After 14 years and 57 days of searching, Sun Zhuo, who was abducted and trafficked to Shandong, finally returned to the arms of his biological parents. This incident has aroused widespread concern on the Internet.
In the past ten years, their child-searching experience has been brought to the screen by the famous director Chen Kexin, and has become the source of the creation of the movie "Dear".
I kept dreaming about my mom and it was an indescribable sensation that I hadn't seen her face, but I could feel her tears and cries for help. Her hands were cold, and I wanted to wake up but couldn't help myself, and that fear is still fresh in my mind. ”
In 1994, Zhao Yongyong returned to Yongxing Town, Dazhou, Sichuan, when his mother Xiao Xueqin was 31 years old, his eldest son Zhao Yongyong was 7 years old, and his youngest son Zhao Yongkuan was 5 years old.
Xiao Xueqin and her husband have been working hard to give their children a better life. More than 20 years have passed, and Zhao Yongyong still remembers the feeling of being carried on his father's shoulders and the wind whirring by when he was a child.
Xiao Xueqin loves her two sons very much, and although boys of a few years old tend to be naughty, she rarely blames them. Zhao Yongyong is introverted and likes to follow his mother on weekdays, rather than running outside with his peers.
Although their lives are not rich, they are simple and happy.
On July 12, the fate of Zhao Yongyong's family changed. That day, Xiao Xueqin planned to go shopping in the town, and saw her mother carrying a basket, and her younger brother and elder brother also wanted to follow.
Xiao Xueqin was worried that she would not be able to take care of her two children, so she refused their request, and as a result, they began to lose their temper. In the end, Xiao Xueqin could only threaten them with a stick and ask them to find a neighbor to help take care of them, and then left with peace of mind.
However, Xiao Xueqin had only left for a while, and the brothers ran out of the vegetable garden in the backyard of their home and chased after their mother all the way. In the end, Xiao Xueqin had no choice but to take the two children to the town together.
In the town, after Xiao Xueqin finished shopping, she was about to leave with the children, when suddenly a few young people stopped her. As a rural person, Xiao Xueqin, with his simple and simple mentality, does not have too many defenses.
Zhao Yongyong, a 7-year-old child, had a gut feeling that something was wrong. He warned his mother not to enter a store run by a stranger, and despite ** trying to convince him, the kind-hearted Xiao Xueqin did not doubt it.
Despite her son's repeated persuasion, Xiao Xueqin still walked into the store. Zhao Yongyong and his younger brother could only wait outside, and they found that the people who had been playing cards in the store had left, and when only a few people remained, the store was closed.
As soon as Xiao Xueqin stood firm, a young man rushed up and beat her.
Xiao Xueqin's screams were drowned out by the sound of the radio in the house, and her moans and cries for help were muffled in them. People came and went outside the house, but no one noticed the atrocities going on inside.
The mother was beaten by several strange men, and Zhao Yongyong and his younger brother stood in place crying in fright, their arms tied and unable to move. Suddenly, a person rushed into the room with a knife in his hand, stabbed Xiao Xueqin directly in the back, and then stabbed several times.
In Zhao Yongyong's memory, the scene of his mother's brutal murder is still vivid. The mother fell in a pool of blood, and at the last moment of her life, her eyes were still full of concern for her child.
However, no matter how the young brothers shook or shouted, their gentle and kind mother did not respond. The death of his mother is not the end for the two brothers Zhao Yongyong, but the starting point of the tragedy of their lives.
They were locked up in a dark basement with their brother and two other children, where the river of time froze, and the gloomy environment made it impossible for them to remember how long they had been locked up.
To calm them down, the traffickers fed them sleeping pills and woke up to endless nights, like they were imprisoned in a nightmare.
On a quiet night, the traffickers saw Zhao Yongyong and his brother's eyelids twitch slightly, knowing that they had woken up from a coma. To confirm that they are sober, the traffickers pull out several bills.
According to Zhao Yongyong's recollection, it was a banknote with the numbers 5 and 0 written on it, and he said it was 50 yuan. After confirming that they were conscious, the traffickers decided to take them away.
