Mother and son reunited after 31 years

A man was reunited with his biological parents in December, 31 years after being forcibly removed from them because his birth was against the law, The Beijing News reported yesterday.

Yuan Ying's parents.

Yuan Ying grew up in the city of Jianyang in southwest China's Sichuan Province. He was told at an early age that he was adopted, but he didn't do anything about it until last year.

In October, he went to his local family planning bureau in search of information and learned that he had been born in Jianyang, but not in the town in which he was raised.

Determined to find his real parents, Yuan produced a leaflet containing his information and distributed 5,000 copies of it across the city.

"I reckoned that if I covered Jianyang in leaflets there was a chance I might find my parents," he said.

He was right. Less than a week after he began his leaflet campaign, one of them made its way to a woman called Zou Yuhua, the report said.

Zou was convinced Yuan was her son. The pair got in touch and the next day they went together to a hospital in to have a DNA test. On December 16, they were told they were mother and son, the report said.

When Yuan was born in 1983, Zou already had a son so was not allowed to keep her new baby.