Google Maps guide kidnap man home after 23 years

A Chinese man abducted more than two decades ago has found his way home thanks to Google Maps, according to a local newspaper.

Just five years old when he was abducted on his way to kindergarten 23 years ago, Luo Gang made himself relive his kidnapping every day so that he could recall details that he hoped would one day help him find his home.

“Every day before I went to bed, I forced myself to relive the life spent in my old home,” he said.

He was taken near his school in the southwestern province of Sichuan and moved hundreds of miles east to Fujian province.

According to the South China Morning Post, Gang was old enough to know he was adopted following his abduction but too young to remember much about his hometown — except that it had two bridges.

After he posted a rough map on a website dedicated to finding missing children, someone told him about a couple in a town in Sichuan province — about 1,500km away — whose son had disappeared at the same time he had.

Photos of the town looked familiar to Gang, and satellite images of the two bridges on Google Maps confirmed it, the SCMP report said.

Gang has been reunited with his birth family, and it’s unclear whether any charges will be laid against his adoptive family.

His parents, Huang Qingyong and Dai Jianfang, had adopted a daughter. “I felt heartbroken. I couldn’t eat or sleep and I cried every day thinking my son was missing and didn’t have enough food or clothes out there,” his mother, Mrs Dai, recalled. She said her boy’s real name is Huang Jun.