He was kidnapped at 4. A map he drew from memory 33 years later led him back home.

For 33 years, Li Jingwei had no idea where he came from. Kidnapped from his village in 1989 at the age of four, he grew up in a different province with a different family. He eventually forgot his birth name and the names of his parents. But there was one thing he never forgot: the landscape of his home.

Images of a specific bamboo grove, a small pond, and a winding road near a school were etched into his memory. In late 2021, inspired by other high-profile family reunions in China, Li decided to trust those memories.

He sat down and meticulously hand-drew a detailed map of his childhood village. He then posted a video of the sketch to Douyin (China’s version of TikTok), hoping against the odds that someone would recognize the geography.

Two people study a mapCanva

“I'm a child who's finding his home,” he said in the video. “I was taken to Henan by a bald neighbor around 1989, when I was about four years old.”

The video went viral instantly. Police and online sleuths began analyzing the drawing, and the specific details pointed them toward a village near the city of Zhaotong in Yunnan province, more than a thousand miles away from where Li was living.

Foggy Chinese villageCanva

The investigation moved quickly. Authorities located a woman in that village who had lost her son decades earlier. When they connected her with Li over the phone, she provided a piece of evidence that wasn't on the map. She asked if he had a scar on his chin from a childhood fall.

He did.

A DNA test subsequently confirmed the match. The investigation highlighted the brutal reality of China's child trafficking black market, which was fueled for years by the one-child policy and a cultural preference for sons. But for Li, the focus was on the miracle of return.

On January 1, 2022, Li met his mother for the first time in over three decades. While his father had sadly passed away years prior, the reunion was a moment of overwhelming catharsis.

In the days leading up to the meeting, Li shared his feelings with his followers on Douyin.

“Thirty-three years of waiting, countless nights of yearning, and finally a map hand-drawn from memory, this is the moment of perfect release after 13 days,” he wrote.

Ultimately, a detailed sketch of a bamboo grove and a pond, drawn from the perspective of a toddler, was accurate enough to bring him back to them.

Li Jingwei, kidnapped map, family reunion, Douyin, child trafficking, hand-drawn map, Zhaotong, viral video, China news, emotional reunion YouTube

This article originally appeared last year.