The Toutiao Missing Persons Search is harnessing the power of short videos to reunite women abducted from minority ethnic groups with their families
As of 2020, there were around 1 million missing persons cases in China, according to a white paper published by the Toutiao Missing Persons Search project. Though estimates are hard to come by, many of these missing people are women from minority ethnic groups, who were trafficked from impoverished southwestern regions of China to cities and villages on the eastern seaboard. In 2010, Chen Yeqiang, then a PhD candidate at Yunnan University, found during field research in the Nujiang Lisu Autonomous Prefecture that 1,750 of 4,000 women who had left one village in the last 20 years had been victims of human trafficking.
Language barriers, exacerbated by these victims’ lack of education and by poor communication links between their home communities and the outside world, makes reuniting these women with their families a formidable task. The internet, however, has given rise to new possibilities: In 2020, China was touched by the story of Dezliangz, a woman from the Bouyei ethnic group who lived 35 years in the central Henan province—where she gave birth to two children, but was unable to speak the language of her neighbors and was know to them only as “Hey!”—before a group of Bouyei livestreamers in Guizhou province finally helped her return home.
In this episode, Story FM collaborated with the Toutiao Missing Persons Search to bring you the story of Huang Defeng, a short-video host who was one of driving forces behind Dezliangz’s homecoming; and Lu Jiaying, a young woman whose Bouyei grandmother recently found her family with help from Huang and others.
Founded in 2017 by Kou Aizhe, Story FM is one of the most renowned podcast in China. Each episode focuses on ordinary people’s lives and viewpoints, including the difficulties of marginalized people. Through intimate and private interviews, Story FM digs out first-person experiences and lets listeners immerse themselves in another person’s voice and feelings. You can listen to their podcast in Chinese on Ximalaya, Qingting FM, Apple Podcasts, and the 故事FM mini-app on WeChat.
Translated By
Nathaniel Gan is a translator working from Chinese and Spanish to English. He translates poetry, fiction, and first-person narratives for TWOC. His background in activism, farming, education, and design has provided a fertile training ground for navigating the space between worldviews, where meaning depends as much on context as content. Based out of Providence, Rhode Island, Nathaniel collaborates with poets and writers in the US and internationally.
