The alertness and quick thinking of an ayi saved a child from being abducted at Chongwenmen, beijingkids has learned.

The boy’s father, a prominent member of Beijing’s international community, shared his story in the hope of warning others. (Names are withheld for reasons of safety.)

“Where we live there’s a communal area outside the shopping mall and all the kids play there in the evening,” he told us. His son was approached by a young man who had bought a cheap toy and engaged him in conversation.

“The ayi saw this and didn’t take that much notice, because my son is quite a sociable guy. Then she noticed there was about half a dozen people moving around and getting closer: six young guys, and a middle-aged guy and middle-aged woman. Once they realized they’d got a connection, this guy was on WeChat, and we assume that it was to connect up with a car.”

The ayi realized what was happening and quickly brought the child inside.

“We’re going through the police and the mall security because that area has cameras,” the father said. He suggested parents should be particularly careful.

“It’s just a bit of a heads up for people,” he said. “It’’s a random thing generally, but when you’ve got organized gangs that’s a different matter.”

And of course the ayi has been rewarded for her vigilance.

“Yes, she just had a hongbao!” the dad said.

Child abductions are tragically common in China, usually of young children who are then raised as their own by the abductor or the person who hired them. It is an extreme response to childlessness in a society where children are seen as a safety net in old age. However this is the first report of an attempt at kidnapping targeted at the international community that beijingkids is aware of since 2011, when there was concern about predatory attacks on teenage girls. We continue to caution against circulating reports of kidnapped children on WeChat when the source cannot be verified.

(This article originally stated that the incident took place at Chaoyangmen, and has been corrected. Apologies for any confusion.)

Photo: www.avontuura.com

This is truly one of my greatest fears and has been a very real nightmare for many parents. I am reminded of how quickly a situation can transition into dangerous territory when looking after my son who is now crawling. I turn my back for just a second and he’s made strides across the floor and placing something in his mouth that doesn’t belong there, or a millisecond away from dropping at a height that could potentially hurt the little guy.

The same can be said for innocent days out with the family. You’ve probably witnessed or heard of similar scenarios where a child gets lost or separated from their family in a busy environment, or shopping mall, or the beach. It’s one of the most terrifying and stressful experiences that any parent can go through. Nobody ever plans to lose their child, but with crowds, colorful distractions, a moment with your eyes off your little one means that getting separated from a child when out truly can happen to even the most careful of parents.

Use the following tips to avoid this from happening on a family fun day out.

Dress your child in bright colors
As simple as it sounds, this can seriously save lives. It’s easier to spot a child in a crowd or, god forbid, while being led away by a stranger. Trade in muted tones for bright or neon colors on days out so that your child’s whereabouts will immediately draw your attention. Also, think about dressing in a similar color scheme to make it easier for your little ones to locate you in a busy crowd should they get distracted by something and lose track of you.

Have a safety talk with your child
When it comes to topics like these, everything should always begin with an open conversation. Communication is key, and from as early on as possible. Before heading out to the mall, amusement park, beach, or any other designated location, sit down with your child and share with them the importance of staying together and not running off on their own. Most importantly stress what action to take in the event that they should lose sight of you; tell them to look for an appropriate adult to help them, as well as teaching them to remember your cell phone number by singing it to them using a familiar song or tune. If your child is old enough, you may want to think about purchasing them a phone, specifically for emergency use only.

Remind your child to stay calm but scream if necessary
You want your calming reassurances to echo in your child’s subconscious, ready to be used as a tool in times of crisis. The same goes for situations like these. Remind your child of the importance of staying calm should they get separated from you. Reassure them, that no matter what, you will always find them. This will help keep your child calm in such a situation and ensure that their stress levels are kept at a minimum.

You don’t want to scaremonger your children, however, at the appropriate age, it’s also important to teach your child some life-saving strategies should in the unlikely event someone try to take them. The first thing that destabilizes a child is fear. Should someone try and frighten them into submission or silence them, giving your child preventative tools to combat such a scenario can be the difference between a lost or safely returned child. Let them know that under such circumstances always, always, always, cry out for help, scream, and let the people around them know that they are lost and with a stranger. Reassure them, that the people around them will always want to help safely return them to you!

Take a photo before your day out
Before you set out for the day, make it a tradition to take a photo of the family together, or just your children. This makes an excellent reference to what attire everyone has on, and can especially be handy when you’re in a panic and might easily forget details. Have your children take note of what you have on before leaving the house too.

