Almost three decades aftergettinglost as a three-year-old boy, aDutch-adoptedPhD graduate ofChinese descenthas finally found hisbirth parents, thanks toDNAtesting. The now grown man was able to bereunitedwith his biologicalfamily.
Gouming Martens got lost while traveling with his birth parents from their home in eastern China’s Jiangsu province to his mother’s hometown in southwestern Sichuan province at the age of three in 1994,The South China Morning Post(SCMP) reported on Monday (July 1).
Almost three decades after getting lost as a three-year-old boy, Gouming Martens finally found his birth parents
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Image credits:来源: 最人物纪账号
With the support of the Dutch adoptiveparents, Gouming spent the last 12 years looking for his birth family.
In 2007, the Martens returned toChinatogether to look for clues, but the orphanage was gone,TheSCMPreported.
Gouming reportedly spent five years relearning the Mandarin language he had forgotten and did part-time work to pay for three trips to China during hisuniversityyears.
Gouming got lost while traveling with his birth parents from their home in eastern China’s Jiangsu province in 1994
Good news reportedly arrived in October last year when volunteers told Gouming hisDNA matchedwith his birth mother, Wen Xurong.
As it turns out, Wen and Gouming’s birth father, Gao Xianjun, had never stopped looking for the child they knew as Gao Yang,TheSCMPreported.
It is claimed that a man described as a “tramp” tricked Wen into going home with him, forcing her to have a son with him.
The man, who has not been identified, subsequently abandoned Wen after she gave birth.
With the support of his Dutch adoptive parents, Gouming spent the last 12 years looking for his birth family
The mom-of-two, who ended up a mom-of-one, returned to her hometown in Sichuan but reportedly suffered frommental illness. She then remarried and had a daughter.
Gao (Senior) reportedly walked all the way from Sichuan to 1,700km away from Jiangsu province, begging forfoodand searching desperately for Gao Yang. He died in 2009.
In 2017, Gao (Senior)’s brother got in touch with Wen and asked her to register her DNA with the police and post her son’s information on Baobeihuijia,TheSCMPreported.
According to a volunteer, it was impossible to match Gouming and his mother’s DNA in the database, as it required both parents’ DNA data to make a match.
Nevertheless, they eventually matched after volunteers collected a handful of information and sent their blood samples for a DNA test.
By happy coincidence, the day volunteers told Gouming about the success of his 12-year search was his realbirthday, October 12 on the Chinese agricultural calendar, as perTheSCMP.
Despite Gouming’s adoptive mother, Maria, dying shortly before the good news reached them, Jozef expressed happiness for his son.
The McGill University linguistics graduate went on to reunite with Wen and his half-siblings in Sichuan, southwestern China, in February during the Spring Festival holiday.
Wen, who suffered from amental disorder, appeared to be fine when she saw Gouming. She reportedly kept calling his nickname, Yangyang, and she asked: “Where have you been?”
Gouming visited his father’s grave in Jiangsu, and he met his uncles and aunts. His uncle handed him the compensation for his father’s house demolition, which he had been saving for him for more than a decade,TheSCMPreported.
The persistent investigator, who now works in Canada as an AI speech recognition expert, said: “I knew they were looking for me, waiting for me to come home.”
Reunions between adopted children and their birth parents are relatively rare, although the exact frequency can vary widely depending on factors such as country, adoption laws, and the availability of search and reunion services.
Good news reportedly arrived in October last year when volunteers told Gouming his DNA matched with his birth mother, Wen Xurong
A 1998 studyexamined survey responses from 61 parents who had reunions with children they had relinquished, including five birth parents who had exchanged letters and telephone calls but had not yet had face-to-face contact, as well as from 42 adult adoptees who had been sent similar questionnaires.
All of the participants chose to use the services of a reunion registry (International Soundex Reunion Registry), and 92 percent of the respondents had a reunion at least six months prior to completing the questionnaire.
Responses indicated birth parents’ reasons for searching, reflecting the continued pain and feelings of loss and emptiness that birth mothers felt, as well as the need to know what had happened to the child.
100% of surveyed birth parents reported no regret over search or reunion outcomes.
Meanwhile, adoptees’ reasons for searching for their biological family included curiosity, concern about hereditary health problems, and the need to fill a missing “gap” in their personal history.
The overwhelming majority expressed satisfaction with being able to have medical and genetic information about themselves. They also conveyed the desire not to replace the families they had but to build new relationships with their birth families.
Thanks! Check out the results:Renan Duarte
Karina Babenok
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