Jiading man reunites with daughter after 57 years

Ti Gong

Thanks to the help from volunteers and local police, a 92-year-old man living in suburban Jiading District has been reunited with his daughter after 57 years.

The man, Wang Gentao, said he and his wife had to send their 9-month-old daughter away back then because they couldn't afford to feed her.

From a local orphanage, the daughter, Wang Jufang, was adopted by a family from Luoyang City, central Henan Province, but they had no idea about her whereabouts until a few days ago.

Wang Jufang, renamed Lu Ruijuan by her adopted family, said her foster mother told her for the first time four years ago that she was adopted, but could not say from where.

"I felt very sad when I learned that I was an orphan, but I wanted to know who my birth parents were," Lu said.

In fact, Lu was one of many children from Shanghai around 1960 who were adopted by families from out of town when extreme economic hardship hit the region.

With the help of police in Luoyang, Lu got the information that she was born in Shanghai's Jiading District. She then sought help from a group of people in Luoyang who were also looking for their lost families in Shanghai and other cities in the Yangtze River Delta region.

The group was led by Wang Jinhu, a 58-year-old man who had been looking for his birth parents in Jiading for three decades. Of the same age as Lu, Wang believed they were probably adopted from Jiading in the same year.

Through the efforts of Wang, who often travels from Luoyang to the delta region, and local volunteers in Jiading, they got a convincing clue this month that Lu was the daughter of Wang Gentao, a resident of Malu Town who had been looking for her for over a decade.

However, to confirm their family relations on paper, they needed more convincing proof.

They turned to Jiading police and applied for a blood test for Wang Gentao and Lu. The police accepted their request and offered help. The result was positive.

"All these years, I have been wondering where my lost daughter was and how she has been living. I feel very happy to see her again and know that she is well," Wang Gentao said. "I feel guilty for her, but I hope she understands that it was the hardest decision I have ever made in my life."

Lu said she doesn't resent her birth parents because they sent her away so she could live. She was told that her mother couldn't stop crying when she had to give her up.

"I will visit my mother's tomb and tell her that my father has found me and that she can rest in peace," Lu added.

Wang Jinhu revealed that several people from Henan have been reunited with their birth families in the past decade, but many are still waiting for answers.

"They just want to know if their birth parents are still alive and ask them why they sent them away," he said. "They want to unfold their life's mystery."

According to Wang, more than 10,000 children from Shanghai as well as Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces were adopted by families in Henan from 1962 to 1964, including about 800 from Jiading, 500 of whom were adopted by families from Luoyang.

The adoptions, he said, continued less intensively from 1965 to 1974.

Ti Gong

Ti Gong