A large part of the 1.4 billion Chinese remain poor. About 600 million people, or 40 percent of the country’s population, live on about $150 a month or less.
Just like Mr. Yue’s family.
Mr. Yue was born in central Henan Province in 1978 and left his village to seek a better life in the city. He and his family settled in Weihai, a coastal city in eastern Shandong Province, and he became a fisherman.
Mr. Yue and his wife had a happy family. Their first son was born in 2000. Ten years later, they had a second son, who paid about $1,500 for violating the one-child policy.
“We didn’t earn much as farmers,” his wife Li Suying said in a telephone interview. “But we were fine because we were frugal.” She posted an online photo album titled “A Loving Family” to her WeChat timeline in 2016. She does many low-paying seafood-related odd jobs while taking care of the family.
Then her older son, then 19 years old, went missing in August 2020. Mr. Yue and Ms. Li went to the local police station and asked the officers for help in locating him by locating his cell phone and checking the surveillance video footage.
According to Ms. Li and Mr. Yue’s interviews with Chinese media, the police ignored their request and verbally abused them when they refused to give up. An officer told Ms. Li to “shut up” and “go away,” she said. They ignored her as she cried outside the police station for days.
“It wasn’t like I lost anything to give up,” she said. “He is my son.”
Mr. Yue went alone to find her son. He went to many cities, including Beijing, where her son once worked in a restaurant. He did whatever odd jobs he could find on his way.