On December 29, 1991, heavy snow fell over Duyun City in Guizhou province, China. It was Zhang Xiu’e’s 27th birthday according to the lunar calendar, but she had to work. Before leaving, she held her three-year-old son Song Yanji’s hand and told him to be good, stay home, and play with his grandfather. She promised to pick him up after work.
It was the last time she ever saw him as the little boy she knew. That day, Yanji insisted on going outside to play in the snow. His grandfather took him to a spot in front of a movie theater, where Yanji played with several other children. Not long after, his grandfather stepped inside to use the restroom.
When he returned, the boy was gone. The grandfather searched frantically in the freezing weather, but there was no sign of the child. He rushed to his daughter’s workplace and told her that Yanji was missing. Zhang Xiu’e dropped everything and ran through the surrounding streets.
Her husband Song Huainan, who had been away driving for work, abandoned his job and rushed home. The entire family searched, but there was still no news. Only after questioning the children who had been playing with Yanji did they learn something crucial. The children had seen a strange man carrying the boy away, but because they assumed he was Yanji’s father, none of them tried to stop him.
The couple realized their son may have been taken by human traffickers. They reported the case to the local police, who collected Yanji’s information and took a DNA sample, entering it into the database used to search for missing children. The couple printed thousands of missing person flyers, and their co-workers and neighbors helped distribute them. From remote villages to narrow alleyways, they searched everywhere they could think of.
After several days, police uncovered an important clue from a nearby surveillance camera. The footage showed a strange man standing across the street, watching Yanji. When he realized the little boy was not accompanied by an adult, the man approached him, offered him candy, picked him up, and carried him away. Nearly a year later, in September 1992, the couple received a phone call from an official at the local anti-trafficking agency.
Police had arrested the human trafficker who abducted Song Yanji. Before the meeting, police warned the couple not to act on their emotions and especially not to use violence. But during questioning, the man repeatedly insisted he had never abducted the boy. Unable to contain his anger, Song Huainan stood up, pulled a photograph of his son from his pocket, and shouted, demanding to know where he had sold the child.
Police had to calm him down. They brought in the children who had been playing with Yanji on the day he disappeared, and the moment they saw the trafficker, they recognized him immediately. Still, the man refused to admit anything. Desperate, Zhang Xiu’e knelt before him and pleaded for him to tell her where her son was.
The trafficker remained silent for a moment, sighed, lowered his head, and finally said, “Try looking for him in Anxi, Fujian. ” In reality, this trafficker had repeatedly abducted and sold children using clever methods, specifically targeting children looked after by elderly family members. Having abducted and sold so many children, he could no longer remember exactly which child Song Yanji was. He only vaguely remembered the boy had been sold to Anxi, Fujian.
From the day her son went missing, Zhang Xiu’e quit her job and spent every day searching the streets. Her weight dropped to just over 35 kilograms, and her emotional state deteriorated badly. Whenever she saw a child around the same age as her son, she ran over to look closely. On several occasions, strangers mistook her for someone suffering from mental illness.
Many people advised the couple to stop searching and have another child while they were still young, but they refused. Some nights, Zhang Xiu’e dreamed of her son, and in those dreams, the little boy told his parents to hurry and come take him home. Over the years, they traveled across much of China, even venturing into remote mountainous areas, following every possible clue. There were times they thought they had finally found him, only to be met with disappointment.
They even considered selling their home to finance the search. People with malicious intentions repeatedly called them, claiming to have information but demanding money first. They received countless scam calls. After 13 years, there was still no trace of Yanji.
By 2004, Song Huainan had completely broken down. He developed severe depression, suffered from insomnia and loss of appetite, and was constantly consumed by grief and guilt. At times, he displayed behavior he could no longer control. Hoping to help the couple maintain a more normal life, Zhang Xiu’e’s father used all his savings to open a tea shop for them.
Zhang Xiu’e pleaded with her husband not to let anything happen to him, telling him they had already lost their son and she could not go on without him. Out of love, Song Huainan promised to keep going, but his condition continued to deteriorate. Some days he was lucid; on others, he was no longer fully aware of what was happening around him. On the third day of the Lunar New Year in 2006, he left behind a short note: “All I need is my son, Song Yanji.
