Text/Li Na
Disappearing from a country of 1.4 billion people is not difficult. According to the "White Paper on China's Lost Population 2020", about 2739 people went missing every day in the country last year, and 1 million people went missing in the whole year. This means that every minute, 2 people disappear from the sea of people.
There is a group of people in the Internet industry who are trying to use technology and love to minimize this disappearance as much as possible. In the five years since 2016, they have helped reunite 15,346 families.
Disappearing people
A loved one disappears from your life, not dead, not traveling, just suddenly gone.
This feeling, the Linze family for a whole 16 years. On the third day of the ninth lunar month in 2004, his younger brother Lin Zhen (pseudonym) did not return as scheduled, and it was the winter of 2020 when he was reunited with his relatives.
Lin Zhen was lost when he went to Zhuhai, Guangdong Province, with his relatives to work. He reacted slowly from an early age, did not go to school, and could only do manual work. Just a few days after arriving in Guangdong, he called his wife and said, "Don't stay, buy a ticket home the next morning."
The wife received a phone call and thought that Lin Zhen probably did not adapt to the big city and was wronged. The next day she made a good dish, but she didn't wait until dark for Lin Zhen's figure. Lin Ze (pseudonym), the eldest brother of Lin Zhen, immediately went out to look for it, walked along the road at the mouth of the village for several kilometers, found nothing, and the next day he rushed to Zhuhai. After finding the hotel where Lin Zhen lived before, the front desk said that Lin Zhen left at five o'clock on the same day, and Lin Ze went to Zhuhai Railway Station again, but found that the destination of the ticket bought by his brother was not his hometown in Fujian.
"He's in the wrong car." The station staff and Linze thought so. Lin Zhen has never been far away, and is slower than ordinary people, and it is possible to find no way back by car to a strange place - for the next sixteen years, the family traveled back and forth between Guangdong and Fujian, looking for traces of Lin Zhen like a needle in a haystack. However, it backfired, and what awaited them was disappointment after disappointment.
There was no turnaround until the end of 2020. The staff of the Huizhou Aid Station passed the information and photos of LinZhen to the "Toutiao Search" platform, which in turn sent this search information to today's headline users in Huizhou, Ningde and other places. A miracle happened, an enthusiastic Guangdong policeman saw the pop-up window, confirmed the identity of Lin Zhen and contacted Lin Ze - after Lin Zhen disappeared sixteen years ago, Lin Ze reported to the police. Lin Ze knew that Lin Zhen had been living in the aid station since 2008. After years of separation, Lin Zhen had long forgotten the appearance of his family, until he was asked "what is your eldest brother's name", he blurted out: "Lin Ze." ”
In fact, the use of Internet technology to find the missing has become a trend. "Google tracing" and "Amber alert system" are quite common tracking methods abroad, and in China, headline tracing, "reunion system", "Chinese children's disappearance warning platform", etc., are all attempts for science and technology to participate in the search.
In the pre-Internet era, the search mainly relied on posting notices on telephone poles and advertising in newspapers, which depended on pedestrians or readers who happened to intersect with the lost, narrow spread, and paper was not easy to preserve. The development of the Internet has included almost everyone in the information network, and platforms with many users and huge traffic such as Toutiao have become a vast pool of information - at least the time cost between seeing and finding is compressed.
Lin Zhen is the 15,289th lost person who has been successfully found since the establishment of today's headline search public welfare project.
Since its establishment on February 9, 2016, the team has helped reunite 15,346 families. Among them are lost people like Lin Zhen who live in aid stations, elderly people with Alzheimer's disease, adults who suddenly want to leave home to commit suicide because of depression, children who are separated from their parents, veterans who have gone to Taiwan for historical reasons, and martyrs who have left only a tombstone.
As long as the population flows, there is a risk of loss, and there is no end to searching for people. According to a "White Paper on China's Lost Population", about 2739 people went missing every day in 2020, and 1 million people went missing in the whole year. This means that every minute, 2 people disappear from the sea of people.
A little faster
Zeng Hua still remembers the morning of February 9, 2016, the second day of the Chinese New Year, he was on duty at the company, responsible for today's headline city news push. Suddenly, the intern brushed a Weibo: Mrs. Li, who lives in Yanjiao, Hebei Province, accidentally lost herself on the first day of the New Year. After understanding the basic situation, Zeng Hua pushed the clues to the entire Langfang City using accurate pop-up windows in accordance with the news method. In just the past five hours, based on the precise information provided by two today's headline users, the family has found the old lady.