Choose a good meeting spot
Always set a meeting point in case your kids get separated from the family or group in a crowded place. This works for both young children and adults. When out with friends, I also usually assign a meeting point or code of behavior to follow should we intentionally or unintentionally split up. Take your whole family to the meeting spot before starting the activities for the day. This works especially well in theme parks or fairs. Make sure that everyone is aware of where to go if they ever get lost from the group and always remember to ensure that the meeting place is a permanent spot such as a candy store (the kids won’t forget such a spot in a hurry) and not a mobile signpost, like a hotdog stand!

Equip your child with a form of ID
To prevent stress and fear always include a form of identification on your child. This will help shorten the time it takes for you to be reunited. These labels can come in many formats, including bracelets, tags on necklaces, badges, and notes in pockets or pinned to their clothing. Avoid writing your child’s information and instead only include your own name and cell phone number as a precaution.

Try and stay connected
This one is simple if actively applied and done consistently. It’s not rocket science and while it’s common knowledge to keep an eye on your child when out, the opposite is easily done. Stay physically connected through your hands. Whether you’re walking amongst a crowd, down the beachfront, or in a mall, when you hold hands with your child you minimize the fear of losing them and can keep a closer eye on them. Reward your children when they follow through on the instructions given to them, and take away treats on the day when instructions are not followed, in order to stress the importance of them. This could involve taking away devices on the drive home, weekend candy, or social time once home. Stay safe!

Photos: Pixabay

Recent reports shared on WeChat about an apparently kidnapped child have highlighted the benefits and pitfalls of social media, when it comes to the safety of children.

The posts, widely shared in Beijing groups, referred to a two-year-old boy who had gone missing in Hangzhou on May 20. Several pictures and videos showed the boy, with his Chinese father and American mother.

Many parents expressed understandable concern and sympathy. Others however were uncomfortable about the vagueness of the details, and tried to find out more before sharing further.

By the evening a second post had been shared, which confirmed the child was in fact with his mother. He had not been abducted, but his parents had separated, and his father was no longer in contact with him.

Parents responded with relief and with sadness for the separated family, but the incident raises several issues. Firstly, it demonstrates once again that China does not yet have much effective legal recourse to help parents stay in touch with their children in the event of family breakdown. This problem is exacerbated when the parents are of different nationalities.

Secondly, however, it opens the question of how Beijingers can best help in cases like this, and what checks can or should be carried out before sharing such information on social media. Nobody takes their child away from their partner casually, and in some cases – though not, we must emphasize, in this one, as far as we are aware – they do so because they are fleeing domestic violence or abuse. In such a situation, helping the abuser to find their missing partner can lead to tragic consequences, even murder.

Child abduction is a real issue in China, but we have not been able to find any occasion on which a child was saved by the use of WeChat. One case in April made worldwide headlines, when a taxi driver began handing out cards with pictures of his daughter, 24 years after she disappeared. In that case though she made contact herself when she saw the story on television. And mistakes can happen. In 1996 a Henan couple were delighted to be reunited with their child, missing for three years, when a court-ordered DNA test confirmed the identification. However earlier this year the boy’s kidnapper confessed, and a completely different young man was revealed to be their real son. The couple are reported to be considering suing the court.

WeChat posts can continue to circulate long after the missing child is safely back home, causing embarrassment to the child and their family, and there are also fake videos which appear regularly, such as one purporting to show the police raiding a place where kidnapped children are being held (but filmed from a camera already inside the building.) How can concerned parents be sure that sharing is, as the saying goes, caring?

We would suggest it is best to check any information before sharing it on social media. If the person who posted it cannot personally verify that the post is truthful and current, then passing it on may do more harm than good. China has official channels for sharing information about missing children, and the chances of someone seeing a picture on WeChat then happening to spot and correctly identify that child, in a country of 1.3 billion people, are, to say the least, remote.

