Even as a child Song Yangzhi somehow felt that he was adopted, even though his parents never told him directly. When he was little, he could recite two poems that his parents never taught him, and other kids called him “orphan boy.”
It turns out that Song’s instincts were right: he was kidnapped as a young child and spent 25 years being raised as the child of parents who weren’t his own, until his mother finally found him recently.
They had a tearful reunion on March 4, after Song and his adopted parents saw a picture of a missing child that closely resembled Song when he was little. A DNA test later confirmed that the woman was his biological mother.
The two had, in fact, almost re-united back in 2011, when he read about a woman looking for a child with a mole on his left arm and a birthmark on his left buttock. (She had mis-remembered: it was actually on his right arm and right buttock.)
The reunion was emotional for Song, who broke down in tears throughout. “Please stop crying. I’ve stopped crying,” his mother said. “I am so happy to find you. You’re going to break my heart if you keep crying,” Zhang Xuexia said. It was the first time she'd laid eyes on her son since 1991, according to the state-run Jinhua Times on March 5.
