There were tears of both joy and disbelief earlier this week as a man was reunited with his son after his abduction 14 years ago, recreating the plot of a movie on which the abduction is based. Even more incredibly, it’s second such occurrence this year.
Born in 2003, on 9 October, 2007, Sun Zhuo was abducted from his home town in Shandong Province while playing in a toy car. Dedicating himself to finding his son, the efforts of the boy’s father, Sun Haiyang, came to the attention of movie makers, who turned the real-life story into the 2014 hit film, “Dearest” (情爱的).
Just as in the real-life story on which it is based, the movie is centred around a divorced couple having to deal with their son’s disappearance. After years of hardships, the father’s character finally finds his son in a remote mountainous area, but he has become someone else, having been been given a new identity.
So too now in real life. Zhuo was reunited with his father on 6 December. After the discovery, his trafficker has been arrested, while his adoptive parents have also appealed for release on bail pending trial, reports The Paper.
Zhuo said in an interview that after learning the truth, he was actually a little guilty and under great pressure. “They have been looking for me for more than 10 years. They must be very loving and concerned about me. Thank you for looking for me for so many years. It must have been very hard”, he said.
Nevertheless, Zhuo also said he would choose to go back to his adoptive parents and that his biological parents are the equivalent of having another home, reports Sohu.
t is a happy but bizarre story. But it’s not the only movie based on an abduction which came to such an end this year.
In another case of “based on a true story” becoming “true story based on a movie”, after the 2015 drama “Lost and Love” (失孤) came out, there was much criticism that the two films were too similar.
By way of defence, the filmmakers said that the two focus on the same topic, hoping that they can have a greater social impact, so as to maintain society’s unremitting attention to the problem of child trafficking.
Lost and Love is based on the abduction of Guo Xinzhen, who as a 2-and-a-half-year old, was carried away by a woman while playing at the door of his home, also in Shandong Province in 1997. His father, Guo Gangtang, had been searching for him ever since, until they were finally reunited in July of this year.
Meanwhile, the makers of Dearest have marked this week’s returning of Zhuo with a special poster (pictured) and sent their congratulatory blessings.