Please note the image used is a stock photo and does not depict a child in danger or distress

Photo: Jenny Downing via Flickr

We spotted this alarming news on China Briefing via BeijingCafe:

Foreign schoolchildren are the potential new targets in child kidnapping cases following an incident at one of Beijing’s luxury compounds this past weekend. On Saturday afternoon at approximately 4:30 p.m., the student was outside the side exit of the Yosemite Villa Estate and a man, unknown to her, came towards her and gave her a hug. She pushed him away but he then attempted to lift her up and drag her into his car. Fortunately a guard and a taxi driver stepped forward to help her and she safely returned home. The incident has been reported to the police for further investigation … The suspect is described as a 30-40 year old Chinese man of average height and build, short (buzz) haircut, frame-less glasses, wearing a dark-colored jacket and pants, and driving a small dark-colored car.

Several BeijingCafe users have also verified this news and have added these two accounts:

It’s not just children. There have been reported cases of kidnappers targeting women driving expensive cars. BJ is no different than any major city. Where I come from, car jacking is not unusual. You should always be on alert and pay attention to your surroundings.

Yes it is true and this is not the first time this happend. Young woman I know was attacked by a man in the city. She is rather tall and could get away but can tell you that she still "carries" it with her.
And another kidnap attempt happend near the Yashow. Her friend could help her and also there was a little van approaching them with open door.

It made me more allert and even it is a boy, still foreigner, my 14 year old boy is (was) not allowed to go to town in the evening or during day by himself by taxi. But now not even by himself in the neighbourhood. I know it must be possible to do so but I am very glad he understands my concerns and he deals with this without any comment. Only the idea that they take you child…
And I agree with Esther we all have to be allert why should this not happen in Beijing while it happens everywere else in the world.
It does not mean we must be scared to go out of the house but just be allert.

According to the China Briefing post, a few schools have issued warnings to parents and have offered some advice on what to do in such situations. Click here to read more.

For over a year now editor, blogger, musician and Beijing resident Charles Custer has been working on a distinctly important documentary, Living with Dead Hearts, that focuses on the plight of kidnapped children in China – an issue that is especially relevant given the recent news of the adopted Hubei orphans who were allegedly taken from their birth parents against their will.

Marilyn Mai at thebeijinger.com recently interviewed Custer and Imagethief (a.k.a. Will Moss) wrote a heartfelt essay promoting the documentary’s upcoming release (at the time of writing production was ongoing with a release date TBD). A quick excerpt from Imagethief’s essay:

But I’ve also become a crier. As near as I can figure there is some kind of hormonal recalibration that goes on in fathers, probably to help ensure you empathize with your child in order to reduce the chances of, say, clubbing him to death with an antelope thigh bone when he does any of the zillions of things that really annoy you. But a side effect of that sensible evolutionary step is this emotional trigger that makes me choke up at completely inappropriate times.

I’m serious. I mean, forget all the Old Yeller bullshit. We all cried then. I get damp cheeks for nothing these days. Street musicians, public service announcements, that moment in Star Wars when Threepio abandons R2D2 in the desert, bus shelter advertisements, whatever. Any cheap emotional trick and I’ve suddenly, you know, got something in my eye. I misted up watching Transformers 3 because I thought the compositing was good.

Lost Laowai founder and blogger Ryan McLaughlin also has an interview with Charles (who recently wrote an article relating to this subject for Foreign Policy), in which he relates some of the challenges the crew has faced in production and how readers might be able to help:

The easiest is just to help us promote it by sharing it with your friends, family, and followers online. Maybe you can’t afford to donate right now, but some of them can. Beyond that, of course, there are a million other ways to help too. Last time we raised money, the publicity also led a bunch of people to get in touch with us and offer their help with everything from research and translation to photography.

It was also through a connection from the last round of fundraising that we got to know the folks at the Xinxing Aid center, who we’re donating 20% of the money we raise to this time around. As of the time of this interview, we have already gotten an offer from one person to help us out with the production any way he can, and a number of other people have offered help with promoting the film or have offered their expertise as interview subjects; we’ve already found two new experts to interview.

Read the rest of the interview here.

Those of you who keep a good China blogroll have probably heard of Chinageeks.org, where founder Charles Custer works to provide a community of people interested in China with deeper analysis of the country’s here and now.

For the last year or so, Custer’s also been hard at work on a new documentary film, Living With Dead Hearts, which takes a close look at kidnapping in China and how affected families cope or try to fight back.

If you want to know more about the kidnapping issue itself, check out Custer’s recent article on Foreign Policy, as well as case studies of missing children and their families here. As for the documentary, I for one am nervous. This is the kind of subject that makes me want to cry like a baby and kick someone in the groin repeatedly – very strange mix of emotions. We’ll have to wait until Custer and his team finish shooting and editing before we can actually see it, but for now the director himself is taking questions.