” After that, he never regained consciousness. His death devastated Zhang Xiu’e. At one point, she even thought about following her husband. But whenever she thought about the son who might still be waiting for her to come and take him home, she forced herself to keep going.
As the internet developed, Zhang Xiu’e began posting information about her missing son on websites dedicated to helping families find missing loved ones. When CCTV’s family reunion program “Waiting for Me” went on air, she saw a glimmer of hope. In December 2014, she went to the studio and spoke to her son through the camera, telling him that he must have grown into a handsome young man and asking him to come home soon if he saw that his mother was still looking for him. But even with the wider audience, she still received no news.
On January 23, 2016, just before the Lunar New Year, Zhang Xiu’e decided to travel again to Anxi, Fujian. With the holiday approaching, many people would be returning to their hometowns, and she believed handing out flyers at the train station might give her a better chance. She spent New Year’s Eve at a railway station in Anxi. Local media learned about her search and reported on her story.
Many people were deeply moved, and netizens shared it online. On February 22, during the Lantern Festival, Zhang Xiu’e unexpectedly received a message. A man wrote: “Hello, Ms. Zhang.
Happy Lantern Festival. My family says that when I was little, I looked very much like Yanji. Do you know if Yanji had any birthmarks? ” Her hands began to tremble as she read it.
She immediately asked whether the man had a birthmark on the right side of his buttock. When Song Yanji was born, he had a light coffee-colored birthmark on the right side of his buttock, vaguely shaped like a little bird. He also had a mole about one centimeter long on his right wrist. The man asked his wife to photograph the birthmark and send it.
The moment Zhang Xiu’e saw it, she screamed, “I finally found my son. ”
On March 4, 2016, they agreed to meet in Guizhou and undergo DNA testing. The moment Zhang Xiu’e saw the man, she could not hold back her tears. “We don’t even need a DNA test.
I already believe you’re my son. You look so much like your father. ” They went to the appraisal center for a paternity test. While waiting for results, Zhang Xiu’e brought the man back to her tea shop for a meal and called over neighbors and relatives.
After seeing his face, many of them said, “This is Yanji. There’s no way we could be wrong. He grew up exactly the way he looked when he was a child. ” While they were eating, Zhang Xiu’e received a call.
The results showed the two were biologically related. The man standing before her was indeed Song Yanji, the little boy who had disappeared all those years ago. After 25 years, she had finally found her son. The next day, Zhang Xiu’e took her son to Song Huainan’s grave.
As soon as they arrived, Song Yanji knelt down and called out, “Father. ”
Yanji then told his mother that he had known since childhood that he had been abducted. The trafficker had taken him onto a train. After they got off, the man approached a married couple and told them his family had too many children and could no longer afford to raise him, so he wanted to give the boy to them.
The couple already had two sons and two daughters, but when they saw little Yanji, his face red from the cold, they decided to take him in. Yanji said his adoptive parents always treated him well and considered him their own son. When he later told them he wanted to search for his biological parents, they fully supported him. During their conversation, Yanji and his mother took out their phones to add each other as contacts.
Then they made a shocking discovery. They had already been QQ friends for four years and had even talked to each other before. In 2012, Song Yanji had come across the information Zhang Xiu’e had posted on a website for finding missing loved ones. He sent her a friend request and even initiated conversations with her.
But some of the information they provided did not match. In her missing person notice, Zhang Xiu’e had mistakenly listed the location of her son’s birthmark. The birthmark was actually on his right wrist, but she described it as being on his left wrist. That simple mistake prevented her from realizing she was talking to her own son.
Yanji assumed he had contacted the wrong person. He even comforted Zhang Xiu’e, telling her not to worry too much, and said he would help share the information and hoped she would find her son soon. Neither of them could have imagined the person he was talking to was his biological mother. It was not until 2016, when Yanji’s adoptive parents told him he looked very much like the child in the missing person notice, that the two contacted each other again.
By then, Song Yanji was a grown man. He had married and had two sons of his own, and he was living in Guangdong. After finally finding her son, Zhang Xiu’e often helped him take care of her grandchildren. She would ask Yanji about his childhood, wanting to make up for the 25 years they had lost.
But Yanji reassured his mother there was no need to rush. He would tell her everything little by little, and he promised to take care of and support her for the rest of her life. After 25 years, mother and son had finally found their way back to each other.