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For 33 years, Li Lin lived without knowing whether her younger brother was alive. The last time she saw him, they were children, surviving alone on the streets of China after losing their mother and being abandoned by their father.
A stranger had offered to buy a piece of bread for the boy, who was just seven, but he was never seen again. From that day on, his sister devoted much of her life to finding him, with an old photograph as her only clue.
The search came to an end when Chinese police managed to identify and locate Li Xin using facial recognition technology, an old family photo, and biometric technology.
According to the South China Morning Post, the reunion took place on March 23, 2026, at a police station in Jiangxi province, where the two embraced in tears after more than three decades apart.
What is known about Li Lin and her brother’s childhood?
The story began in Xiantao, a city in China’s Hubei province, when the siblings were left almost entirely on their own after their mother died of cancer. Their father, local media reported, suffered a psychological breakdown, left home, and never returned. At the time, Li Lin was 11, and her brother was just seven.
With no relatives to care for them, the children survived on leftover food they found on the streets. One day, while they were seeking shelter from the rain in the back of a truck, they fell asleep and woke up in an unfamiliar city.
During their journey, an elderly woman approached the siblings and offered to buy bread for the younger boy. Li Lin agreed because she thought the woman was willing to help them. However, her brother never came back.
“He was kidnapped while I was in charge of him. I have lived with that guilt my whole life”
According to Li Xin, after being kidnapped he tried to escape to find his sister, but his captors caught him, beat him and denied him food. He also said he was kept locked in a dark room.
In the end, the boy managed to flee and survived by begging on buses until he reached Guangdong province in southern China. There, he was adopted by a family that gave him the surname Han, although he never forgot that he had an older sister.
How he managed to find his brother after 33 years
For more than three decades, Li Lin traveled through different parts of China in hopes of finding her brother. To fund the search, she took jobs in factories, restaurants and construction sites, where she carried bricks and did cleaning work.
According to information published by the South China Morning Post, the woman handed out tens of thousands of missing-person flyers and spent nearly 1 million yuan, equivalent to about $145,000, over the years.
The main obstacle was that she did not have DNA samples from her parents to help identify her brother. Her only clue was an old family photo she had kept since childhood.
The breakthrough came in 2026, when a police officer in Jiangxi used facial-recognition technology to identify a man with the surname Han living in Guangdong. Later, DNA tests confirmed the relationship between the two.
On March 23, the siblings reunited at a police station. Li Lin brought several bags of bread as a symbol of the food they had used to lure her brother when he was little. During the reunion, he told her he had never blamed her for what happened.
The next day, she took him to his hometown, where she organized a red-carpet welcome with fireworks, a birthday cake, and tangyuan, traditional glutinous rice balls associated with family unity.
One of the most emotional moments came when Li Lin accompanied her brother to their mother’s grave, where she said she had finally managed to bring her son back home.
After the reunion, the woman said her next goal is to find their father, learn why he disappeared, and ask him to come back. For his part, Li Xin said the greatest blessing of his life had been having a sister who never stopped looking for him.