That day, they were taken by train to a strange place, where they were forced to evade fares and pickpocket trains with traffickers. During the journey, in addition to them and their younger brother, two strange boys were also taken away, and they witnessed the scene of the two boys being taken away.
After Zhao Yongyong's family of four separated, Zhao Yongyong's thoughts about his mother never stopped for a moment. On the other side, Zhao Yongyong's father, Zhao Daifu, has been relentlessly searching for the whereabouts of their mother and son.
On one occasion, he even found the trafficker's home, but searched the entire house but could not find any trace of the children. After months of searching for nothing, Zhao Daifu was like ashes, locked himself in the house, and did not go out all day.
Zhao Yongyong's grandfather would go to his grandson's favorite place to play every day to look for them, and once, he accidentally fell on the bridge and died of his injuries.
Zhao Yongyong's grandmother, not long after their disappearance, left because of depression and hatred, and what she held in her hands was still the ** of the mother and son.
Zhao Yongyong and his younger brother Zhao Yongkuan were taken to rural Fujian. This change has turned their fate, as well as the fate of their parents, upside down.
They first lived in a farmer's house, and soon a buyer came to the door and bought their brother Zhao Yongkuan, who was only 5 years old. The younger brother is two years younger than Zhao Yongyong and does not seem to realize the seriousness of the matter.
The younger brother didn't cry or make trouble, and the man gave him a dollar, and he obediently took it. Then, the buyer carried his brother on his shoulders and left. Zhao Yongyong saw this scene and knew that his brother had been bought, so he cried and tried to stop the man.
But, after all, he is only 7 years old and cannot stand up to adults. In this way, he watched his younger brother being taken away, and he had no idea where his brother was going. The only bond that the brothers could rely on was torn apart at this moment, and it was not until many years later that they were able to see each other again.
Xu Jinchi, a farmer, bought Zhao Yongyong home, solved the hukou problem for him, and changed his name to "Xu Yang". Although this fake name has been used for decades, it seems to be more authentic than his original name.
Zhao Yongyong recalled that when he was at the poorest of his family, the whole family could only drink porridge and did not have any other food. Although Zhao Yongyong and the rest of the family are from the countryside, his life is much better than theirs.
Zhao Yongyong never thought that this family, who had such a hard time, would spend 5,800 yuan to buy him. Xu Jinchi's family didn't buy Zhao Yongyong just to reproduce.
Due to the lack of male children in the family, he took on a lot of manual labor. At their home, Zhao Yongyong is responsible for cooking food, and he has to work with adults during the rice planting season every year.
When he planted rice, he remembered the scene when his mother once taught him how to plant rice. At that time, they had hundreds of ducks at home, so Zhao Yongyong was also responsible for feeding them. This is undoubtedly an unbearable workload for a child.
But in this family, Zhao Yongyong has no choice, he feels more like a long-term worker hired by Xu Jinchi at his expense, rather than a part of the family.
Although Zhao Yongyong's painting skills were recognized, his life was full of hardships. In addition to heavy manual labor, beatings are almost a daily occurrence for him. Due to the need for overwork and physical growth during the day, he ate more than ordinary people, but the food ** was very scarce during that period, and he rarely had a full meal.
In order to survive, he had to steal something to eat when people weren't looking, but if they found out, he would be beaten up. In addition to that, if he doesn't do anything well, Seo Jinchi will punch and kick him.
In his own home, he has never been hungry, but in Xu Jinchi's family, not only is he hungry, no matter how hard he works, it is inevitable that he will be beaten and scolded. Once, when he was discovered by Xu Jinchi for stealing food, he was tied up and locked in the toilet for an entire night.
Fortunately, Zhao Yongyong is a resolute and intelligent child, even if he was kidnapped to Fujian, he can remember his life before he was kidnapped, including his life experience in his hometown in Sichuan.
For a 7-year-old, this is undoubtedly a difficult task. At Xu Jinchi's home, he never called them parents, but by their first names. For more than 20 years, he has been consistent.
