For more than 200 days since her son went missing, Mother He has been cycling around every day in search of him.
Her 26-year-old son suffers from depression and has been unable to find a job for six years after graduating from university. At around 11 a.m. on March 10 this year, her son said to her, “Mom, I’m going to wash my hair.” He never came home again. In the more than 200 days that followed, the nearly 60-year-old mother pedaled a bicycle, cycling over 10,000 kilometers, searching every street and alley in Wuhan.
The missing boy is named Wang Shi, and his mother, who is searching for him, is He Changyu, who lives in Caidian. Hung on the front of Mother He’s bicycle is a photo frame with a missing person notice inside; the paper has become worn and yellowed. The notice states that Wang Shi is 26 years old, 176 cm tall, suffers from schizophrenia, speaks with an Enshi accent, and was last seen wearing a sweater with a checkered pattern, blue jeans, and black-and-white casual shoes.
Mother He told reporters that Wang Shi graduated from Enshi Vocational and Technical College in 2006 but, due to his schizophrenia, had been unable to find a job. “He often begged me to take him out to look for work, saying he felt suffocated staying at home. But he faced rejection everywhere, couldn’t integrate into society, and remained in a prolonged state of loneliness,” Mother He said through sobs.
Because Wang Shi didn’t bring his phone when he went out to “wash his hair,” after going missing on March 10, Mother He sold the small restaurant she had run for many years to focus solely on finding her son. For over seven months, she cycled about 50 kilometers each day, covering nearly every street and alley in Wuhan, asking everyone she met, “Have you seen my son?” Over those seven months, she traveled a total of over 10,000 kilometers, spending more than 40,000 yuan, yet still hasn’t found her son. Mother He says that as long as she is alive, she will keep searching— even if she gets injured or sick, or ends up sleeping on the streets.