Zhu Yiyi, senior reporter of The Paper
Wang Jinhu and his mother. The pictures in this article are all taken by Zhu Yiyi, a senior reporter of The Paper
Wang Jinhu was one of the many families in Shanghai in the early 1960s who were poor enough to raise their youngest sons in the hope of growing up with well-wishers.
Luoyang and Shanghai are 1100 kilometers apart, and in the past twelve years, Wang Jinhu has used countless round-trips of 2200 kilometers to record the hardships he paid for the more than 300 family seekers of the "Henan Jiading" family search group, and under his efforts, more than ten lost families ushered in a reunion.
Now, he has also found his mother who has been lost for nearly 60 years in Jiading, shouting out a belated "mother", and the short mother in her 80s can't stop wiping away tears.
At the age of 46, he learned his real name and began a journey to find his relatives
At the age of 46, Wang Jinhu somehow talked about his own life in a small conversation with an acquaintance.
At that time, Wang Jinhu had learned from his adoptive parents that his biological parents had others. After learning the truth, he also had the idea of looking for relatives, but there were few clues in the sea of people, and even if he had the heart, he didn't know where to start.
Unexpectedly, during this casual chat, he not only learned his name "Mao Fan" before he was adopted, but also learned that he came from Jiading District of Shanghai, a thousand kilometers away.
The suppressed desire to find relatives in his heart burst out again, and Wang Jinhu met about 18 fellow villagers who had similar experiences with him, and embarked on the first journey to Jiading to find relatives.
With the assistance of the Jiacheng Police Station of the Jiading Public Security Bureau, Wang Jinhu found information related to "Mao Fan" by consulting the household registration file, which clearly recorded the date on which the "Mao Fan" household registration was moved out in that year, which coincided with the time he knew to move into Luoyang, Henan, further confirming that today's Wang Jinhu is the "Mao Fan" who was born in Jiading.
Among the companions, some people also found the original file that matched their current household registration, and joy spread in this small search team.
In the days that followed, a "gathering to recognize relatives" kicked off at the Nearby Police Station's Fucheng Experimental Primary School. Because the speed of information dissemination at that time was far less than today, there were not many families who came to the rally to look for their separated relatives, but there were also two families who vaguely identified the two people who may have been raised and taken away by identifying childhood photos and some vague memories.
However, perhaps it was a good thing and a lot of grinding, and the analysis of biological samples compared with the feedback information that was unsuccessful, so that the family search team returned to Luoyang with regret.
But fortunately, everyone did not give up on this, Wang Jinhu also continued to cheer for his companions, the next year's "May Day" holiday, they once again assembled, came to this former hometown, and then, the third year, the fourth year... Their family search journey has been gone for 12 years, and the number has slowly expanded from the initial 18 to more than 300 people, and the initiator of the year, Wang Jinhu, has now become the leader of this family search group.
The civilian police accept the pennant
The regimental commander who is always happy for others
On June 30, 2021, a report about the search for relatives landed on the platforms of major media in Shanghai: At the Jiading Branch of the Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau, Wang Gentao, a 92-year-old veteran of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, was reunited with his daughter Lu Ruijuan, who had been separated for 57 years. "It was finally confirmed that Wang Gentao was Lu Ruijuan's biological father." Hearing these words, the old man Wang Gentao, who had passed his old age, smiled and squinted, hugged his little daughter who was already two sideburns, and gently slapped his daughter's back with both hands, as if the person in front of him was still a baby in swaddling, looking at the scene in front of him, Wang Jinhu couldn't help but have a smile on his face.
In his memory, in 2009, the first time he came to Jiading to hold a "confession gathering", when the two families suspected of finding relatives were the family of the elderly Wang Gentao, but unfortunately, the bad news that came really made the old man feel uncomfortable for a long time.
For many years, Wang Jinhu has been in contact with the old man's family, and this time there have been new clues after several turns, and Wang Jinhu, as the leader of the family search regiment, naturally does not dare to be sloppy. On the one hand, he contacted Lu Ruijuan, who had moved to Xiamen, to inquire in detail about all the details of his life, and on the other hand, he actively communicated with the Jiading police to inquire about the latest requirements for the analysis and comparison of biological samples.
After the police of the Criminal Division of the Jiading Public Security Bureau learned of the relevant situation, they also began to help the reunion after more than 50 years at the same time. With the concerted efforts of everyone, the comparison of biological samples quickly came to a conclusion, and this time the results did not disappoint the old man Wang Gentao, and he also heard the "father" who had been absent for 57 years.
