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The story of a migrant worker in Beijing who got stuck in COVID-19 while looking for his missing son

The story of an immigrant worker at Beijing that stuck COVID-19 while searching for his missing son, which took off on Chinese social media, had an unexpected twist on Friday (21/1) when police announced they had confirmed that his son had died a year ago, a development that parents they refused to accept him.

The story of the 44-year-old migrant worker, whom authorities identified only by his first name Wow, caused shock and sympathy on social media yesterday, drawing attention to the difficulties faced by non-residents in major Chinese cities.

On Wednesday, local officials said the man had been identified as an asymptomatic coronavirus infection, prompting details of his movements to be made public online. His frequent travels around the city, at unusual times, caused a great deal of discussion on the internet.

Users called him “the hardest working man found in a search.” COVID-19” – one hashtag which garnered over 60 million views on the platform Weibo – the equivalent Twitter of Of China. The case has sparked debate over inequality in China, an issue that led the president last year Xi Jinping to seek the attainment of a “common prosperity”.

In interviews with local media, the former fisherman from the province Henan stated that he arrived at Beijing, knowing that his son, 21 years old Wee Wetong, had worked as a cook in the capital. Since then he has done various jobs – from garbage collection to transporting construction materials – and is the one who offers the most money to his family of six, including his paralyzed father. In the Beijing, The Wow earns about 200 to 300 yuan ($ 31.53-47.29) per shift and sleeps four to five hours a day.

“I do not think I am sad, I just want to do my job well, not to steal, to rely on my own strengths, my own hands, to make some money and find my son,” he told China Weekly News.

Chinese police, however, announced today that his son Wow was found dead two weeks after his disappearance. His parents refused to accept this result, even after a test DNA who confirmed the identity of the deceased, who is in a local morgue and has not yet been cremated, according to a police statement in Weyhai, a coastal town in Shandong Province where he lived Wow before the disappearance of his son.

The police added that from 2021 o Wow and his wife asked various services to correct the mistake and conduct investigations.

The Reuters failed to contact him Wow but his wife said in a telephone interview that she did not recognize the body referred to by her police. Weyhai as it was in a state of advanced decay. He added that he wants another test to be done DNA in her particular homeland in the province Henan.

The magazine China Weekly News broadcast on Friday (21/1) that the Wow He said he had gone to a hospital last October to identify a body, but that he did not look like his son.

The announcement of the police about the death of his missing son Wow garnered over 120 million views on Weibo with users expressing regret or distrust of the police announcement. Some asked for the case to be reopened and others, such as the user Aguardar, said that they hoped that the COVID-19 would help in some indirect way to find his son Wow.

“But life is never like a fairy tale,” he wrote Aguardar.

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