Searching for Yue: Contact tracing information reveals sad story behind Covid case in Beijing
On January 18, a person tested positive for Covid19 in Chaoyang District, Beijing. The person, who was asymptomatic, was among three reported cases of Covid19 detected in the Chinese capital on Tuesday.
The patient’s contact tracing records showed that from January 1 this year to January 18, over an 18-day period, he visited many parts of Beijing and worked odd jobs around the clock on over twenty different construction sites across the city. . This earned him the title of “the most hardworking Chinese man in contact tracing” (“流调中最辛苦的中国人”).
Yue went around town doing odd jobs around the clock.
In China Weekly News (中国新闻周刊), reporter Chao Xiang (赵翔) interviewed Chaoyang Covid patient and provided more information about him. This article, titled “A Conversation with the ‘Chinese Who Work Hardest in Contact Tracing Records'” (“对话”流调中最辛苦的中国人”) quickly went viral on Chinese social media.Pekinology does a full translation of the article here).
Who is this hardworking and industrious man? They are Mr. Yue, 44, a migrant worker from Weihai, Shandong, who rents a tiny room in Shigezhuang for 700 yuan ($110) a month. As he was about to start his journey by train from Beijing South Railway Station to return home with his wife and youngest son to Weihai, epidemic control officers alerted him that he had been tested. positive for Covid19 and got him off the train.
While he was immediately quarantined at a designated hospital in Beijing, his recent movements and personal story quickly became a major talking point on WeChat and Weibo after a press conference and a press release detailing his whereabouts and recent arrivals (#北京朝阳无症状感染者轨迹公布# ).
Although Yue once worked as a sailor, he is now a construction worker in Beijing. He began working in the city in search of his eldest son, who disappeared at the age of 19 and previously worked as a kitchen helper in Beijing.
Yue Yuetong (岳跃仝)
Yue’s son, Yue Yuetong (岳跃仝), allegedly complained of a stomach ache while working at a food factory in Rongcheng, Weihai, in the summer of 2020. He was supposed to take a bus home , but he never got on that bus. and never returned home. Besides Beijing and Rongcheng, Mr. Yue traveled to at least ten other cities in search of his son, still believing that he could not have gone very far and that it was possible to find him.
Authorities were reportedly not very helpful in arranging a thorough search for the 19-year-old. Yue said China Weekly News that it took weeks before the family could officially register Yue Yuetong as a missing person. Mr Yue also claimed that the police did not find his phone records and CCTV in the first days after his disappearance for confidentiality reasons.
Yue tells China Weekly News (translation by Pekinology):
“I also asked in hospital morgues. On October 12, 2021, they [not clear who] saw me making a petition and told me that a corpse was that of my eldest son and asked me to go to Rongcheng Second Hospital to identify the corpse. I saw this man, whose face was hard to see but big and round. My son is 1.74m tall, thin and has a long face. I don’t think it was my son. I asked to test the bones of the body, but they were unwilling to do so. They initially said the test would be conducted at the Weihai Public Security Bureau, which would take dozens of days. Later it was said that the medical examiner was on a business trip. After half a month, he/she [unclear] called me and told me not to bother him/her again.
My wife couldn’t stop crying when she learned that our eldest son had died. I don’t believe that corpse was my son.
When this corpse was first discovered, I asked the police station, and they said it was not my eldest son. As soon as I started petitioning, they said it was my eldest son in order to close the case.
All the money Yue earns has gone to find her son and his parents who are suffering from multiple health issues. Medicines and medical bills for her bedridden paralyzed father and her mother, who recently broke her arm, are not covered by insurance, and Yue does everything he can to cover them. His wife earns a meager income and his youngest son, who is only 12, attends college.
Despite her difficult life, Yue said China Weekly News he does not feel sorry for himself.
There are several reasons why Yue’s story struck a chord with Chinese netizens. One of the reasons is that although his story is significant, he is not the only one facing such difficulties in China today. In this regard, the responses to Yue’s story bear some resemblance to the reactions dominating social media following the posts of the essay by Fan Yusu, a migrant worker living in Beijing.
Her story about her life and struggles with work, marriage and family became a viral hit in 2017 (find out more here). At the time, commentators wrote, “We are all Fan Yusu,” suggesting that Fan’s story was just one voice among thousands of migrant workers struggling with similar issues and struggles.
“Yue is not the only hard-working Chinese,” one commenter wrote, while another wrote, “I could work even harder than him.”
Many netizens said that Yue’s story brought them to tears because of her dignity and resilience, which many people admire her for – especially in times of Covid19.
There were also many who hoped that Yue, who had received so much attention over her particular contact tracing records, could use her sudden and unexpected fame to her advantage to enlist the help of the public and the police to finally find his son. Calls for a massive search for Yue’s son have also been criticized for how the case was apparently handled by authorities in 2020 and 2021.
The hashtag “Yue Yuetong Come Home” (#岳跃仝请回家#) has quickly trended on Chinese social media, along with the hashtag “Internet helps find Yue Yuetong” (#全网帮忙寻找岳跃仝#).
The missing person flyer for Yue Yuetong from 2020.
Meanwhile, Rongcheng police responded to questions and comments from the public on January 20, saying they would re-investigate to “understand” the case.
On January 21, Weihai authorities released a statement regarding the story. The statement explains that the Rongcheng City Public Security Bureau was informed on the evening of August 12, 2020 by Li, Yue’s wife, that her son had disappeared earlier that day after leaving work.
Police say their team investigated the case and tracked Yue Yuetong’s last known movements and retrieved details of the surveillance. After their search efforts yielded no leads, they listed Yuetong as a missing person.
On August 26, 2020, two weeks after Yue Yueyong disappeared, authorities in Rongcheng learned of a deceased person and found a man’s body. After his DNA was compared to the DNA of Yuetong’s parents, authorities confirmed that the remains belonged to Yue Yuetong. They also said there were no suspicious circumstances surrounding his death.
According to the statement, Yue Yuetong’s parents refused to believe that the deceased man was their son. Despite repeated attempts by the local police to let the family know that their ongoing requests to find their missing son were unsuccessful, the family were unwilling to accept the facts. The body was transferred to a funeral home.
A Weibo commenter wrote, “So to sum up, they already knew their son was dead about ten days after he disappeared, but they couldn’t accept it and traveled all over the country looking for him… I’m without voice. What a tragedy.”
“So their son was actually already gone two years ago… but they couldn’t identify him because he had been in the water and the parents didn’t want to believe him despite the results of DNA. They continued to search for two years. How sad!”
Others blamed the police for not apologizing to the family for the circumstances surrounding the investigation into their son’s disappearance, and also expressed their hope that Mr. Yue could receive psychological help at the Beijing hospital where he is still being treated for Covid.
Ironically, it was her misfortune to catch Covid19 and her remarkable contact tracing records that sparked public interest and ultimately ended the long and costly search for her son.
Despite the official statement, there are still unanswered questions. Why did the police allow Mr. Yue and his wife to continue looking for their son for so long if they already knew he was dead? Why was Mr. Yue so convinced that the body found was not his son? How and why did Yue Yuetong die? Many of these questions may never be answered. One thing that the majority of those discussing this topic agree on is that they wish Mr. Yue a speedy recovery, hoping that he can regain some peace of mind after struggling for so long.
Through Manya Koetse, with contributions by Miranda Barnes
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