While a mother’s love for her daughter is one of the most powerful forces on Earth, that bond often doesn’t suffer at all even where long distances are concerned. One mother whose daughter was abducted from a train station 26 years ago thought she’d never see her little girl again and all-but gave up hope.
Chen broke down in tears when she finally saw her daughter again after 26 long years. The loving mother recognized her daughter Yin immediately despite the passage of time and embraced her in a hug that seemingly lasted forever…
Mother’s Love
When Yin was born, Chen and her husband were ecstatic. Their daughter was so beautiful, so small and delicate, and they couldn’t wait to get her home from the hospital and start their lives together. Things were good for a while, until one day when the family decided to take a trip.
Family Outing
The year was 1992 when the family decided to go on a trip. They arrived at their local train station and collected the train tickets they had purchased from the box office. Little Yin was only eight months old at the time, and her parents lost sight of her for just a moment. That moment was long enough though.
Watching Yin
Yin’s aunt was also in tow for this family outing, and she was tasked with watching over Yin while the parents sorted out the train tickets to go and visit the city of Huaihua in China. Yin’s aunt fell asleep for a moment as she waited and when she woke up, Yin had gone, having been abducted by a stranger.
Searching Hard
Chen and her husband never stopped looking for their daughter, but after a few months passed and there was no sign of her, Chen fell pregnant. The family was thrilled to welcome a new baby boy to the home, but they never forgot about Yin and carried on searching for her as best they could.
Far Away
Yin knew she was adopted in some way and she lived in the city of Wenzhou in eastern China’s Zhejiang Province; far away from where she was born. Her parents still lived in southern China’s Hunan Province and in the meantime, Yin had grown into a young woman, gotten married and had a daughter of her own.
Never Married
Yin explained that she was raised by a single father who never married, and her adoptive parents and grandparents died when she was a child. Yin told reporters, according to the Daily Mail, that she was always treated well by her adoptive family and that they always gave her the best things in life.
Devastating News
As Yin explained about the events of one fateful day: “One day, my grandfather suddenly told me I was not born to the family. He said I had been bought by my grandmother at a train station,” she said. That revelation left a big shadow over Yin’s head as she began to wonder who her real family was. She was haunted by thoughts of potentially being abandoned as a baby and wanted to know the truth.
Heavy Heart
The fact she didn’t know the truth weighed heavily on Yin’s heart. “I hated them when I was little, and later I hated them when I was by my own and feeling helpless,” she explained. As the years passed, Yin decided she was going to try and find out the truth about her birth parents and decided to embark on a mission to locate them.
Looking Online
Yin said she regularly browsed a website called Baobeihuijia, who specializes in connecting families who are long-lost. In 2014, Yin visited the police station the Lucheng district of Wenzhou city to have her blood sample taken. At that point, her DNA data was registered into China’s national anti-abduction database.
Free Service
The website, which offers its services free of charge, has helped more than 5,000 abducted children in China to reunite with their parents. It took four years, but finally, the database threw up some information that would be very interesting for Chen and Yin. Yin’s DNA had been matched to a family from the Hunan Province.
DNA Match
Having received the call that a DNA match had been found for her parents, Yin was ecstatic to be reuniting with her parents shortly. Having made the arrangments to meet her long-lost biological parents for the first time in 26 years, Yin was excited to have the chance to answer all the difficult questions that had weighed on her mind for all these years.
Not Important
“Whether I was abandoned or abducted, it’s not important to me anymore,” Yin said. “Right now I just want to have parents,” she added. The Wenzhou Public Security Bureau set up the reunion between Yin and her parents’ and was set to take place just a few days before Christmas.
One of Four
Yin was one of four abductees to be reunited with their real parents on the same day. Another couple in attendance were Lin Zurun and Liao Yue, who live in Wenzhou. They found their daughter through the same free DNA service having been separated for more than 31 years.
Abduction Issue
Child abduction in China is a problem that affects thousands of people each year. People in rural areas are the worst affected, while the major cause of the problem is the fact that Chinese families prefer sons to daughters, resulting in them buying baby boys.
Gender Gap
The gender gap in China is an issue and is the result of a 30-year one-child-only policy in the country. This had made it hard for some Chinese men to find wives and as a result, teenage girls are often kidnapped and sold as child brides. The subject is a sensitive one and authorities in China don’t release annual figures on the matter.
Many Abductions
While the government doesn’t release official figures, a report from a Chinese website called Caijing claims that roughly 200,000 Chinese children are abducted annually. From that number, only 200 per year are ever able to find their real parents.
Child Beggars
Due to the economic situation in China for many rural communities, there are an estimated one million child beggars in China. Most of these children were abducted as children and are forced to beg on the streets by their families. These websites do what they can to bring families together, but the success rate is pitifully low.
Mainly Boys
The websites’ figures show that roughly 64 percent of children abducted in China are boys while the rest are girls. The other worrying statistic is that more than 75 percent of kidnapped children are under the age of six and seldom find their real families ever.
Family Reunion
Yin was beyond excited to reunite with her parents after more than two decades apart. She was dying to ask them a bunch of questions and was thrilled when she found she hadn’t been abandoned at all but had been abducted. That knowledge was a real weight off of Yin’s shoulders after she had worried about that eventuality for many years.
Taking Action
Many people in China, especially those in outlying rural areas, are taking steps to try to stop the practice of child abduction in the country. People are extra vigilant in these areas when it comes to their children and seldom leave them unsupervised even for a moment. It is hoped that more abducted children, like Yin, will be reunited with their families eventually.
