She then announced that the cancer had progressed and spread to her bones.
“Jiaju, your mother will never see you again. I'm sorry,” she wrote.
The boy was five years old when he was abducted the day before the Mid-Autumn Festival in 2015 while playing with a friend in a field near his rural home.
The boy's parents have distributed hundreds of thousands of posters in an effort to find him. Photo: Weibo
Li had been working in another city in Guangdong province to support her family financially and pay for treatment for her younger daughter, who was diagnosed with autism in 2016.
She called her husband to check if his son had eaten mooncakes, a traditional sweet to mark reunions, and learned the devastating news that he was missing.
Since that day, Li and her husband Liu Dongping have been searching for him.
Liu said search efforts had spread to northeast China and hundreds of thousands of posters about missing people had been distributed.
They registered their DNA with police to improve their chances of finding their son.
Chinese police introduced an anti-kidnapping DNA system in 2009.
In 2021, they launched their Reunification Campaign, dedicating even more resources to finding missing children.
The database is also a place where people with questions about their identity can submit DNA information to search for possible matches nationwide.
The system has helped many long-lost Chinese children find their biological parents.
These are people like Sun Zhuo, who was abducted in 2007 and reunited with his parents, Sun Haiyang and Peng Siying, in 2021, and Guo Zhen, who was abducted in 1997 and reunited with his father, Guo Gangtang, in 2021.
Liu said their hopes grew every time other parents were reunited with their children.
Li was shocked to learn that her son had been kidnapped while playing outside. Photo: Weibo
And after being diagnosed with lung cancer in 2022, it became a race against time for Li.
Li divorced Liu after his diagnosis, fearing she would become an additional burden to him, already caring for his paralyzed father and hearing-impaired mother.
But Liu continued to look after Li and paid her daughter's special school tuition of 2,500 yuan (US$350) a month from the 4,000 yuan monthly salary she earns from her job at a supermarket.
After Li's death, Liu said he would continue to search for his son to fulfil her final wish.
