THE story of a Chinese migrant worker whose plight sparked a wave of online sympathy after he tested positive for the coronavirus took another sad twist, as police said his missing son was long dead.The 44-year-old labourer surnamed Yue became one of China’s trending topics this week after he was found to be among a handful of new coronavirus cases in Beijing.
As part of its zero-Covid-19 strategy, China publishes anonymised details of where coronavirus carriers have been, to aid contact tracing.Yue’s itinerary exposed a harsh life of working dozens of odd jobs, hauling construction materials often late at night, to support his extended family and help finance searches for a missing son.
Yue said his 21-year-old son, Yue Yuetong, was reported missing in eastern Shandong province in August 2020 and that he had filed a petition to higher-level authorities.
Police in the city of Weihai, which falls under the jurisdiction where the son was reported missing, said on social media yesterday that a “severely decomposed” corpse found in a local reservoir in August 2020 was identified via DNA.
“(The) public security bureau conducted DNA identification using blood samples taken from Yue and his wife... which confirmed it was Yue’s son, but the couple did not accept the results,” the police statement said, adding that the couple had since launched legal action.Yue said he went to Beijing last year as his son had once worked there, after taking odd jobs in various provinces in the meantime.
The hashtag “the hardest-working Chinese person found by contact tracers” gained millions of views on social media before it was deactivated yesterday. — AFP
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