It’s been 18 years since his son was abducted, yet a Shandong father still has refused to give up hope and continues a search that has put more than 400,000 km on the odometers of 10 motorcycles he has gone through.
On the morning of September 21, 1997, 27-year-old Guo Gangtang left as usual to go to work in a nearby mine. In front of his home near Liaocheng City in Shandong Province, his 2-year-old son Guo Zhen was playing just outside. When Guo Gangtang arrived back home from work, his son was no where to be found. He had been abducted.
Guo Gangtang has devoted the last 18 years to searching for his son. In doing so he has gone through 10 motorcycles and ridden more than 400,000 km (for comparison: that’s more than the distance between the Earth and the moon). Unfortunately, thus far his search has been unsuccessful.
Ever since Guo Zhen’s abduction, the Guo family hasn’t taken a single family picture. Guo Gangtang says that they are all waiting for his son’s return so they can be a complete family once again.
What Guo says worries him the most is that the old family home has since been torn down. If his son does manage to make it back, he won’t find a trace there of old life.
A recent BBC report estimates that a stunning 20,000 babies are abducted in China each year. The abducted children are then put on the black market and even sold openly online. Check out the documentary “Living With Dead Hearts” to learn more about this frequently overlooked problem.
While 18 years might seem like too long a period of time for this story to possibly have a happy ending, stranger things have happened. In 2013, a Sichuan man found his way home after 23 years with a little help from Google Maps. Earlier this month, a Sichuan man was reunited with his family 25 years after he was abducted.
If you’d like to help out. Baby Come Home is an excellent charity that helps to bring abducted children back home.
by Alex Linder
[Images via China News]
Tuesday, January 22, 2019
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