A Chinese man reunited with his parents after disappearing for 16 years.
(Picture: Xiashi TV Weibo)A Chinese man who disappeared for 16 years after failing out of college has reunited with his family.
A viral video shared to Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, showed the man falling to his knees and apologizing to his mother. The reunion was filmed by Xiashi News, a media outlet in Shaanxi Province.
This was the first time that the man, known only by his surname, Wang, had seen his mother since 2005.
The Xi’an Customs Authority released a statement explaining that Wang, now 39, was an honors student at the top of his class in 2001. In 2005, however, he became addicted to video games and flunked out of college. Too embarrassed to face his family, Wang decided to cut off all contact.
Sign up to our new free Indy100 weekly newsletter
Over the 16 years he spent on his own, Wang worked a series of jobs that did not require him to register his name of identification with the local government. He was put in contact with his family after going to a Xi’an government office to renew his ID. It was then that officials discovered Wang was considered a missing person in Shandong, where his family resided.
Unbeknownst to Wang, his father had been traveling to Xi’an twice a year for 16 years to search for him.
“Every time I came, I would stay for around a week. I’ve walked every street in Xi’an and gone to every internet cafe. It broke our hearts to not be able to find him,” his father told Bailu TV.
Wang’s mother assumed that her son was dead.
“We hadn’t heard from him for so long, and it made me unhappy every day to think about what could have happened to him,” Wang’s mother said. “But I don’t blame him. I am just happy to see him again.”
