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December 13, 2010

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A little boy lost ... for 30 years

When Wu Jiubing, 34, was reunited with his birth parents, it had been 30 years since they last seen him.

Wu, from Chongqing in southwest China, was abducted as a toddler and sold on at least three times during his ordeal, police said.

Wu and his parents, now both in their 60s, met last Friday in a police station in Xiangyang in Hubei Province, the provincial news portal cnhubei.com reported.

His father, Wu Maosheng, and mother, Li Shiqun, burst into tears when they saw their missing boy again.

The couple hugged their son, now a grown man, crying: "We owe you, son."

Wu's ordeal began in 1980 when he was just four years old. His father was working as a carpenter in Hubei while Li raised Wu and his sister in their hometown in Chongqing's Yunyang County.

The family's life changed for ever when Wang, a fellow villager, offered to take Li and the children to visit Wu Maosheng.

Li remembered that it was in the spring when Wang took them to the city of Xiangyang in Hubei.

However, they were being led into a trap.

Wang told Li to leave the children with his friend in the hostel where the family were staying while he took her to see her husband.

Instead, his intention was to sell her to be somebody else's wife in Hubei's Zhongxiang City, the report said.

As soon as Li found out what was going on, she escaped back to the hostel in Xiangyang, but found that her son had gone missing and only her daughter, then six years old, was there.

On hearing the news, Wu rushed to be with Li and to question Wang about the whereabouts of the boy.

The police were called but Wang wouldn't or couldn't tell them where the boy was and he disappeared soon after, making further investigation impossible.

The abduction resurfaced this May as part of a wider investigation into child trafficking gangs in Hubei when the police in Xiangyang reopened the case.

Officers went to Wu's hometown and managed to track down Wang, who is now 58 years old.

Wang told the police he had sold the boy to a man, surnamed Tang, at a railway station. Police found that Tang later sold the boy to a woman, surnamed Liu, in central China's Henan Province for 300 yuan.

Liu then gave the child to one of her relatives who sold him to a colleague, officers said.

Then, finally, the colleague gave the boy to a relative, Qin Shengli, police discovered.

When officers found him on December 4, Qin, now 75, told the police he had adopted a boy years ago and named him Qin Dongsheng.

The boy, now a man, is working in Guangdong Province and has been married, Qin told them.

Alerted by police, Qing Dongsheng took a DNA test which confirmed he was the missing boy, Wu Jiubing.

A police investigation into all those involved in the abduction saga is ongoing.




 

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