After a day of odd jobs, Tao Liang (not his real name) returned to the cottage rented by his friend. Because he did not have an ID card, he could not find a formal job, nor could he rent or buy a house.
"When I was five years old, my mother ran away, and then I heard from my relatives that I actually had an older sister who was given away as soon as she was born." Talking about his family, Tao Liang did not have obvious emotional fluctuations. "I want to have a hukou and find a job, and now I have to squeeze into a friend's house."
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Tao Liang no longer remembers what year he was born or when he left home, but only remembers that he was born in a small village in Sichuan Province. He was most impressed by the concept of "home" by his sisters, aunts and other relatives in the village. And with his father, he remembered only the endless fists and sticks, for him, for his sister, for his mother. "When I was five years old, my mother didn't want to be beaten again, so she ran away, and when I heard that I ran to Xinjiang, my father went to find her."
During the days when his father left home to look for his mother, Tao Liang and his two sisters ate at their aunt's or other relatives in the village. Although he had five years to eat "a hundred meals", Tao Liang was happy, so that twenty or thirty years later, Tao Liang still clearly remembered that he and his two sisters walked a long, long village road, watching the golden millet swaying with the wind, and then his sister told him: "You were born when you were threshing." ”
After five years, his father finally gave up looking for him and came back, and Tao Liang's most feared day of being beaten also came.
The young Tao Liang did not think about the consequences at all, only wanted to escape from the daily punches and kicks, so he plunged into the vast night, like his mother, escaped from the home that gave birth to him, raised him, and made him love and hate.
According to Tao Liang's recollection, there was a long road out of the village, and he met a driver driving a truck on that road. The driver, with a thick foreign accent, asked him why he was alone and whether he wanted to go with him, and Tao Liang, who was dazed, agreed.
The driver, a Fujianese, "picked up" Tao Liang, who was about ten years old, and returned home. "He also has a daughter who let me do housework and clean up, which is not good for me, but not bad." Tao Liang thought he could settle down at the driver's house, but a week later, he broke one of the driver's teacups while wiping the table. His daughter thundered and shouted at him, "You bad boy, broke my father's cup, and my father will definitely beat you to death when he comes home!" ”
The little girl's words made Tao Liang's heart flutter, and he instantly recalled the feeling of being beaten by his father when he was at home, and before the driver came home, he escaped again. Without too many survival skills, Tao Liang could only pick up some bottles and cans to survive, so he walked and stopped, unconsciously spanning more than a thousand kilometers, in 2005, he came to Guiyang.
The wandering along the way made Tao Liang taste the hardships of life, and it was even more difficult for him to walk without a hukou. Deeply regretting his irrational act of leaving home, he went to the public security bureau to report the crime, and was later taken in by an aid station.
However, his impression of home has long been blurred, and the only memory fragments left are not enough for the aid station to contact his family or help him apply for a household registration. The work of hoeing and cleaning was day after day, and finally, he ran over the wall out of the aid station, intending to go home on his own.
Sichuan Province is close to 500,000 square kilometers, and it is so difficult to find a village with an unnamed name! Tao Liang found a farm and worked to make ends meet while searching for his family. Two years passed, Tao Liang did not get any useful clues, the road to find relatives could not end, he wanted to give up, so he proposed to the owner of the farm to leave.
However, the boss did not settle the salary for him as agreed in advance, but let him settle the meal money and tobacco money for two years. Therefore, The penniless Tao Liang escaped from the farm again.
Sketch of the wandering route
In the end, Tao Liang chose to settle down in Guiyang. Because he did not have a household registration, he could not find a formal job, nor a place to live, so he had to go to the construction site to do odd jobs, so he met some friends and lived in the house rented by friends.
In Guiyang, Tao Liang's new life began. He met a girl, fell in love soon, and had a wedding. In July 2014, their daughter was born, and it was at this time that the father-in-law found that Tao Liang did not have a household registration and could not get a marriage license, so he tried his best to break up the two, quickly found a new husband for his daughter, and signed an agreement with Tao Liang.
"My husband said that I don't have to pay a penny for child support, and they come to raise my daughters, and I want to see them at any time." After a moment of silence, Tao Liang continued, "But I didn't go to see her, I didn't have a hukou, I didn't have the face to tell my daughter that I was her father, because I didn't want others to ask her why you have a black daddy." ”
In June 2021, by chance, Tao Liang brushed the video of Dou to find the creator Gan Biao in Douyin, because there were too many failures before, he did not hold out much hope, but left his own help information casually, unexpectedly, Gan Biao quickly contacted him and helped him release the search video.
"At first, I didn't expect Brother Gan to help me so wholeheartedly, and he also introduced me to a lot of volunteers, such as Sister Wang and Brother An, who were all helping me forward videos, and we got along like relatives." With the help of volunteers, more and more people have seen Tao Liang's story.
In October, Tao Liang's cousin's classmates brushed up on the video posted by Gan Biao, and felt that the situation of one family in the same village was very similar, so they forwarded it to the classmate group. In the end, Tao Liang's second sister got the clue and quickly called Tao Liang. "Many of the things my second sister said matched what I experienced when I was a child, and she said that I had a scar on the back of my right foot, and I could almost confirm that this was my sister."
Although leaving home was a helpless move of the teenager Tao Liang, more than 20 years of wandering and black household life made him regret his mistakes. Unwilling to delay his ex-wife and face his daughter without face, he is still alone and has no savings. "Home" for everyone, is not only emotional sustenance, but also the root vein. After finding a home, Tao Liang can apply for a hukou in Sichuan and does not have to wander all day.
This is the 17368th lost person successfully found by today's headline search public welfare project since its inception, and also the 269th lost person successfully found by "dou to find people", in February 2021, toutiao searcher launched the "dou to find people" plan, relying on ByteDance's Douyin, Today's Headlines and watermelon and other platforms, through official training, traffic support and other ways, so that volunteers, well-wishers through the release of vibrato, micro headlines and other ways to help find people and relatives.
Headline search is a free public welfare project for the whole country, dedicated to helping all kinds of families to find the lost, its principle is to find information in the pop-up window near the missing place of the lost person, with the help of the huge number of headline users, greatly improve the probability of possible witnesses to help find people. Past successful cases have confirmed that the accurate geographical pop-up window of the headline search has a higher success rate for people with low mobility such as the elderly and mental disorders who have lost in a short period of time. Email: [email protected]
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