FOR the past 12 years, Shanghai mother Tang Weihua has crisscrossed China, walking through villages, forests and mountains in a desperate search for her only son who was kidnapped at the age of five.

"My son is still alive, waiting for me to take him back home," Tang told Shanghai Daily in a recent interview. She refuses to give up hope, though the man who abducted her boy Wang Lei for 50,000 yuan (today around US$7,720) ransom, said in fury that he drowned him after Tang contacted the police.

The owner of a small appliance shop and her husband Wang Jie grimly explored the river in Guangxi where the kidnapper said the boy was murdered. They found nothing.

So far they have spent around 3 million yuan to find the boy, who would now be 17 years old.

Wang Lei is just one of the approximately 200,000 children who go missing every year in China. They are overwhelmingly boys and most are kidnapped and trafficked from small villages or towns in China's rural areas. Some are sold on as workers or field hands, some are sold to beggars' rings and may be mutilated. Some are enslaved by rich families and the average price for boys is US$6,000, according to media reports.

An online campaign to rescue child beggars and combat trafficking was launched through the microblog weibo.com in January. More than 100,000 children have been rescued and reunited with their parents but at least 600,000 children are still listed as missing, according to media reports.

As for Tang, 12 years is a long time and she has pursued clues and false leads around the country, often following bad tips by people who want the 500,000 yuan reward for solid information leading to the boy's whereabouts.

There is still hope the boy is alive, says Tang because arrested traffickers routinely say a child has been killed, so police will not track down the buyers of children, ruining their business.

She has been collecting evidence, calling on lawyers and carrying out her own investigations into the man who was convicted of human trafficking, a lesser crime than kidnapping, and received what she calls "too light" a sentence. The man, Lu Shundong, received 15 years, not a life sentence for kidnapping, and he's getting out of prison next year.

Prospects of his release drove Tang to campaign very publicly for the case to be reopened and city prosecutors finally agreed that a "mistake was made" when the case was closed 12 years ago. Another hearing was promised.

Tang doesn't know when that will happen and cannot rest until the man is sentenced to life behind bars. And whatever happens in court, she will go on searching.

She has written a book about her experience searching for her son, "My Journey of Misery," and says it will be published when the kidnapper is incarcerated for life.



Astonishing tale

Tang's story began in 1999 with an unexpected visitor to her small electric appliance shop on Qiujiang Road in Hongkou District.

A man almost fell to his knees, begging Tang, "Please take me into your shop. I have no work and no place to live."

She didn't need another worker but because of her faith in Buddha, she gave the man a job so he could survive in the big city.

"I didn't realize when I tried to save that poor man that I was hitching a ride to misery," Tang said.

Around five months later on August 26, when Tang was away taking a test for her driver's license, Lu kidnapped the boy Wang Lei and took him to Liuzhou City in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in southern China. Lu, a Guangxi native, confessed this after his arrest in Liuzhou one month after the abduction.

"My whole world started to collapse when I heard about the abduction," said Tang. "I would pay everything to have my son back. He was only five and the next day he was supposed to attend a new kindergarten." She still carries his unused kindergarten ID card in her wallet and has posted her story online and distributed thousands of copies of the boy's picture nationwide.

After the abduction she immediately called police but said she was disappointed by their response.

"They didn't take action immediately. Lu even spent the next day playing with my son in Shanghai's People's Park," said Tang. "Right under the policeman's eyes, Lu took my son on the train to Guangxi."

According to Tang, Lu asked for only 50,000 yuan ransom and the family was willing to pay, but police bungled the call trace. Thus, the kidnapper calling from Guangxi was never connected again to the family and assumed the family didn't care about the child and wouldn't pay ransom, she said.

Then 30 years old, Tang began her journey across the country in search of her missing son. Since then, Tang has never cut her hair - she hasn't had to because it's falling out due to her rage, fear and sorrow.



Arrest

Good news finally came one month after the abduction. Police announced that they had caught Lu in Liuzhou.

On the flight back to Shanghai, Tang knelt in front of the man, begging him to tell the whereabouts of the boy.

But Lu was disdainful and said, "I drowned the kid in a river, and only God knows whether he was still alive." He mockingly called her "the boss who adopted me."

It was a devastating blow to Tang, but she didn't give up faith. For the next three months, Tang and her husband walked along the river Lu mentioned, searching everywhere in vain and talking to people along the way.

Though she despised Lu, she confronted him again and again in prison, altogether eight times, trying to get information.

But Lu wove different lies each time, refusing to say anything about the boy, as a way to punish Tang for calling the police, she said.

But he did tell her clearly why he stole her son and her happiness.

"I was working so hard in the city for so many years, and I still didn't have much money. But I looked at you - you were so rich and happy," she remembered him telling her.

According to Tang's investigation, it was not the first time that Lu had abducted a child. He earlier kidnapped his employer's child in Liuzhou, demanded a 5,000-yuan ransom that the man paid immediately without calling the police.

Tang and her husband have offered a 500,000 yuan reward, prompting many people to fabricate sightings of the boy.

In her book, Tang records her experience of being cheated and mislead. Once a man phoned her from a remote mountain village in Fujian Province and promised her that he had taken photos of the missing boy.

Tang immediately headed there with her husband, only to find the man offering a photo that was merely a print copy of the boy's picture uploaded online.

Another time, a man called Tang from a village in Guangdong Province, and when they arrived, they didn't find their son but saw a batch of seven boys who had been trafficked and sold as workers to families.

Tang and her husband reported the case to local police immediately, but she said they did nothing after the children's current "owners" sent them a thick envelope of money.

"Still, I would rather buy their lies as they often give me some dim hope," said Tang. "I have to keep searching so when I get old, I would not regret my inaction."

Tang's 174-page book, "My Journey of Misery," tells stories from her ongoing search saga.

"I want to tell all the human traffickers around the world that human beings are not commodities for trading, but are the continuation of bloodlines," said Tang. "Please stop murdering families."

Tang said she dreamed that her son was now a tall and handsome 17-year-old and that she tells him,

"Wherever you are, remember that your parents never give up hope," she said. "Please have faith in us."