At that time, some people in the village predicted that this child would be difficult to raise, and he would definitely return to his hometown in the future. At the same time, Zhao Yongyong's younger brother, Zhao Yongkuan, was not spared from the bullying of buyers.
According to Zhao Yongkuan's recollection, after his mother was killed by traffickers, his previous memories gradually faded until he was sent to Fujian, and the original memories seemed to disappear.
Zhao Yongyong and Zhao Yongkuan are half-brothers, and they grew up in a poor family. Zhao Yongkuan was sold to a poor woman, who hoped that Zhao Yongkuan could become her son-in-law and stay at home as a laborer.
Zhao Yongkuan's life was very difficult, not only did he not have enough to eat, but he also had to do a lot of manual labor. Zhao Yongkuan is only 5 years old, but he can't stand such a life. One night, he climbed out of the window, but in a strange place, he didn't know where to go.
In the end, he was found by the woman. The woman took Zhao Yongkuan home again, but Zhao Yongkuan was severely beaten and abused. In order to prevent Zhao Yongkuan from escaping again, the woman locked him in the house and denied him food and drink.
A young boy, Zhao Yongkuan, had been abused and beaten, but he was determined not to be treated like this again. So he seized the opportunity and fled his abusive family again.
During his wanderings, he followed a farmer who was driving cattle home, and eventually reached the house of a kind old couple. Although Zhao Yongkuan still wanted to run away at first, he found that the old man was much better than his previous abusers, and sometimes bought him toys and ate without treating him badly.
Eventually, Zhao Yongkuan found peace in the family.
After Zhao Yongkuan was taken away by Xu Jinchi, Zhao Yongyong always had a hunch that his younger brother might be in a nearby village. Once, someone told Zhao Yongyong that he seemed to have met his younger brother, but then the man realized that it might be a misunderstanding, because that person looked very similar to Zhao Yongyong.
Under Zhao Yongyong's questioning, the man told him that he saw Zhao Yongkuan in **, but when Zhao Yongyong arrived there, he found nothing. Since being trafficked, the brothers have never had a birthday.
In Zhao Yongyong's memory, their mother would always make a bowl of longevity noodles on their birthday, but they never enjoyed this blessing again. Of course, not being able to celebrate a birthday is not the most important thing for trafficked children.
None of them had the opportunity to receive a good education. After graduating from junior high school, Zhao Yongkuan followed his grandparents' relatives to the north to do building materials business. Zhao Yongyong dropped out of school when he was in the fifth grade.
Zhao Yongyong, a teenager who had been trafficked, stayed at Xu Jinchi's house to help them with farm work. In 2000, in order to find a better way out, he followed a fellow villager to Guangzhou to study jade carving.
Before leaving, the Xu family specially instructed the villagers to take good care of Zhao Yongyong and not let him escape. Obviously, the Xu family also understands that they owe too much to Zhao Yongyong on weekdays.
Although Zhao Yongyong does not have a high degree of education, fortunately he is a very smart person, and two years later, he has learned a skill. So he left his master and began to work on his own.
In fact, what excites Zhao Yongyong the most is not that he can break away from his master and go it alone, but that he can finally use his skills to get rid of the shackles of the Xu family.
At this time, he was very desperate to find his biological father, to catch those traffickers, and to avenge his mother.
Zhao Yongyong's economic situation has improved now, and whenever he makes a sum of money, he will get on the train and embark on a journey to find his hometown. He was abducted when he was 7 years old, leaving him in the dark with the name of his hometown or the province in which he lived.
Everywhere he goes, he always focuses on two things: enjoying the scenery and tasting the food. He pays attention to the local scenery in the hope of finding a sense of familiarity, and then looks for local food, hoping to awaken memories buried deep in his heart.
Zhao Yongyong learned in 2010 that there were many migrant workers in Sichuan, and through small talk, he found that his descriptions matched the Sichuan specialties described by these migrant workers.
In addition, he found that the accent he spoke as a child was similar to theirs. This made him sure that he was from Sichuan, thus greatly narrowing down the scope of his search for his hometown.
