一场令人心碎的重逢向我们揭示了中国遗失儿童的困境 [英国媒体]

Growing up, Kang Ying didn’t think much about the fact that she was adopted. Her family, farmers in a rural county of China’s south-western Sichuan province, never treated her differently. When Kang asked about her birth parents, she was told she had been found on the street, a little girl no more than four years old, probably abandoned.

日渐长大的康英（音译，下同）过去并没有过多地纠结自己为何会被收养。她的养父母都是农民，生活在位于中国西南部四川省的一个农村县，养父母们从来没有对她区别对待。每当康问及自己的身世，她总会被养父母告知：她四岁那年在街上被他们捡到，因此她很有可能是被人遗弃的。

In March, Kang, now 28, learned that was not the whole story. Married and with children of her own, she began to wonder about her own mother. She searched online for “child lost more than 20 years ago” and came across a sketch that made her stop.

三月时，今年28岁的康，了解到事实的真相并非如此。已经嫁作人妻，初为人母的她，开始打听询问她的生母。她在网上输入关键词搜索“走丢了超过二十年的孩子”，并偶然发现了一张人脸素描，正是这幅素描使她停下了继续找寻的步伐。

The drawing had been posted by a couple in Chengdu, about 100 miles from where she grew up, who had been searching for their daughter for the last 24 years. The father, a taxi driver, had been handing out cards about his missing daughter to all of his passengers. The online ad was their latest effort.

这幅素描由成都的一对夫妻所发布，而成都距离她所长大的地方足有将近100英里，这对夫妇24年里一直在找寻他们的女儿。家中的丈夫是一名出租车，这些年来一直在向他的乘客分发介绍他失散女儿的卡片。这则网上的寻人启示是他们最近一段时间所做出的努力。

She called the contact listed and, less than a month later, flew to Chengdu to meet her birth parents. The family met for the first time on Tuesday in an emotional reunion that captured the public imagination, a rare happy ending for one of the thousands of Chinese families who have lost a child.

康英她拨打了寻人启事上所列出的联系方式，并在不到一个月后，飞抵成都见到了她的生父母。

On Friday, Kang was visiting her parents again to celebrate their reunion in her father’s village, two hours from Chengdu where they normally live. Her mother washed dishes and prepared food in a dark kitchen at the back of the family home. Kang took her children to play outside.

周五时分，康再次拜访了她的生父母以庆祝他们的失散多年后的重聚，庆祝地点位于她生父的村庄，这里离他们平时在成都的家有两小时的路程。她的生母在屋后昏暗的厨房里洗净碗碟，准备饭菜。康带着她的孩子们在屋外玩耍。

“I thought it would be awkward meeting them after so much time, but it felt natural. I guess it’s because we are family,” Kang said.

康说道“我之前认为，时隔这么久才跟他们相见场面可能会很尴尬，但实际上我们的重逢使我感到很自在，我想这是由于我们是一家人的缘故。”

In China, anywhere between 50,000 and 200,000 children go missing every year, according to estimates. In most cases the children have been abandoned, the result of multiple factors: rural poverty, China’s formerly stringent one-child policy, a preference for sons and larger families, and local traditions.

在中国，据估计，全国各地每年都有五万到二十万的孩童失踪。多数情况下，孩子们是被抛弃的，多种因素导致了这一结果：农村的贫穷，中国先前严厉的一胎政策，对男孩的偏好和对传宗接代观及当地的传统的执迷。

But many have also been kidnapped, to be sold within the country as couples struggle with rising infertility rates and imbalances caused by population controls. Boys fetch higher prices, but according to Anqi Shen, a professor at Northumbria Law School in Newcastle who researched trafficking, girls are also in demand because of the belief they will take care of ageing parents.

但这之中也有很多孩童是被诱拐的，目的是为了将他们卖到城市夫妇手中，这些夫妻的生活或是为不孕不育的阴影所笼罩，或是受困于计生政策所导致的人口失衡。男孩通常能沽得更高的要价，但是根据专门研究非法交易的诺桑比亚法学院教授沈安琪的说法，女孩在人口贩卖的市场需求中也占有一席之地，出于养女儿防老的观念。

“What we can say is that child trafficking and abduction was a historical social problem in China, and it remains a serious problem,” she said.

“我们想要说的是，贩卖和拐卖儿童是中国历史上就存在的一个社会问题，如今这一问题仍旧保有严峻态势，”她说道。

Kang’s parents, Wang Mingqing and Liu Dengying, were selling bananas at a market in Chengdu in 1994 when Kang, whom they had named Qifeng and called Fengwazi, or “Feng baby”, went missing. Liu sent her husband to get change for a customer. When he returned, Kang had disappeared. They ran through the market shouting her name but she was gone. She was three years old.

康的生父母，王明清和刘灯颖过去常把康唤作“疯娃子”或是“疯宝贝”，在康于1994年走丢时，她的父母正在成都的市场上卖香蕉。刘当时让她的丈夫去给顾客找零。当他回来时发现女儿不见了。他们一呼唤着女儿的名字，一边跑着穿过集市，但是此时女儿已经踪影全无。那年她才三岁。

Liu sank into a depression, refusing to work, sleep or eat. Her husband cycled the streets of Chengdu calling his daughter’s name. Eventually they went back to work. They had two other children.