So fill us in: How did an underground hip-hop artist and China blogger such as yourself become interested in China’s kidnapping issues?

Well like anyone I see kids begging on the street from time to time, and while I was living in Harbin I became good friends with an ex-cop who sort of schooled me in the way things work in China behind the scenes. I asked him about the beggar kids, and from there we got into talking about the problem of kidnapping, and ever since then it’s been something I’ve paid attention to.

Social issues and cynicism go hand in hand these days, so I have to ask: Children are kidnapped all over the world – what is unique or especially alarming about this practice in China?
First, the numbers. The official government number is around 10,000 kids kidnapped a year, which is already pretty horrifying, but the US State Department pegs it at more like 20,000, and some independent estimates I’ve seen go as high as 70,000 kids kidnapped each year. To compare, although many children are reported missing in the US each year, most end up having been taken by family members; there are only a few hundred real kidnappings (where a stranger snatches a child for ransom or other profit) in the US each year.

Secondly, unlike kidnappings in the West, kids here are rarely if ever kidnapped for ransom, and once kidnapped the chances of them ever seeing their families again are quite slim. Some kids are sold into adoption, others into lives on the street, prostitution, or even forced labor. Kids sold into street begging are even sometimes intentionally crippled or maimed to make them appear more ‘pathetic’ in the hopes that this will allow them to make more off of begging.

And as you know, there are tons of serious issues in China. Why should people pay attention to this one?

It’s important because the victims here are children. Lots of different famous people have said things along the lines of, “A society can be judged by how it treats its weakest members,” and I think that’s fair. The tens of thousands of children who are kidnapped each year have no way of defending themselves or bringing attention to their cause. And the parents who lose children also tend to be relatively poor, with few resources to draw on in their search for their kids.

Moreover, the root causes of the kidnapping issue do speak to a lot of China’s other serious issues, from corruption and freedom of speech issues to China’s culture of silence and the it’s-none-of-my-business attitude that often lets kidnappers operate with relative ease. If China were able to completely eliminate this kidnapping problem – difficult, but not impossible – it would resolve or at least lessen a number of other problems too, I think, because to truly stamp out kidnapping you have to fight corruption and complacency, you have to give the victims a real voice, and you have make regular people care enough about the issue to get involved and be willing to do things like report it to the police when they’re made aware of a kidnapping case.

Your film follows a couple families looking for their kidnapped children as well as an adult who was kidnapped and is looking for his family. How much hope do you have that they’ll find their family members?

Certainly, we’re very hopeful that one or even all of our subjects will be able to find their children again, and we’re doing our best to help them promote their cases on the off chance that someone might have seen their kids (photos and details about them are here).

That said, statistically speaking, the chances are very slim. Many, many parents lose their children to kidnappers each year, but very few ever see them again. This is especially true in the case of someone like the Liu family, as their son Jingjun was kidnapped too young to be able to remember anything later that could lead him home. Their best chance is that the police happen to uncover a kidnapping ring connected to Jingjun’s case and hope someone tells the police something useful. Lei Xiaoxia’s family has a bit more reason to hope, as at least their daughter was old enough that she knows where she’s from, knows her family members, and knows what’s happened to her. There’s a decent chance that if she can escape from wherever she’s been taken, she might be able to find her parents.

In any case, you never know. But the statistics are not on the parents’ side. 

Any moments talking with your film subjects that really crystallize these issues?
One moment that really has struck me was listening to Li Yong, the adult who was kidnapped as a kid, talking about his experiences in his new "home" after he was sold to a family. Everyone knew what had happened. He spoke a different dialect than anyone else in the area, and he walked around the neighborhood telling people he’d been kidnapped and telling them his parents’ names. In school, kids used to tease him because his parents had bought him rather than given birth to him. Everyone knew, but no one said a thing to the police until over a decade later, at which point it was way too late to do anything, although the fines the police levied on his "adoptive" parents did prevent Li Yong from being able to attend college.

