Fran Luin Beijing
Published: 9:00am, 1 Jul 2024Updated: 1:04pm, 2 Jul 2024
Lost at busy train station aged 4, orphanage boy becomes linguistic expert, spends 12 years seeking out birth parents
A PhD graduate of Chinese descent who was adopted at the age of four by a couple from the Netherlands has found his birth parents after a 12-year search.
Gouming Martens’ unstinting 12-year quest to discover his origins has touched many people online.
Almost three decades ago, Martens got lost while travelling with his parents from their home in eastern China’s Jiangsu province to his mother’s hometown in southwestern Sichuan province, at the age of three in 1994.
Kind-hearted people sent him to an orphanage and he was adopted by Dutch couple, Jozef and Maria Martens in 1996.
Gouming Martens was adopted by a Dutch couple from an orphanage in China at the age of four. Photo: Sydney Today
The couple named him Gouming, after the name given to him by the orphanage, Gou Yongming, so he would remember where he comes from.
His adoptive parents supported his search for his birth parents.
In 2007, the family returned to China together to look for clues, but the orphanage was gone. However, Gouming never gave up his search.
He spent five years relearning the Mandarin language he had forgotten and did part-time work to pay for three trips to China during his university years.
He registered with Baobeihuijia, Baby Come Home, a volunteer operation dedicated to help people find lost family, in 2012, and looked for his birth parents with the help of volunteers.
Meanwhile, he completed his studies at Leiden University in the Netherlands, and graduated with a PhD in linguistics from McGill University in Canada.
Gouming photographed with his birth parents before he was lost at a busy railway station. Photo: Sydney Today
He now works in Canada as an AI speech recognition expert.
Good news arrived in October last year, when volunteers told Gouming his DNA matched with his birth mother, Wen Xurong.
It turned out that Wen and his birth father, Gao Xianjun, had never stopped looking for the child they know as Gao Yang.
Their story is a tragic one.
In 1994, Gao senior first lost sight of Wen at a railway station. He then got startled by a bunch of hooligans while searching for his wife, and lost Gao Yang.
A tramp tricked Wen to go home with him, and forced her to have a son with him. The tramp abandoned her after she gave birth.
Wen returned to her hometown in Sichuan, but suffered mental illness problems. She then remarried and had a daughter.
Gao senior walked all the way from Sichuan to 1,700km away Jiangsu province, begging for food and searching desperately for Gao Yang. He died in 2009.
In 2017, Gao senior’s brother got in touch with Wen, and asked her to register her DNA with the police and post her son’s information on Baobeihuijia.
According to a volunteer, it was impossible to match Gouming and his mother’s DNA in the database as it required both parents’ DNA data to make a match.
They did eventually match after volunteers meticulously went through all the posts and matched their information, and sent their blood samples for a DNA test.
By happy coincidence, the day volunteers told Gouming about the success of his 12-year search, was his real birthday, October 12 on the Chinese agricultural calendar.
Unfortunately, Gouming’s adoptive mother died shortly before the good news reached them. He said his adoptive father was happy for him.
He reunited with Wen and his half siblings in Sichuan, southwestern China, in February, during the Spring Festival holiday.
Wen, who suffered from a mental disorder, appeared to be fine when she saw Gouming. She kept calling his nickname Yangyang, and asked: “Where have you been?”
“I’m here,” Gouming said.
It took a 12-year search before Gouming was finally reunited with his birth family. Photo: Sydney Today
His stepfather cooked him all kinds of potato dishes after learning potato was a main staple food in the Netherlands and Canada.
Gouming visited his father’s grave in Jiangsu, and met his uncles and aunts. His uncle handed him the compensation for his father’s house demolition, which he had been saving for him for more than a decade.
He also wrote a letter to thank his adoptive father for “raising him up as a high-end talent that many aspire to become” and “letting my brother rest in peace”.
Gouming said he persisted in searching for his birth parents not only because of himself, but also because of them: “I knew they were looking for me, waiting for me to come home.”
He said he will return to China every year.
The story has moved many people online.
“He might have thought his parents abandoned him, but they have never given up on him,” said one online observer.
“Despite the unfortunate beginning of his story, he was eventually lucky as both his birth family and adoptive family are full of love,” said another.
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