刘陷入了绝望之中，无心工作，寝食难安。她的丈夫呼喊着女儿骑着自行车找寻遍了成都的每一个大街小巷。最后他们不得不无功而返地回到工作中。（自那之后）他们又养育了两个孩子。

But they never quite let it go. Wang subscribed to a newspaper hoping for news of Kang. In 2015, he began driving for the taxi-hailing app Didi and had hundreds of cards printed with information about their missing daughter. They did not have a photograph of Kang so they used a picture of her sister. Every time the phone rang, Liu would jump, thinking it might be Kang.

但是他们心头的挂念却从未消散。王订阅了一份新闻以期寻找康的音讯。在2015年，他借助叫车软件滴滴当起司机，并且做了数百张印有走失女儿信息的卡片。他们没有康的照片，所以用的是她妹妹的图片。每当手机响起，刘都会激动地跳起来，心想这说不定是康的电话。

Eventually, news of Wang’s efforts went viral and a police sketch artist volunteered to do the drawing that caught Kang’s attention. When Kang called them in March, the three of them spoke over video on WeChat. Wang and Liu had spoken to 30 other women they thought might be Kang but this time felt different.

最后，关于王某寻女的新闻迅速地传播开来，一副由警方速写画家志愿描绘的画像吸引了康的注意。康在三月给他们夫妻双方打电话时，借助的是微信的视频通话。王先生和刘女士曾同另外三十名有可能是自己孩子的女性谈过话，但是这一次他们明显感觉到了不同以往的地方。

“When we saw her I had this feeling of being a mother that I never felt with any of the others. I knew for sure she was my daughter,” Liu said.

她的生母刘登英说道“见到她的第一眼我就感受到了我作为一个母亲所具有的本能情感，这种情感是我在其他人身上从未感受到的。”

They started to talk over the phone every day, and decided Kang should do a DNA test. When she became anxious about how long it would take, Wang told his daughter: “We’ve been waiting for this for years. It’s OK if we wait a few days more.”

他们每天都在手机上聊天，随后他们决定让康去做DNA测试。康对等待测试结果所需的漫长时间感到焦虑，王告诉她的女儿：“为此我们已经等了这么多个年头了，再多等几天也无妨。”

China has criminalised the buying of children, punishable with three years in prison, and established a national DNA database for searching families. Still, the problem persists. On the website, Baobeihuijia, or Baby Come Home, more than 41,000 sets of parents are looking for lost children.

中国将买孩子的行为列入了刑法，可处三年有期徒刑，并且建立了国家基因库用以寻找（丢失孩子的）家庭。可问题仍然屡禁不绝。在网站“宝贝回家”上，超过四万一千对父母苦苦找寻着他们失散的孩子。

On 1 April, Kang got a call from the police telling her she should book a flight to Chengdu. Her DNA matched. Two days later, Kang made the journey with her husband and two children. They were swarmed by a horde of reporters and television crews.

四月1日，康接到了警方的一则电话，对方告诉她可以预定前往成都的班机了。她的DNA（与那家人）是匹配的。两天后，康同她的丈夫及两个孩子开启了这趟行程。他们被一大群记者和电视台人员簇拥着。

“I’d never seen so many people. My mind went empty,” she said. In the crowd she saw her mother holding a sign: “Child, welcome home.” Kang went back to her parent’s home in Chengdu, where they stayed up until the early hours of the morning. “I don’t remember what we talked about. We just didn’t stop talking,” she said.

“我从没见过这么多人，我的脑海里一片空白”她说道。在人群中她看到她的母亲手持标语“孩子，欢迎回家。”康回到了她父母成都的家，他们一直待到天刚拂晓。“我不记得我们都说了些什么。总之我们一刻不停地聊着。”她说。

The next day, Kang’s father wanted to take her to his village, two hours from Chengdu, where his family has lived for generations. Relatives and friends came, filling 20 dining tables set out in the yard. Kang’s father parked at the village gate and insisted on carrying her on his back the rest of the way.

次日，康的父亲带她回到了他的村庄，离成都两小时的里程，他们一家在这里世代生活。亲朋好友如期而至，坐满了院子里的二十张餐席。

He told her how much his parents, now dead, had prayed that she would be found. “Now I can finally tell my mom I’ve brought our Fengwazi back,” he said.

她的父亲讲述着她过世的爷爷奶奶是如何向上天祷告，祈求她能被找回。“现在我可以告慰我母亲的亡魂了，我把“疯娃子”带回家了。”他说。

Kang, who lives in China’s northern Jilin province, more than 1,500 miles from Chengdu, still talks with her birth parents most days. They understand that she has a separate life and her own family.

现居中国北部吉林省的康，离成都1500英里之遥，仍然经常和她的生父母聊天。他们明白她已经过上了独立的生活并且有了自己的小家庭。

On Thursday on Tomb Sweeping Day, a holiday for families to honour their ancestors, Wang drove them three hours to where Kang’s adoptive father and grandparents are buried. Kang watched as her parents knelt and kowtowed at their graves. They thanked them for raising their daughter and said they were sorry they had not.

周四是清明节，一个家庭成员纪念先祖的节日，王（康的生母）驱车带着他们一家三口去了康养父和祖父母埋葬的地方祭奠。康看着她的父母在他们的坟头跪拜。他们谢过了她养父对他们女儿的养育之恩，念道着自己没能尽到这个责任。

“At that moment, I really felt like crying. I don’t want my parents to feel regretful. It’s not their fault,” Kang said.

“那一刻我真的哽咽了。我不想我的父母感到愧疚。这不是他们的错。”康说。