BEIJING (SCMP): A man in China who went through many hardships to reunite with his family 34 years after he was abducted has announced a tragic rupture with them one year after the reunion.
Yu Baobao, 37, said on his social media account, which has 326,000 followers, that he had severed ties with his birth family because of money.
Yu lived using the name Li Qiang for 34 years until he found his birth family and discovered his real name in September last year.
He was abducted at his grandparents’ home in southwestern China’s Sichuan province at the age of two.
A rich family in central China’s Henan province bought him from the human traffickers, but did not treat him well and often beat him.
They told him he was adopted when he was five, and sent him away to another family when he was 11.
Yu left his new adoptive home and became a vagabond. After he turned 19, he went to Shanghai and Beijing to work, and settled as a delivery rider in the country’s capital.
Yu said he had not stopped looking for his birth family for one day. When the police informed him that his DNA matched that of his mother, he said he only wanted to “have a good nap on mum’s knees”.
Yu’s deep love moved many, who supported him to do e-commerce live-streaming online to make up for his difficult days.
Required by his divorced birth parents to help out his two younger brothers, who were both in debt, Yu decided to run the online sales business together and gave them a total of 60 per cent of their total earnings under his parents’ persuasion.
Many people who were abducted as children and found their home after growing up engaged in e-commerce live-streaming to financially support their new life.
Some companies, like Zhejiang-based apparel manufacturer Langsha Group, specially hired these families to promote their brand.
Their first live-streaming session turned out to be a huge success, generating 470,000 yuan (US$66,000) in income.
Yu showed proof of bank transfers that he had properly given the right amount of money to his brothers, but he complained that he did not receive his share of earnings.
Also, his brothers had been speaking rudely to him, telling Yu they were doing him a “favour” by accepting him into their family.
One of his brothers even called him by his adoptive name and threatened to beat him up following another quarrel over the money.
Yu said he wanted to save some money to find and bring the human traffickers, who had brought misery to his life, to justice.
Yu said he felt truly disappointed realising his mother was biased towards her other two sons, and continued asking him to give them more money.
Yu said his father blocked one of his social media accounts in May. Two days before he announced to cut off ties with his family on Sept 30, Yu blocked one of his mother’s online accounts.
Yu told Chinese newspaper Dahe Daily that he still missed his mother, but they would never reconcile.
“They separated over three decades ago because of money. Now they separated again because of money. Money is the root of all evil,” one online observer said. - South China Morning Post
