information + anti-trafficking" method to establish an official channel for the release of child missing information. As of May 2020, 4,467 missing information of child missing information have been released, and 4,385 people have been retrieved. Toutiao also launched the "Toutiao Search" project in February 2016. The principle is to use geographical location push technology to push missing persons near missing places. As of March this year, more than 130,000 search messages have been pushed, helping more than 15,000 families reunited.
"On the one hand, with the improvement of the living standards of our people, especially the promotion of poverty alleviation, the number of trafficking cases including theft and robbery of children has shown a downward trend in recent years." Fan Jinsong, the person in charge of the Zhu Renzhong case and the captain of the Trafficking Case Investigation Detachment of the Criminal Investigation Corps of Chongqing Public Security Bureau, said, "On the other hand, with the development of new technologies and new media, the ability of the public security departments to crack down on trafficking cases is constantly improving."
Fan Jinsong introduced that DNA identification technology, facial recognition technology, etc. have been widely used in the investigation of children's trafficking cases. The policeman who has been engaged in anti-trafficking for 21 years has also opened a new media account himself. He believes that the new media platform can better mobilize the power of the masses to help the masses.
After returning to his long-lost hometown, Chen Jinbin changed his WeChat back to his real name early. Although he did not grow up together, he found that his brother and he still had a tacit understanding of twins, from his views on life to his taste of eating and his way of walking. "I feel like I feel good every day," he wrote in a circle of friends. Even for the past half month, he has been with his parents every day, eating, chatting, visiting relatives, and dancing square dance.
When Chen Jinbin just contacted his biological family, he just wanted to chat secretly on WeChat with his adoptive parents on his back. "The adoptive parents have always been very nice to me, and I am afraid of hurting their relationship." Chen Jinbin said. Later, when he learned that his adoptive parents, who had successfully searched for his relatives, all supported him very much in coming back to meet with his relatives. As for where to go in the future? Chen Jinbin just wants to enjoy his life with his biological parents recently. He doesn't want to talk too much, and may not have completely thought about it.
"Grateful, only gratitude." Mother Lin Xiaoqin said, "Thanks Abin for meeting a kind-hearted family to take him in, and thanks to Douyin for letting us meet. The child has grown up. What is the future? I respect his own choice." For the Chen family, this reunion in more than 20 years has come, and it is good to come.
But maybe it could have been earlier. As Fan Jinsong called for, I hope that more separated families can actively use various authoritative platforms, such as the free national "anti-trafficking" DNA database, and I also hope that more kind-hearted people can provide timely and effective ways to help after discovering the lost population. I hope more people will find their lost relatives as soon as possible, and I hope there will be no kidnaps in the world. (Reporters Chu Mengmeng and Chen Guozhou)
Source: Xinhua Daily Telegraph
