Zhang Baoyan harbors a long-cherished wish: One day, the website she co-founded can be shut down.

Baby Back Home, or Baobeihuijia.com, was launched by Zhang and her husband Qin Yanyou in 2007 to help families find their missing or abducted children. From an office in Tonghua, a city in the northeastern province of Jilin, Zhang and her team—with the support of over 360,000 volunteers across the country—have helped more than 3,600 people reunite with their biological parents. But she hopes there will come a time when the website is no longer needed.

Zhang has been widely honored for her campaign, and has been awarded a range of accolades, including a national honorary title for female role models conferred by the All-China Women's Federation on February 26. She is also a deputy to the 13th National People's Congress, China's top legislature. In recent years, in her role as a lawmaker, she has advocated for harsher penalties for human traffickers and stronger protection for children.

Long-awaited reunions 

Yin Kaiqiang was abducted over 26 years ago, when he was barely 2 years old. On January 8, with the help from Baby Back Home, he finally reunited with his family.

On March 11, 1995, Yin's mother and grandmother took him to a tourist site in Shenzhen in the southern province of Guangdong as a routine, where they had a stall to sell trinkets and souvenirs to visitors.

The women were busy catering to customers. After finishing a deal, the mother looked for her son, but couldn't find him. A witness said a stout middle-aged man had carried the boy away while he cried for his mother. The family reported the case to the police and scoured the nearby areas for him, but to no avail.

The heartbroken family never abandoned their search. In 2009, Yin's aunt heard about Zhang's website and sought help. At the suggestion of a volunteer,

Yin's parents refiled the case with the Shenzhen police and offered new DNA samples for use in the search for him. With technological advancements and the enlargement of genome and general biological information databases, a match was eventually made, and Yin, who was residing in a city not far away from Shenzhen, reunited with his parents.

Zhang said as the general public has become more vigilant against child abduction, the number of new cases has been gradually declining. In 2007, there were periods when eight such cases were registered with her website every day on average; but more recently, the annual total is fewer than 20.

In 2015, the Criminal Law was revised, which stipulates that not only child traffickers but also the buyers of abducted children would be punished.

"It can be said that the crime of child trafficking has been contained. Moreover, 90 percent of the missing children can be traced down," Zhang told China News Service during an interview in February.

Some adults who believe or suspect that they were abducted as children have initiated their own search for their parents on the website. A recent such case involves Liu Binbin, a young man who has returned to his biological family.

Liu grew up under another name in Huilai, a county in Guangdong. He remembered entering primary school in 1997 one year after being taken to the city, so he inferred that he was abducted when he was about 5. He recalled that one day, when he was outside his home, he was taken away by a middle-aged man, who later handed him to his foster parents.

He remembered scattered details about his original home where he could hear train whistles in the early mornings. He also remembered that he had once been in a traffic accident while riding in his father's car.

When Liu, in his 20s, learned about Baby Back Home, he registered to search for his parents. After analyzing his case, a volunteer suggested that he go to the Shenzhen police for a DNA testing. In December 2020, one month after the test, the police notified him that a match was found. It turned out that his parents, who were also looking for him, had published search notices on the website.

 

Continuing development 

Baby Back Home is the first free online platform in China dedicated to locating missing children. Zhang and her husband decided to set up the website because of their own painful experience. One day in 2002, Zhang's son went out with his grandmother and got lost. It took the family several hours of exhaustive search to find him. Later, Qin, a professor in computer science, set up the website where people could share information about lost children.

In 2006, Zhang quit her job as the head of the credit department at a local bank to manage Baby Back Home full-time. As the website became well-known, several volunteers joined her in publishing information and following up on cases. They often worked for long hours.

On the website, families can upload photos of their missing children, and others can upload photos of children who they believe are missing or have been abducted.

But it isn't easy to match people by examining photos, because appearances change over time. Over the years, Zhang's team has adopted state-of-the-art technologies, such as DNA testing and facial recognition, to identify suspected missing or abducted persons.

Baby Back Home also cooperates with the police and social assistance institutions to share information in missing person identification cases. Zhang and her team have also launched events on TV and other platforms to raise public awareness of child trafficking.

The campaign has received increasing attention and support. One case registered with Baby Back Home has become a media focus. In 1997, a father from the eastern province of Shandong began a search for his abducted 2-year-old son, traveling for years around the country by motorcycle. This real story inspired the film Lost and Love, released in 2015 and starring famous Hong Kong actor and singer Andy Lau. The film has gone a long way in increasing public awareness of human trafficking.

In addition to missing children, the platform has expanded to include new services. It now provides assistance in finding lost adults, including seniors with Alzheimer's.

It even helps people get back in touch with old friends. Recently, Wen Renguo, a resident in Sichuan Province in southwest China, used the website to reconnect with a friend he had lost contact with for over 20 years. The men renewed the youthful brotherhood they had formed while working together in a restaurant.

Despite the happy reunions, many families are still searching for their missing children, including Guo Gangtang, the farmer whose story was adapted into Lost and Love.

Zhang said, "What the volunteers and I hope most is that no child will be abducted and sold, and no parents will lose their child anymore. At that time, we can shut down Baby Back Home with no regret."

"However, as long as there is a need, we will keep working on it," her husband added.

(Print Edition Title:A Bumpy Journey Home)  

Copyedited by Sean Connolly 

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