At the scene of this recognition ceremony, Wang Jinhu, as the head of the Henan Luoyang Family SearchIng Group, on behalf of the non-governmental organization of the Family Search Group, reached a joint construction agreement with the Jiading police to provide help to people who have the same needs as Wang Gentao's father and daughter to find relatives, and to deepen the "reunion action" of the public security organs.
In the past twelve years, Wang Jinhu has found a reunion for more than ten families, "Many people ask me, 'What do you feel like when you find yourself for so many people?'" Wang Jinhu said that sitting on the train back to Henan again and again, he couldn't help but be lost and repeatedly shed tears, but he firmly believed that people who were related would always meet.
Become a family search volunteer
At the end of 2021, a phone call from the police of the Jiading Public Security Bureau sent good news to Wang Jinhu.
On the night of December 23, Wang Jinhu, who was having dinner with his wife, received a call from Wang Xiang, a police officer from the Jiading Public Security Bureau, who was familiar to him, "To tell you the good news, we may have found your relatives, and this time the possibility is very high." ”
On December 26, also at dinnertime, Wang Jinhu's WeChat received a friend application from a person named "Juanzi". Originally, he didn't care, thinking that he still came to the family search group for help as usual.
However, just passed the application for adding, the convenience and immediately sent the application for video communication, after the connection, the people at both ends of the screen looked at each other, after a moment of silence, the other party tentatively asked several questions, all about the same person, this person has Wang Jinhu's familiar name "Mao Fan".
The two chatted and chatted, and the bowl and chopsticks that Wang Jinhu picked up from time to time gradually stopped, until the other party asked a question that he had been waiting for for many years: "Are you my brother?" The wife next to her noticed something strange and also came to see it, but she was immediately stunned when she saw it.
According to Wang Jinhu's recollection, his wife only looked at it at that time, and determined that the woman in the picture should be the relative that her husband had been looking for for many years, because the eyebrows and the look were exactly the same as Wang Jinhu's daughter, and the person who made the video call with Wang Jinhu was his sister.
It turned out that shortly after Wang Jinhu found his daughter for the old man Wang Gentao, the old man's son-in-law proposed that he must repay the kindness of the family search group. Under his contact and communication, Wang Jinhu's biological samples were collected in early June and sent to large and small cities in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai, and on December 23, in Kunshan, Jiangsu Province, near Jiading, Shanghai, Wang Jinhu's biological samples were compared with a local old uncle.
Although it was later confirmed that this old uncle was not Wang Jinhu's immediate family member, but only one of his cousins, from the old man's mouth, he accidentally obtained an important piece of information: Wang Jinhu's family had lived in the Huating area of Jiading for a long time. It was night, the Jiading police received the relevant information, and began to search for the first time.
Through the information provided by the cousin, the community police at the Huating police station quickly found the family of Mrs. Qin, who may be Wang Jinhu's family.
On the other hand, the members of the group stationed in Jiading also visited the Huating area, and when they showed the photos of Wang Jinhu when he was a child to the elderly people in the village, several people recognized them at a glance, and the person in the photo was "Mao Fan" who had been sent away.
Once the situation on both sides was summarized, the possibility that Mrs. Qin's family was Wang Jinhu's family was further confirmed, and what was missing was the authoritative identification finally given from the biological sample, which was given from a scientific point of view. The next day, the police of the Criminal Division of the Jiading Public Security Bureau drove to mrs. Qin's home, collected biological sample information for the whole family, and began to analyze and compare without stopping. On December 29, the preliminary comparison results confirmed that Wang Jinhu and Mrs. Qin were related, and on December 30, the results of the second retest were the same as the previous one.
On January 6, 2022, Wang Jinhu, the leader of the family search group that reunited more than a dozen families, returned to his own relatives as he wished, and personally shouted out the "mother" that had been waiting for nearly sixty years.
Don't give up, this is the experience that Wang Jinhu summed up for himself. He said he did four biological tests, the first three failed, and the fourth was successful. "My friends have given up, and two of them are no longer alive, and it would be nice if we were almost 60 years old and could still find our parents."
For this lost 60 years, Wang Jinhu said that he and the members of the regiment did not have resentment in their hearts, and he had become a father and a mother, understanding the plight of the year and the helplessness of his parents, they would continue to run the family search association, and his WeChat name had been changed to "Wang Jinhu Henan Family Searching Volunteer".
Wang Jinhu plans to bring his daughter and grandson to Shanghai to meet his mother in June 2022, and then take her to Luoyang for a few days.
Source: The Paper