A Chinese man who was abducted as a young child has reunited with his birth parents more than two decades later and chosen to sever ties with the family that raised him, marking what he calls a personal rebirth.
As per a report by South China Morning Post, Peng Congcong, now 26, originally from Jiangxi province in southeastern China, shared an emotional online post on December 12 reflecting on his first year after finding his biological family.
Abduction that changed everything
Peng recalled that his family had moved to Beijing when he was four. While playing alone near a local market, he was lured away and abducted. His parents were left devastated. They reported him missing immediately, put up posters and searched tirelessly for him for the next 21 years.
During this period, Peng was raised by a family in Jiangsu province in eastern China and was given a new name, Zhang Kun. Some mainland media reports have described this family as the “buyer”, although Peng has not publicly addressed or confirmed this claim.
Breakthrough through DNA testing
As per the outlet, last December police informed Peng that he was not originally from Jiangsu but from Jiangxi, and that his birth family had located him through DNA testing. He soon travelled to Beijing to reunite with his parents and his two older sisters.
Peng said his family took him back to the market area where he had lived as a child and showed him familiar neighbourhood sights. A few days later, they returned to Jiangxi, where villagers welcomed
him with fireworks, a banquet and warm celebrations. Relatives prepared red envelopes and a cake to mark his return.
“This is what a real home feels like. With my parents’ care, my sisters by my side and my relatives’ blessings, I feel a sense of belonging deep inside me,” Peng wrote.
Choosing to start over
At the time of the reunion, Peng’s job, friends, house and car were all in Jiangsu. After reconnecting with his birth family, he quit his job, transferred his household registration and sold both his home and car.
“These things do not belong to me. So I returned them,” he said.
In a live stream, Peng explained that his adoptive parents had bought the house, while he had paid for the renovations. He then cut off all ties in Jiangsu and moved back to Jiangxi to rebuild his life.
Giving back and looking ahead
Peng described 2025 as his “rebirth year”, shaped by love, healing and reunion. “For the past 20 years, my parents lived with guilt and pain. Now I take them travelling and try good food with them. I want to make up, bit by bit, for the time the years stole from us,” he wrote.
He has since become a volunteer helping families search for missing children and earns money by selling household goods on social media. Peng donated all proceeds from his first live stream to the missing children charity Baby Come Home.
China has long struggled with human trafficking linked to illegal adoption, labour and sexual exploitation. As per the outlet, official data shows that cases involving the abduction and trafficking of women and children in 2021 were down 86.2 per cent from 2013, though many children taken years ago remain missing.