Father reunited with son after 24 year, 500,000km motorcycling search
A determined father who spent decades traversing China on a motorcycle in the desperate search for his abducted son is reuinted with him after 24 years
A father who spent decades criss-crossing China on a motorcycle in search of his long lost kidnapped son has been reunited with him after 24 years.
In an extraordinary example of human perseverance triumphing over shocking adversity, Guo Gangtang’s son Guo Xinzhen was discovered in the next province of Henan after DNA profiling linked him to a couple suspected of child trafficking, who promptly confessed to the crime.
However, this is not before Guo went to extraordinary lengths to discover his son in a journey that took him across China, during which he expired approximately ten motorcycles as he racked up hundreds of thousands of miles in a desperate search for anyone who might have been able to help.
In all he is estimated to have covered 500,000km over those years, suffered numerous accidents that left him with broken bones and was also robbed.
So remarkable was his story that it was adapted into a film in 2015 named Lost and Love, starring Hong Kong film star Andy Lau, and was the motivation behind a nationwide anti-child trafficking campaign.
His son, now 26, was discovered in July 2021 thanks to the advances in DNA testing that established a link between Xinzhen and his biological family, police tracked down a suspected trafficker who confessed along with his ex-girlfriend that they had abducted the child when he was two-years old.
"He [Guo Xinzhen] is fine. God treated me fairly. Now that the child has been found, everything can only be happy from now on," Gangtang told assembled media as he was reunited with his son.
