A COUPLE in Luohu District have opened a photocopying store in the hope of finding their son who they believe was kidnapped eight years ago.
A sign with a picture of the boy displayed at the shop front reads Son-seeking Store, the Daily Sunshine said.
The photo was taken when Yan Yiren was 4, before he went missing in the Caopu neighborhood. He might have changed [in his appearance] as he must have grown into a teenager, but that s all we ve got, said Yan Zhiyong, the father of the missing boy.
Yan Yiren went missing Jan. 22, 2002, one year before the notorious kidnappings of 18 children reported in the same neighborhood, the Daily said.
We looked around the whole country in the years following his disappearance but we still don t know. So we ve decided to return to where my son went missing and open a store, hoping that people who might have some clue to his whereabouts will come to the store, Yan Zhiyong said.
Yan s shop isn t the only one of its kind in the neighborhood. Sun Haiyang and his wife also run a small shop selling bread rolls and steamed corn, all in aid of publicizing the search for their son who was also believed to be abducted there.
I can t sit around waiting for the police to find my son, Sun said. It s been years.
His son, Sun Zhou, went missing Oct. 7, 2007, when he was in a nursery school playground a few meters from the family s apartment.
Sun has distributed thousands of pictures of his son and said he had explored all avenues himself, claiming the police had given him little support.
Originally from Hubei Province, Sun and his wife came to Shenzhen to give their son a better future.
Since he was born, I had wanted to take him to a big city so that he could have a better education, but I never would have thought that I would lose him soon after we arrived, said Sun.
It is estimated that 20,000 children are kidnapped in China every year.
In June 2007, a child labor scandal sent shockwaves through China, after children and disabled people were found working as slaves in hundreds of brick kilns across central and northern China. (SD News)