When he was a child, he painted many paintings, including the clearest memories of the landscapes and houses of his hometown after he was abducted as a teenager, and these paintings have also become evidence for the local public security bureau.
In 2012, the number of non-profit organizations gradually increased, and when he posted his experience of being trafficked on the ** of "Baby Come Home", more and more people began to pay attention to him.
Although many volunteers contacted him to help him find his relatives, searching for relatives was like looking for a needle in the bottom of the sea, and he had no clue for a long time.
On the road to find relatives, Zhao Yongyong found that memory is an effective tool to find answers. He distinctly remembers that when he was a child, his mother told him about a place called Monument Street.
So, after unremitting pursuit, they finally found a place called Beigao Township in Dazhou City, Sichuan Province. The discovery made them excited. After coming to Beigao Township, Zhao Yongyong was pleasantly surprised to find that there are many families surnamed Zhao here.
At one point, he almost mistakenly thought he had found his home, where a mother had gone out with her child and then disappeared. However, when he actually arrived at that house, he found that he was not part of that family.
Because in his memory, the structure of his house was not like that family.
It took Zhao Yongyong half a year to find his relatives, depleted his savings, and even owed debts. When he returned to Guangdong to raise money and set off again, the volunteers found his hometown in Yongxing Town, where they found his lost mother with two sons, one named Yongyong and the other Kuankuan.
Zhao Yongyong immediately set off, and when he passed by the market where he had visited with his mother and younger brother, he recognized the traffickers at a glance, but in order not to startle the snake, he held back his anger and hatred.
The volunteer encouraged him to look in the basement, and he found that it was the place he remembered to be held, which made him creepy. The traffickers were alert, and in order not to expose themselves, Zhao Yongyong and the volunteers left.
Finally, Zhao Yongyong walked to the familiar village entrance in his memory, and his father was anxiously waiting for him at this time. Because of the disappearance of Xiao Xueqin and his two sons, his father ran around, and even went to the police station to report to the police, but in the end he failed to find any clues.
Later, his father formed a new family, and when he saw Zhao Yongyong, he found that he had changed a lot from the appearance in his memory, and he was very thin, but that appearance was exactly the same as the father image that Zhao Yongyong had painted.
Therefore, he was sure, this was his home. After many efforts, Zhao Yongyong finally found his home on September 11, 2012. Immediately afterwards, he and his father went to the police station to report the case, and the traffickers were also arrested.
In the backyard of the storehouse, they found Xiao Xueqin's bones, which were all based on information provided by human traffickers. In 2013, through clues provided by human traffickers, they finally found their younger brother Zhao Yongkuan.
After searching for his loved ones, Zhao Yongyong found that his family had changed, and the home of his dreams had become the home of his father and another woman, which made him feel a little confused.
For Zhao Yongyong, returning to his hometown is like returning to someone else's home. After 20 years of separation, the relationship between the two brothers cannot return to the closeness they had when they were children.
Although Zhao Yongyong found Beijing District as soon as he learned the news of his younger brother, after they met, they were not only moved, but also silent and embarrassed. On the day of the family reunion, the village was bustling with fireworks, but Zhao Yongyong and his younger brother did not talk to each other much afterwards.
Zhao Daifu's life experience led them to different paths, and his father was old and silent. For Zhao Yongyong, finding his loved ones is more important than anything, even more important than the closeness of relatives.
It has always been his wish to find his mother's whereabouts and give him an explanation. After getting together, the three of them returned to their original life tracks. Although Zhao Yongyong and his younger brother do not have much contact on weekdays, they are closely following the child sale incident and firmly support the "buyer's imprisonment".
When Zhao Yongyong and Zhao Yongkuan returned to their hometowns, we still couldn't ignore the problem of child trafficking, but fortunately, countless volunteers and caring people in the community stood up to speak up for these families, as if looking for a needle in the boundless ocean.
As we often say, "no trade, no harm", and the same is true when it comes to child trafficking. We hope that more and more of the abducted children will be found and returned to their families.
I also hope that all children who have experienced twists and turns, like Zhao Yongyong, will eventually find their own home even if the road is bumpy.