While his birth family searched, Peng grew up hundreds of kilometres away in Jiangsu province, where he was given a new name, Zhang Kun, and raised by another family.
More than 20 years after being taken from his family as a child, a Chinese man has finally returned to where his story began, and decided to rebuild his life from scratch. Peng Congcong was just four years old when he was abducted. Now 26, he has reunited with his biological parents in Jiangxi province and made the difficult decision to cut ties with the family who raised him, according to the South China Morning Post.
In an online post shared on December 12, Peng reflected on his first year back with his birth family. He recalled that his parents had moved to Beijing when he was young. One day, while playing alone near a market, he was lured away and kidnapped. His disappearance shattered the family. His parents reported him missing immediately, plastered posters across cities, and searched relentlessly for 21 years.
Everything changed last December when the police informed him that he was not originally from Jiangsu, as he had believed, but from Jiangxi. DNA testing had finally led his biological family to him. Soon after, Peng travelled to Beijing to meet his parents and his two older sisters for the first time since his abduction.
During that emotional visit, his family took him back to the market area where he had lived as a child, helping him reconnect with memories long buried. Days later, they returned together to Jiangxi, where his homecoming turned into a village-wide celebration. Fireworks lit up the sky, a feast was prepared, and relatives welcomed him with red envelopes and cake.
