BEIJING: A Chinese man has been reunited with his kidnapped son after a 24-year search that saw him travel half a million kilometers across China on a motorbike, chasing tip-offs on the boy”s whereabouts. Guo Gangtang”s son was just two years and five months old when he was abducted from in front of the family home in eastern Shandong province, where he was playing unattended. Traffickers snatched the boy and sold him to a family in central China, the Ministry of Public Security said Tuesday. Kidnapping and child trafficking became widespread in China from the 1980s, when the draconian one-child rule was enforced, and a cultural obsession with sons fuelled demand for abducted boys. After years of searching, police told Guo on Sunday that a DNA test had confirmed that a 26-year-old teacher living in central Henan province was really Guo”s long-lost son. Guo is seen sobbing into his palms while his wife hugs their son, Guo Zhen, during a reunion event in a photo released Tuesday by the public security ministry. “Now that the child has been found, everything can only be happy from now on,” Guo said through tears in a video released by the state-run China News Service. After his son was abducted in 1997, then 27-year-old Guo quit his job and criss-crossed the country on a motorbike with large flags bearing his son”s photo tied to the back. His 500,000-kilometer crusade — that included battling highway robbers, sleeping under bridges and even begging when his money ran out — inspired the 2014 Chinese blockbuster “Lost and Love”.