That is just painful. Like makes me want to punch someone in the face painful. Are there a lot of stories like this?
Yeah, being in the room with them and hearing these stories, it’s hard not to be moved by it, moved and really really pissed off by it. In the case of Lei Xiaoxia, for example, we’re still investigating the background, but her parents explained to us that after she was kidnapped, police failed to check the surveillance tapes at her school or at any local bus or train stations. They just "forgot." They also failed to interview any of the girl’s classmates at school, so when a reporter finally did and discovered that she HAD been to school at least briefly that day, and that the school’s cameras would probably have a recording of it, it was too late – the system automatically deletes to conserve space after a certain amount of time has passed. Of course, checking these tapes should have been one of the first things the police did, but according to the parents, they have basically done nothing to investigate other than sending out a small group to look for her the night they reported her missing.

Wow. That is astounding. So what have you been most shocked by while making this film?

I guess the lack of police involvement, from the parents’ perspective anyway, has been kind of a revelation to me. I knew, of course, that kidnapping gangs were highly organized and difficult to break, but if the police are even trying to find these kids, they’ve certainly done a terrible job of communicating that to the parents. 

Why did you change the title of the film from Finding Home to Living with Dead Hearts?

The more we shot the more we realized that kids finding their homes is very unusual. It’s not at all the norm and it didn’t really represent the footage we were getting or the truth of the situation on the ground. The new title was something we agonized over for quite some time. Then I was reviewing one of the interview transcripts and noticed Lei Xiaoxia’s mother had said that living without her child was like living with dead hearts for them. Since a big part of our film is approaching this problem from the perspective of the parents, that’s a much more indicative and evocative title.

As you make the film, is it hard to find that line between sensationalizing something so people will pay attention, versus giving a really complex and honest picture that is harder for people to "latch" on to? 

Yes, and no. The emotion and the stories that are there are actually sensational, I think. It’s hard to overstate the drama of someone having their child kidnapped. The difficulty, I think, comes in trying to capture the complexity of what led to that and not falling into the trap of making some kind of polemic against one cause, when other factors are also at play. That’s a trap that some other work on this topic has fallen into – I don’t want to call anyone out here, though – so it’s something we’re trying hard to avoid. Of course, that does make it harder for the audience to catch everything at first glance, so we’re going to have to strike a delicate balance there. We’re still shooting; that battle will play itself out more when we start editing, and ultimately I guess the viewers will be the judge of whether or not we were able to do justice to the truth of the issue.

You’re still raising funds to finish the film. What needs to be done? How can people help?

The primary expenses we’re raising money for are travel and editing. People can help by donating at livingwithdeadhearts.com. There are some cool rewards for donating money, and you can choose to donate however much you’d like. Also, 20% of what we raise this time around will go to the Xinxing Aid center for street kids, because we wanted to help them out too and it would be difficult for them to do something like this on their own.

But for people who don’t want to donate, there are lots of other ways to help. The easiest way is just to spread the word, tell friends and family members and convince some of them to donate. But of course beyond that there are less obvious ways to help, too. Perhaps you have a skill that might be useful to us — for example, we’ll need lots of music for the film, so musicians with music that might work can help by donating us songs and the rights to use them in the film. 

Are you hoping to get both the local and foreigner communities involved?

We haven’t really tried to mobilize the Chinese community too much yet, because it’s a little risky. We don’t want to attract too much attention until the film is finished – not that it’s a political film, it’s actually meant to be a very personal film, but I’m not sure everyone will see it that way, and we want to be careful to protect ourselves and our subjects. So before we promote it too much in Chinese we want to have the film done so that we can be very clear about what it is and what it isn’t.

That said, I’ve been extremely moved by the response of the ‘laowai‘ community, for lack of a better term, to our project, especially the China blogger community. At this point it’s probably already apparent the ways in which a number of people helped out because it’s plastered all over their websites – including this one! But everyone really stepped up in a way that was just incredible.

I want to specially mention Kaiser Kuo here, who did quite a bit to help us raise money the first go-round, in addition to making a generous donation himself. Lots of people stepped up and helped just out of the goodness of their hearts, and we’re very grateful for it, and continue to be amazed by it as we go through this next round of fundraising and continue to see the generosity at work.

But that’s not to say it’s not there in the Chinese community. I feel quite certain it is, and I think we’re going to see that very clearly once the film is finished and we begin really engaging with them as well as foreigners.

Living With Dead Hearts is set for tentative release in 2012. We’ll keep you posted on screenings and related events. Meanwhile, check out the details and list of rewards for donations here.

This article is excerpted from thebeijinger.com.