BEIJING (AP) – Since he was a child, Li Jingwei did not know his real name. He did not know where he was born, or for certain how old he was – until he found his biological family last month with the help of a long-remembered map.

Li was a victim of child trafficking. In 1989 when he was four, a bald neighbour lured him away by saying they would go look at cars, which were rare in rural villages.

That was the last time he saw his home, Li said. The neighbour took him behind a hill to a road where three bicycles and four other kidnappers were waiting. He cried, but they put him on a bike and rode away.

“I wanted to go home but they didn’t allow that,” Li said in an interview with The Associated Press. “Two hours later, I knew I wouldn’t be going back home and I must have met bad people.”

He remembers being taken on a train. Eventually he was sold to a family in another province, Henan.

“Because I was too young, and I hadn’t gone to school yet, I couldn’t remember anything, including the names” of his parents and hometown, he said.

Etched in his memory, however, was the landscape of his village in the southwestern city of Zhaotong, Yunnan province. He remembered the mountains, bamboo forest, a pond next his home – all the places he used to play.

After his abduction, Li said he drew maps of his village every day until he was 13 so he wouldn’t forget.

Before he reached school age, he would draw them on the ground, and after entering school he drew them in notebooks. It became an obsession, he said.

More than 30 years after his abduction, a meticulous drawing of his village landscape helped police locate it and track down his biological mother and siblings.

He was inspired to look for his biological family after two reunions made headlines last year. In July, a Chinese father, Guo Gangtang, was united with his son after searching for 24 years, and in December, Sun Haiyang was reunited with his kidnapped son after 14 years.

Reports of child abductions occur regularly in China, though how often they happen is unclear. The problem is aggravated by restrictions that until 2015 allowed most urban couples only one child.

Li decided to speak with his adoptive parents for clues and consulted DNA databases, but nothing turned up. Then he found volunteers who suggested he post a video of himself on Douyin, a social media platform, along with the map he drew from memory.

It took him only 10 minutes to redraw what he had drawn hundreds, perhaps thousands of times as a child, he said. That post received tens of thousands of views. By then, Li said police had already narrowed down locations based on his DNA sample, and his hand-drawn map helped villagers identify a family.

Li finally connected with his mother over the telephone. She asked about a scar on his chin which she said was caused by a fall from a ladder. “When she mentioned the scar, I knew it was her,” Li said.

Other details and recollections fell into place, and a DNA test confirmed his heritage. In an emotional reunion on New Year’s Day, he saw his mother for the first time since he
was four.

As Li walked toward her, he collapsed on the ground in emotion. Lifted up by his younger brother and sister, he finally hugged his mother.

Li choked up when speaking about his father, who has passed away. Now the father of two teenage children, Li said he will take his family to visit his father’s grave with all his aunts and uncles during Lunar New Year celebrations next month.

“It’s going to be a real big reunion,” he said. “I want to tell him that his son is back.”

AP – Treasure hunters who believe they found a huge cache of fabled Civil War-era gold in Pennsylvania are now on the prowl for something as elusive as the buried booty itself: government records of the FBI’s excavation.

Finders Keepers filed a federal lawsuit against the Justice Department over its failure to produce documents on the FBI’s search for the legendary gold, which took place nearly four years ago at a remote woodland site in northwestern Pennsylvania.

The FBI has since dragged its feet on the treasure hunters’ Freedom of Information Act request for records, their lawyer said on Wednesday.

“There’s been a pattern of behaviour by the FBI that’s been very troubling,” said Anne Weismann, who represents Finders Keepers.

She questioned whether the agency is “acting in good faith”.

A message was sent to the Justice Department seeking comment on the suit, which asks a judge to order the FBI to immediately turn over the records.

Finders Keepers’ owners, the father-son duo of Dennis and Kem Parada, had spent years looking for what, according to legend, was an 1863 shipment of Union gold that was lost or stolen on its way to the US Mint in Philadelphia.

The duo focused on a spot where they say their instruments detected a large metallic mass.

After meeting with the treasure hunters in early 2018, the FBI brought in a contractor with more sophisticated instruments.

The contractor detected an underground mass that weighed up to nine tons and had the density of gold, according to an FBI affidavit unsealed last year at the request of news organisations, including The Associated Press (AP).

The Paradas accompanied the FBI to the site in Dent’s Run, about 135 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, but say they were confined to their car while the FBI excavated.

The FBI has long insisted the March 2018 dig came up empty, but the agency has consistently stymied the Paradas’ efforts to obtain information.

The FBI initially claimed it had no files about the investigation.

Then, after the Justice Department ordered a more thorough review, the FBI said its records were exempt from public disclosure.

Finally, in the wake of the treasure hunters’ appeal, the FBI said it had located 2,400 pages of records and 17 video files that it could potentially turn over – but that it would take years to do so.