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25 years ago, Xie Kefeng and his wife began a long and difficult road toward searching for their 3-month-old son who disappeared from their house when Xie's wife left him alone—for only 10 minutes—to buy groceries.On December 2 this year, Xie's family held a party to welcome their son home and thank all the people who helped with the efforts to search for him.The son, Xie Qingshuai, was reunited with his parents, an older brother, and a sister. To top it all, he transformed from a day worker living month to month to a millionaire, with three houses and a car, overnight.Xie's wife recounted that their son was in bed the day he went missing—on December 4, 1998. She had left the house unlocked when she went to buy groceries and when she returned after about 10 minutes, he was nowhere to be found.The search got more difficult as years passed because they could not be sure of how his physical look transformed over the years, and they only depended on the artist's illustrations.At one point, Xie said he had spent almost all his savings and his wife slipped into depression. She was kept under medication for over ten years as a result.He also said he had broken down six motorcycles and traveled as far as Shandong, Shanxi, Henan, as well as southern China's Shenzhen and Guangzhou during his search for his son.He did not give up though, he kept searching and working harder to provide for his family, and after years of hard work, he had saved enough money and announced a 1 million reward for any information regarding his son's whereabouts.Xie says he received many calls since announcing the rewards, which brought many hopes, but all turned out to be false alarms. He even fell for some of them and lost money trying to obtain the information.He still did not give up.His wait was not in vain, at the end of November this year, he received a call from the police informing him that a person matching his lost son's description had been found.A tech company in Beijing had developed an artificial intelligence algorithm that could predict the facial features of a person as they grow up and compare them with their relatives.In this case, they used the child's photo, and images of both parents and his older brother to search through a database to find close matches.The parents submitted DNA samples for comparison and the results came back with good news that the person who matched the description is indeed their son.The company announced on Weibo that Xie Qingshuai was the fourth abducted person it had helped the police locate in the past six months.Xie Qingshuai was abducted by two people who sold him to a couple in Handan, Hebei, the same province as his family. One person involved in the abduction was detained by the police, while the other is reportedly already deceased.Xie was later raised by the couple's parents after the "father" died and the "mother" remarried. He was working in Chengdu, Sichuan, when he was informed of the news and soon reunited with his biological parents in Xingtai, Hebei."My son has returned, and these tears you see are the tears of joy," said Xie's wife. "He didn't have his father's or mother's love since little, and I'm sorry for my child."Xie said he had planned for the future of his son for many years, he has bought him 3 houses and a car already. Reference: Weibo, NetEase
*The opinions expressed in the article are solely those of the author.* Follow Us
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