After his 2-year-old son was kidnapped, Guo Gangtang scoured nearly all of China, traveling more than 300,000 miles by motorcycle in a decades-long hunt for his boy.
Guo, now 51, has handed out countless fliers since 1997, the South China Morning Post reports. He flew a flag on the back of his motorbike with his son’s picture on it. He begged for money and slept under bridges. He broke bones in traffic crashes, faced highway robbers and wore out 10 motorcycles.
Despite his efforts, months turned to years, years stretched into a decade, and then that decade became two, says The Washington Post. At one point, Guo considered suicide. But he never stopped looking.
“Only on the road, I felt I am a father,” he told a newspaper in 2015. “I have no reason to stop [searching]. And it’s impossible for me to stop.” Now, he can. Last weekend, Guo and his wife were reunited with their son, Guo Xinzhen, who’s now in his mid-20s. As cameras rolled, the long-suffering parents buried their heads into the young man’s shoulder and wailed as they saw him for the first time in 24 years.
In 2015, a movie was made about Guo’s search for his son: Lost and Love, starring Hong Kong actor Andy Lau. The film ends in failure. The father doesn’t find his son. Happily, someone now needs to make a sequel.
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