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Home > News > World News > Article > Twas a long way home

T’was a long way home

Updated on: 09 January,2022 11:22 AM IST  |  China
Agencies |

A victim of child trafficking who was kidnapped returned home with the help of a map he drew as a kid

T’was a long way home

Map

Since he was a child, Li Jingwei did not know his real name. He did not know where he was born, or how old he was—until he found his biological family last month with the help of a long-remembered map. Jingwei was a victim of child trafficking. In 1989, when he was four years old, a bald neighbour lured him away by saying they would go look at cars, which were rare in rural villages. That was the last time he saw his home, Jingwei said. The neighbour took him behind a hill to a road where three bicycles and four other kidnappers were waiting.




He cried, but they put him on a bike and rode away. “I wanted to go home but they didn’t allow that,” Jingwei said in an interview with The Associated Press. “Two hours later, I knew I wouldn’t be going back home and I must have met bad people.” He remembers being taken on a train. Eventually, he was sold to a family in another province, Henan. “Because I was too young, only four, and I hadn’t gone to school yet, I couldn’t remember anything,” including the names of his parents and hometown, he said.


Etched in his memory, however, was the landscape of his village in the southwestern city of Zhaotong, Yunnan province in China. He remembered the mountains, bamboo forest, a pond next to his home—all the places he used to play in. After his abduction, Jingwei said he drew maps of his village every day until he was 13, so he wouldn’t forget. Before he reached school age, he would draw them on the ground, and after entering school he drew them in notebooks. It became an obsession, he said. More than 30 years after his abduction, a meticulous drawing of his village landscape helped the police locate it and track down his biological mother and siblings. He was inspired to look for his biological family after two reunions made headlines last year.

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