Chinese couple reunite with son after a long search of 37 years

Losing a child is a painful experience that no parent wishes to go through. However, in a miraculous incident, a Chinese couple reunited with their son after a long search of 37 years.

The paternal grandmother gave away the child just after the day he was born in 1986, without his parents' knowledge. The boy was sent to a man with the last name Zhao so he could be brought up in his family as she believed that the parents couldn't afford another child, having two sons already. The amount of money Zhao paid the grandmother is not confirmed.

According to the South China Morning Post report, Li and his wife, the boy's parents, only knew Zhao’s hometown was in the Shandong province of China. After the grandmother's death, the couple travelled around the world for three decades in search of their son.

In February, the couple found a match to their blood samples – a man with the surname Pang who lived in Zaozhuang, Shandong province, according to the data from the Ministry of Public Security.

In an initiative to reunite children with their biological parents, Chinese authorities collected samples of them and established a DNA database in 2009. The child and his parents' blood was tested twice by the Shaanxi police to confirm they are related biologically.

On August 3, with the Police officers' help, Pang finally met his parents in Weinan, his birthplace, after 37 long years.

"Son, dad and mom are sorry for you. How has your life been all these years?" the couple said with tears in their eyes. They hugged Pang and held his hands tightly, as seen in the video which gained an emotional response from viewers in China.

"The grandmother is so cruel. She abandoned her own grandson. It is hard to understand her actions," a user wrote on Weibo, one of the most popular social media platforms in China.

Another had a different take on it, "The son appears embarrassed at the reunion event. He does not have any feelings for his biological parents, who have not raised him."

(With inputs from agencies)