Mrs. Lee is with her family
This provides inspiration. Half a year ago, Toutiao was already trying to use LBS (location-based services) to find lost children, but to no avail. The team understands that if a lost child is abducted, it must respond within a few seconds to be effective, but the current social public information processing does not achieve such capabilities. The elderly, on the other hand, have lower mobility and send pop-up information near the lost location, and the probability of success will be greater.
Since then, the team has expanded the search target from children to the entire population, and in cooperation with police stations, aid stations and other agencies, it has begun to use the advantages of information distribution to connect civil forces and supplement the government-led rescue system.
In July 2018, when zhang Yimei, 21, became an intern for headline search, the team already had a relatively perfect work system: the employees responsible for emergency search were divided into morning and evening shifts. Morning shifts run from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. and evening shifts run from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. After the regularization, Zhang Yimei generally works the morning shift, and at her busiest time, she publishes 30 search messages a day.
The Internet has improved the efficiency of searching, and Zhang Yimei does not want to reduce that efficiency because of herself. So lunch was dragged into dinner, and when he got off work, he found that he had not drunk water all day, which became the norm for Zhang Yimei.
"Maybe just because you're going to eat, the other person has an accident, and if that happens, I'll blame myself very much." Zhang Yimei said she ranks suicidal adults and elderly people with old age and poor health in the best order, because saving them is sometimes between millimeters.
Zhang Yimei remembers that once she received a message from the police saying that a family member had called the police, that a family member suffering from depression was carrying a large number of sleeping pills and leaving a suicide note saying that she was going to another city to commit suicide. The team released the revelation as quickly as possible, and just at the minute when the push arrived at the user, the ticket inspector at the station recognized the person and contacted the family in time. After treatment by a psychiatrist, he finally opened his heart knot and tried to survive.
Whenever she thinks about this, Zhang Yimei feels that it is too important to pop up the window in time: "If this person is in the car a few minutes late, then maybe he was not a healthy person when he was found." So in the team, almost everyone has the idea that if you can be fast, you have to try to be as fast as possible, because the minute that is squeezed out may just save the happiness of the family."
Resist forgetting
After these five years, the headline search has expanded its dimension, and the missing people who are searched have also extended from individuals to many special groups.
In March 2017, Headline Seeker received a special letter. The helper is a 97-year-old Taiwanese veteran named Hu Dingyuan. He was not looking for his lost loved ones, but his hometown 77 years ago.
When he went out to buy vermicelli at the age of twenty, Hu Dingyuan was unexpectedly used as an expeditionary force, going to Burma, India, and finally settling in Taoyuan, Taiwan. Hu Dingyuan suffered from liver cancer, there are not many days to come, and the grandson wrote to today's headlines in the hope of using the power of the Internet to find relatives on the mainland in his lifetime.
"Veterans who are still alive today live one day less, and if we don't seize the time to help them find their loved ones, they may not have a chance in this life." Zeng Hua sighed, "If there is no reliable platform for some trivial things to do, then no one may do it, after all, the older the times, the more people forget." ”
"Fenghuang Township, Luxian County, Sichuan Province, 6 Bao 2 A", the address of the Republic of China period, is indeed no longer remembered. But after today's headlines targeted the news of "Hu Dingyuan looking for relatives" to the Luzhou area of Sichuan, a miracle actually happened. Volunteers and media people relayed in many ways, and the team found Hu Dingyuan's 83-year-old nephew. Ten days after the video call between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, Hu Dingyuan returned to his hometown after more than 70 years of absence. "There are more houses and more people, but the scenery has not changed, they are all in my dreams." The wish was fulfilled, and more than a year later, Hu Dingyuan passed away peacefully.
Hu Dingyuan
Inspired by this incident, at the end of 2017, Today's Headlines officially launched the cross-strait family search public welfare project. In July 2018, Today's Headlines launched a project to find the descendants of martyrs. These people and things that need to be measured in a larger historical dimension are no longer confronted by the intricacies of the real environment, but the gradual dissipation of collective memory.
