Trafficked Chinese boy reunited with family after 24 years apart
Updated 1406 GMT (2206 HKT) January 16, 2015
Hong Kong (CNN)A Chinese man has been reunited with his father 24 years after he was abducted as a toddler from a vegetable market.
In 1991, 4-year-old Sun Bin was taken by child traffickers from his hometown in Sichuan province and sold to a family thousands of miles away, in Jiangsu province on the country’s eastern coast, Chinese state media reported.
On Tuesday, Sun was finally reacquainted with his 60-year-old father, Sun Youhong, and a younger sister he had never met. The moment was captured in a moving series of photographs.
“I was happy. I was grateful,” the father said. “But I was also bitter.”
Child trafficking is still a major business in China, as traffickers seek to profit off a growing demand for healthy babies from potential adoptive parents in China and elsewhere.
Boys, prized because they carry on the family line, are in great demand and fetch higher prices.
Earlier this week, Chinese police said they had rescued 37 newborn babies after busting a trafficking ring that sold the babies for up $13,000 each.
The reunion Tuesday took place at a police station in Chengdu. When a police officer introduced Sun Bin to his father, the 28-year-old dropped to his knees and wept in his father’s embrace.
“You’re a man. Don’t cry,” said the elder Sun, according to a report released by the state news agency Xinhua.
The Search
Sun Bin was just a toddler when he disappeared at a vegetable market in 1991. Sun Youhong said that he and his wife had dropped everything to search for him.
He said they posted search notices around the area, and Sun Bin’s mother traveled to other cities in Sichuan and neighboring provinces.
Sun Bin’s mother was diagnosed with cancer in 1996 and died in 2011.
“To find our son had been my wife’s biggest wish in life,” Sun Youhong told Xinhua earlier this week. “And days before she passed away she was constantly murmuring our son’s name.”
Sun Bin told Chinese journalists he had always thought he was adopted but he didn’t know where his original home was.
He said he had never asked his adoptive parents how he ended up with them.
As he grew older, he said his wish to find his own family had become stronger and stronger. He left a DNA sample with a local police station in Jiangsu in October 2014 and recently received a phone call saying that a match had been found.
The family also received assistance from a Chinese web site called “Baby Come Home,” which helps reunite separated relatives.
The elder Sun said he was disappointed to learn that his missing child had been put to work as an electrician when he was still a teenager.
“I would have kept my son in school at the age of 15,” he said.
In a phone interview with CNN, the father accused his son’s adoptive parents of breaking the law, for accepting a kidnapped child.
“But as long as my son comes back to live with me, I won’t press charges against them,” he added.
Sun Bin has yet to make a decision of whether he will leave the adoptive coastal town where he was raised. For now he is sleeping for the first time in 24 years in the home of his biological father.
I am glad this young man was found and the babies. This is an enormous success. Human trafficked people are still at an all time high. All lives have the same value and it isn’t how much they can be sold for, it is what they will contribute to the world. Pray for this young man and the babies that they will heal physically and emotionally.
Namaste
Inner Peace
idealisticrebel 
i love happy endings
So many of these cases have no happy ending but thankfully this one at least has.
Thank you, Good Soul, for sharing this.
Big hugs
john
What a sad but wonderful story.
such beautiful and happy endings!!
Reblogged this on The Militant Negro™.
Thanks so much. Be well. Hugs
Hello Barbara Hugz, I am up for a minuter but back to bed soon. How have you been?
Missing our talks Pesky
Did you get my message?
Reblogged this on ChildreninShadow.wordpress.com.
I love happy endings too, but why should we STILL have beginnings like this? I wish upon wish that we can see all human trafficking stop all around the world. Thanks for sharing a rare happy ending. xxx
We world is losing respect for human life. That is where it begins. Hugs, Barbara
It isn’t really an entirely happy ending, is it. There are still other parents, his adoptive parents who raised him and who likely did not know who was a stolen child. Most do not know they have a stolen child. There is always more than one side, more than two sides even. I know it isn’t popular, but as an adopted child I can see some of the other pieces and understand some of the other hurts.
Terrible, the child stealing. Horrifying the pain of the first family. I am happy for the father and son, they finally came back together.
Human trafficking is a scourge. Both families are hurt and devastated. But the child sold has suffered the worst. Hugs, Barbara
The stealing of children is probably one of the worst crimes in the world. Glad for the return of the young man to his father, but look at all the suffering that occurred over the years he was missing. And the suffering of all the parents who have lost their babies.
So very true. Hugs, Barbara