A Chinese man who was kidnapped when he was just a toddler has finally been reunited with his family after 24 years, state news agency Xinhua reported.
Sun Bin was 4 years old when child traffickers kidnapped him from a vegetable market where he lived in Sichuan province in 1991, Xinhua reported, according to CNN. His parents relentlessly searched for their son, not knowing the traffickers sold him to another family in Jiangsu province thousands of miles away.
Thanks to DNA testing, authorities were able to match Bin to his biological family. On Tuesday, the now 28-year-old Bin reconnected with his father for the first time in more than two decades during an emotional meeting at a police station in Chengdu.
Upon seeing his father, Bin broke down and wept in his dad's arms, according to CNN. Bin's younger sister, whom he had never met before, was also there.
"I was happy, I was grateful," Sun Youhong, Bin's father, told Xinhua. "But I was also bitter."
Bin was raised all these years in the coastal province by a family he thought adopted him. He never knew where he came from nor did he ask, but that changed when he got older and began wondering whom his original family was.
So Bin sent a DNA sample to his local police station last October and waited until he received a phone call telling him a match was found, CNN reported.
Though his father was there to greet him, Bin's mother was not - she passed away in 2011 after battling cancer for 15 years.
"To find our son had been my wife's biggest wish in life," Youhong told Xinhua. "And days before she passed away she was constantly murmuring our son's name."
Youhong also expressed outrage towards the family that accepted his kidnapped son. It's unclear if the family knowingly accepted a missing boy.
Child kidnapping is a lucrative business for traffickers in China who supply children to hopeful parents in demand of healthy babies, CNN reported. Boys are preferred because they grow up to carry on the family line in Chinese culture.
Bin's father threatened to press charges against the family who raised him.
"But as long as my son comes back to live with me, I won't press charges against them," the father said.
