By LU Keyan

When children go missing, decades may pass and their cases run cold, but their families never give up the search.

SHEN?Yanrong's life stopped when her son disappeared. For twenty-four years, she woke up, went on another day’s search, and exhausted herself to sleep. Most days led to disappointment, one day led to XU?Zhihui’s truck.

Just a dad who wants to help

The truck was covered with notices, each about the size of a piece of notepaper, and each showing a photo of a missing child. There were so many of them.

Under the pictures were a few lines of information – name, date of birth, where the child was last seen, and how to contact the parents. One of the portraits was her son.

The owner of the truck, a stocky 36-year-old man, was from Shen's hometown, Xinxiang, in the populous northern province of Henan. Xu doesn’t work for anyone except his trucking boss: He is just a dad and wants to help.

Missing child cases in the 1990s and 2000s were often poorly investigated, but the parents almost always keep on searching. The internet is hungry for such stories, which come to light on a regular basis, stimulating volunteers and charities to join the search force.

By Xu’s estimate, there are over 9,000 vehicles – trucks, private cars, road cleaning machines, and delivery bikes – traveling around the country spreading the information. The hope is that the more people know about the cases, the more information they will provide.

Xu Zhihui and his truck with posters of missing children tagged all over.

Before becoming a truck driver, Xu was a successful man. He owned an electronics store and drove a nice car. But the business went under during the pandemic and Xu found himself in debt to the tune of over a million yuan. He looked for construction jobs, but there were none. He took to food deliveries,?but?crashed his bike. A friend said there was money in trucking. So trucking it is.

Happy just to be noticed

Not long after he started driving the truck, Xu saw?a video about a family searching for their missing child, it?turned him into a crying mess. Xu had recently become a dad.?Then he discovered that there was an almost unlimited number of videos in circulation, hundreds, thousands even, perhaps millions, of broken families.

But when Xu reached out to these families, he found almost all of them in desperate straits. Penniless and often chronically sick, there was little Xu could do for them except sympathize.

One mom told him she felt elated even when a scammer called her - yes, a scammer preying on distraught parents: “I was just happy that someone was following our story,” she said.

Finally, Xu had heard enough and knew how he could help.

A slap in the face

Xu found a free office space through a friend and hired a part-time assistant. As the scammer story shows, it is easy to contact affected parents, and they are very free with the information they provide, even though the trail has been cold for decades.

The assistant checks the information provided by the parents and digitally unblurs their old photos of the children. The biggest expense is printing. The fliers are exposed to the elements, and must be made of strong, weatherproof material. Xu managed to negotiate a below-market rate. The print shop owner was hesitant at first, but he didn’t say a word after Xu showed him what was on the posters.

Videos of Xu’s truck are everywhere on the internet. Other drivers saw what Xu was doing and offered their trucks. For the drivers, it is a unique feel-good experience that costs them almost nothing but a small printing fee. When a child is found, the good news is shared by everyone.

When Shen’s son went missing in 1999, she and her husband stood outside their house every night. They slapped themselves in the face to stay awake and as a form of self-punishment. For twenty-four years, Shen has spent every waking hour looking for and thinking about her son.

'But what if my child comes back?'

Before smartphones, Shen traveled around the country following any clue she could get hold of, sleeping in dingy hostels, or under a bridge when she didn’t have money. The family house has fallen down and she and her husband live in a shed next to their pig pen. They don’t have the money to make repairs or tear it down. Plus, what if the boy?comes back and can’t find the old house?

Shen Yanrong holds a t-shirt with the information of her missing son printed on, the boy disappeared 24 years ago.

Other families are in just as much despair. A mother who was blinded by years of crying, texts Xu, begging for updates. A father hasn’t changed the layout of his shop, or even torn down the 20-year-old ads on the walls, hoping that his daughter will recognize the place if she passes by.

Families go on searches together, moms sleeping in a hired van, dads on the street. Sometimes they get together just for a good cry. Shen likes these gatherings. At last, people there don’t find her tiresome and annoying.

Xu encourages the parents to find distractions. Following his advice, Shen started a street-food stand in front of a local college. An egg sandwich costs five yuan at other places. Shen charges four. She points her customers and onlookers toward the fliers about her son.

Depressingly-many people know others in similar situations, be they wandering parents or children who know that something is wrong with their own backstories. She tells her customers that a DNA test is often helpful.

'Bastards' united

Shen met Panda through Xu. From a very young age, Panda knew that the family she lived with was not her own. The village kids called her “the bastard,” a word that still hurts, but it was only after her adoptive father died that she started looking for her biological parents and went to a gathering of parents searching for their missing children.

“Many people told me my parents must have abandoned me because they wanted a boy,” she said. “Even if it were true, I wouldn’t mind. I only want to find out who I really am.”

Deep in her heart, she believes her parents are still looking for her just as hard as these parents are looking for their own children.

CUI?Huaqiang, a trucker who works with Xu, has first-hand experience of the matter. He was a "lost" child. Like Panda, he was teased and bullied as a child. “I wanted closure,” he said.

It turned out that his parents had been looking for him for three decades. The reunion was a powerful experience. His parents, now in their 80s, speak a dialect he could hardly understand. He has since kept in constant touch with them and his siblings.

Children separated from their parents often start looking for them when they leave their adopted families and form their own, Xu says. They don’t want to hurt the people who raised them. Sometimes the urge to find their own parents becomes too pressing when they become parents themselves.

Places where trucks cannot go

Xu’s fleet, like all successful operations has diversified and grown. Some volunteers are truckers, some are taxi drivers, or deliverymen.

Many people, traumatized by the search, cut contact with other searching families once they find their own child. Cui has stayed with the community. He posts videos about his own experience and teaches other people how to use DNA tests to speed up the process.

Real estate broker turned delivery guy LI?Yang has a dozen posters on his motorbike. “I go into small alleyways and residential compounds, places where trucks cannot go,” he said.

None of the volunteers are rich. Many interested drivers decide to not participate when they learned they had to pay for the fliers, while some borrow from credit cards to make payments. Xu doesn’t take donations, especially not from families. He does not offer rewards either.

Whenever a family is reunited with its child, the drivers are beyond happy. On most days, there is no news.?

More than just a face on a truck

"No child was found simply through a photo or a poster, it takes more than that,” Xu says.

Even so, he believes the fleet is spreading kindness and hope, and has some evidence to back up that claim. Warehouse managers, when they see the posters, often offer the drivers food, or let them unload first if there is a line.

His only regret is not having enough time for his own family. He never accompanied his wife on her visits to the doctor before their second child was born. Even in front of reporters, she complains about Xu's constant absence. But she stops at the mention of his posters. Yes, she admits, he is doing a good thing.