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A chance encounter led to a 78-year-old woman in China being reunited with her long-lost daughter.
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Cai Youxiu hadn’t seen her daughter Hu Jun in 24 years since Hu moved to another province for work.
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They completely lost touch with each other after Hu lost a piece of paper with her family’s phone number.
When a 78-year-old woman asked a street sweeper for directions, she didn’t expect the person to be her long-lost daughter she hadn’t seen in 24 years.
The incident took place earlier this month in a small town in China’s Sichuan province. per The Covera Chinese news channel.
The elderly woman, Cai Youxiu, had recently managed to trace her daughter, Hu Jun, to Langzhong city with the help of police, the outlet reported.
While the police had arranged for the two to be reunited, Cai met Hu by accident a day before the scheduled meeting, according to the outlet.
“I was cleaning the entrance to a school when an old lady came to ask me for directions, and I immediately recognized her as my mother,” Hu, 46, told The Cover. “I was so excited, but she didn’t recognize me even after I called her ‘Mom’.”
Cai was initially wary of Hu and had to call police to confirm the latter was her daughter, the outlet reported.
The dramatic story took Chinese social media by storm this week, with many users comparing it to a scripted movie. On the Twitter-like Weibo platform, the hash “Elderly asks for directions and meets daughter who has been missing for 24 years” has been viewed more than 34 million times.
Photos of the mother and daughter, standing next to two officers in front of the local police station, have since been doing the rounds online.
“Fate is so mysterious — I wouldn’t even dare write a novel with this plot because it’s so incredible,” commented one Weibo user.
However, many social media users were also critical of Hu, saying she should have tried harder to reconnect with her family.
According to Chinese news broadcast Red StarHu lost contact with her family after moving from her hometown of Yunyang County to another province in 1999 to look for work at a jewelry factory.
She was unable to call home after she lost the paper containing her family’s phone number, the outlet reported. She was later cut off from them altogether after her family was forced to leave their home to make way for the construction of a the Three Gorges Damper socket.
“I tried to send them letters, but they were all returned because the old address was invalid,” Hu told The Cover.
“I’ve lost too much time with my mom. I promise to spend as much time with her now as possible,” she continued.
Read the original article Insider