On the eve of the 2019 Qingming Festival, in Chibi, Hubei Province, Zhou Youqiang, who was in charge of the "Search for the Descendants of Martyrs" project, met Yu Fahai, an old policeman who helped 142 martyrs of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea to find their families. There is no plaque in the cemetery, only fenced, and the tea hills in the rain are paved down, and from a distance, a green patch. These martyrs all went to Hubei to recuperate after being wounded on the Korean battlefield, and did not survive the injuries and eventually died here. However, the security system was not perfect at that time, and their sacrifice was not seen.
It was not until Yu Fahai was sent to inspect this tomb group fifteen years ago that he confirmed the list of these martyrs from the Chibi Civil Affairs Chronicle from the stall. He began to send letters to the address behind the tombstone, and after receiving numerous letters of "no one to check", he finally received a reply: "I was only four years old when my father joined the revolution, and I died when I was about seven or eight years old. After my father's death, I never knew, and then my mother died, and I was an orphan..."
Looking at the tombstones one by one, Zhou Youqiang had a "sense of being immersed in the situation": "The martyrs are no longer unfamiliar names and distant deeds, they have become clearly visible, and they have become real and living people again." He reconfirmed the value of doing it: those who sacrificed deserve to be remembred and remembered by those who came after him.
Fight against regret
In 2018, Xu Yilong, deputy editor-in-chief of Toutiao, said in a TEDx speech: "Technology is the booster for headline searches to succeed; and goodwill is the background for headline searches to succeed." In another speech, he quoted a line from The Streetcar of Desire: "I always rely on the kindness of strangers." ”
In Xu Yilong's view, the search for people is not an accidental relay of love, but the result of reducing the cost of ordinary people doing good deeds: the original person who saw an abnormal behavior may first have to talk, understand the situation, call the police, and cooperate with the police investigation, and now it is just a matter of keeping a little heart and making a phone call - such as the policeman who notified Linze, such as the station ticket inspector who kept the suicide. "The environment of goodwill in Chinese society has not changed, and the mutual assistance and kindness between people have not changed." Xu Yilong said.
The platform provides a channel for people to help each other, and thus stimulates people's deep compassion, they are an indispensable link in the chain, and it is also an important reason for the sustainability of the Internet charity.
Since its establishment, the search team has received a total of 220,000 requests for help, and the probability of success is about 10%. Although the proportion is not high, it is already a good result compared to the traditional number of people who are too low to be counted. Zeng Hua said that sometimes we have to admit that no matter how hard we try to optimize the process and how hard employees try to race against time, this is still a battle that loses more than wins.
A group photo of the members of the headline search team
"Evacuate, the man has found it." Whenever the family said this in a low voice, Zhang Yimei knew that the ending was not good. One night in the winter of the previous year, the wind was particularly strong, and she was particularly impressed, because two family members had said this to her on this day. One of them, who had Alzheimer's disease, was dying when he was found on the construction site and was not rescued when he was taken to the hospital. Zhang Yimei blamed herself, feeling that she was not fast enough, and the family in turn comforted her: "Everyone has tried their best, and I am still very grateful to you." ”
"Human life is so fragile, and life and death are really such a moment." In the headline search for two and a half years, Zhang Yimei has gradually learned to cope with that kind of powerlessness, "If you blindly get wrapped up in guilt and loss, affecting work efficiency will lead to more people can't find their way home, so we can't spend time indulging in emotions, but try to change the success rate from one-tenth to one-fifth." ”
However, in the remaining cases of reunion, it is not all disappointment. For some, the meaning of finding itself has long since transcended the result. In June 2018, after helping a 78-year-old Taiwanese elderly person post a family search message, volunteers who have long cared for the elderly sent this message: "The old man dreamed of being with his family that night, which has not happened for many years." ”
In the five years since the establishment of the team, Zeng Hua often thinks of his grandmother. Zeng Hua's grandmother suffered from Alzheimer's disease and had been lost many times during her lifetime. When his grandmother died in 2013, he had lost all his memories, so Zeng Hua often wondered: What would the world be like in the eyes of an elderly person with dementia?
"We're healthy, we can't know. And when we lose our minds and our memories, we can't let others know. "Now when going out for a walk, Zeng Hua will habitually pay attention to the old man who is single, and when he encounters a special behavior, he will follow him for a few minutes."
This compassion and compassion has now been pushed from technology from one person to a group of people, and these emotions will eventually flow into the common destiny of humanity– although there will still be unreachable places, but at least a light will be lit.