A Chinese couple has been reunited with their son 37 years after his paternal grandmother gave him up because she was too poor to raise him any more.
In 1986, a woman in Weinan city, Shaanxi province, northwest China, gave birth to a baby boy. According to a report by Jiupai News, the boy was her third son.
When he was just a day old, his grandmother sent him to a man named Zhao to be raised with his family.
Her parents did not consent and had no knowledge of the older woman's decision.
The grandmother later told the couple that she had made the choice instead because she thought it would be too difficult to raise another child when they already had two sons.
After 37 years of suffering, the parents are finally reunited with their son. Photo: 163.com
It is unclear how much Mr. Zhao paid his grandmother.
The boy's father, Li, and his mother said they only knew that Zhao's hometown was in eastern China's Shandong province.
After his grandmother died, Mr Lee and his wife spent 30 years traveling in search of their missing son.
According to the Ministry of Public Security's database, in February, the couple's blood samples were found to match that of a man with the surname Pan who lived in Zaozhuang, Shandong province.
In 2009, Chinese police built a large DNA database by collecting blood samples from couples whose children had gone missing and from adopted children hoping to find their biological parents.
Police in Shaanxi province twice asked Li, his wife and Pan to donate blood before confirming that the couple were the biological parents.
On August 3, with the help of police officers, Pan reunited with her parents in Weinan, where she was born 37 years ago.
“Son, your father and mother are so sorry for you. How has your life been these past few years?” the couple said, tearfully embracing Pan and holding his hand tightly.
A video of their reunion caused great excitement in China.
Elderly couple finds son thanks to nationwide DNA database. Photo: 163.com
“The grandma is really cruel. She abandoned her own grandson. It's hard to understand her behavior,” one netizen wrote on Weibo.
Others had a different view: “The son seems embarrassed at the reunion and has no feelings towards his biological parents who didn't raise him,” said one.
Emotional family reunions with long-lost children who have been adopted or abducted regularly make headlines in China.
His father, Sun Haiyang, found his son Sun Zhuo in 2021 after a 14-year search. Sun Zhuo was abducted near his home in southern China's Guangdong province in 2007 when he was four years old.
A nationwide search by their parents, and the help of facial recognition technology and DNA testing, eventually led to them being reunited.
