犯错的儿子

Hello and welcome to another edition of  Frontline, the weekly feature story brought to you by China Radio International. I'm your host, Wu Jia.

Cai Yan's family [Photo: CCTV.com]

It is known that a child's blood type is decided by both of his or her parents. There are four basic blood types: A, B, AB and O. If both father and mother have O type, their children can only have type O blood. But a family in South China was discovered in which the only child had type B blood, despite both parents being type O. Why is that? Let's follow our very own Yunfeng to find out.

Narrator: Cai Yan is a medical worker in Nanning, the capital city of south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous region. One day she went to the hospital with her mother.

"My mum said her legs were aching. We happened to have time that day. So we drove her to the nearest hospital. It's quite convenient."

Cai Yan remembered that she had an acquaintance in the blood test section, so she asked her husband to test his blood type while waiting for her to finish her test.

"I seemed to remember that I had have type O blood. Indeed, it turned out to be type O."

But Yan found it strange. She had learnt from medicine that it was impossible for him to be type O, because it was clear that their son had type B blood.

"I said it was wrong, and asked him to take the test again. But once again it turned out to be type O. I was stunned." 

Cai Yan almost ran back home to bring out her son's medical record, only to find that it says the boy has blood B type.

"I was quite sure about my child's blood. He was always going to hospital when he was young."

Yan's brain became blank.

"That means the boy is not mine. There is a 99.99 percent possibility that he is not mine. "

The couple conducted a DNA test, without telling the son.

"So the test said he was not ours. I always fainted. I just could not accept the truth."

"I just could not figure out how it had happened. The feeling tore me apart."

Cai Yan's son was named Lu Chenglong, in the 8th Grade. She saw her son off to school and came back home without knowing what to do or say.

"I was really upset, feeling like doing nothing at all."

Cai Yan did not sleep well after that. She always had the same dream - featuring the same boy.

"The boy always appeared in my dreams. He was a small and thin one, playing on the grass. When he saw me, he called "Mum" in despair. But I wondered how could my son be that small?"

She would recall the dream whenever she was doing anything.

"I guessed that I no longer had any chance of finding the child."

"I just could not sleep well. Every time I woke up from the dream, I felt stuffed in the chest."

The husband could not let his woman to suffer more.

"He said: you should not hide the feeling. You should go and find him. It is unhelpful to allow yourself to get depressed over this."

Anchor: Strange, it seems, the son was not biologically theirs. So where was their real son? Ever since they brought back the baby from the hospital, they had never been separated from one other. If the son had been changed, surely the mother must have known about it. The couple thought of the hospital. It could only be their fault. They thought they should have still have kept the record. Their only wish was to find the kid left in the hospital.

Narrator: the hospital itself was also surprised to see the DNA result, and began searching the records.

"We should help them do that, no matter whether we were wrong or not. A lot of staff were summoned to search the records. We narrowed it down to 48 possibilities, from more than 300 babies then resident in that hospital."

The hospital gave the name list to Cai Yan two weeks later. The couple then began to dial the telephone numbers for their lost son.

"We first dialed 114 for the telephone numbers. Then we would dial the number to confirm whether or not they have the boy."

The more numbers they called, the more the couple became worried, since the remaining list of names became ever smaller, and still they had no clue at all.

But things changed for the better when they called one woman, named Liu Qing.

Anchor: Why did we say that this shortlist of 48 names is so important? They are the names of the women who gave birth to baby boys on the same day with Cai Yan in the same hospital. Cai Yan thought her son must be with one of them. To her thrill, Liu Qing's son's hobbies and personality were like her and her husband. But the most important thing was that the boy had Type O blood.

The couple then went to Liu Qing's family.

Narrator: "I explained why I visited her - since I found that my boy had been mistakenly taken by someone else. We talked quite openly. "

So they arranged time for a meeting. Both families brought their boys to the same playground to play. Without telling the kids, the two families took a look at each other's sons.

"Once I saw him, I knew it. His hand was very much like his father's. He looked very much like us."

"Their son's personality is very much like my ex-husband's. Like father like son."

Cai Yan and her husband observed the other boy. The more they looked, the more convinced they became that this boy was their real, biological son.

"But we could not let the boys know of all this. We could do nothing about it."

Anchor: Why had the beloved couple broken up? Who can arbitrate upon who is whose son?

"Although the DNA tests showed that the two babies had been mistakenly exchanged, that did not mean that it must be hospital's fault."

Please stay tuned for this week's frontline: the Mistaken Sons.

Anchor: Though the two families sensed that their sons had been switched, just to be cautious, they both took DNA tests. To no one's surprise, the result showed that the sons had indeed been mistaken -that is to say, Yao family's son's real parents were Cai Yan and Lu Jiaming, and Cai Yan's son's real mother is Liu Qing. The two families predicted that it must have been the hospital responsible for mistakenly exchanging the two babies. So, in March 2005, Cai Yan went to the hospital for explanations. But the hospital authorities also seemed confused by events.

"Although the DNA tests showed that the two babies had been mistakenly exchanged, that fact in itself did not mean that it must be the hospital's fault. They could not provide any evidence to exclude the possibility that the families had made the mistake themselves."

Narrator: The hospital assumed it to be the parents' fault.

"Even though the mistake was taken in our hospital, you could not say it was because of our nurses' mistake. The parents themselves had the chance to meet the babies before going out of the hospital."

Such scenes are common in hospital: Young, exhausted mothers can usually not wait to compare their babies with others'. The hospital said they could have mixed the babies up in this way.

"Newborn babies are all quite lovely, but also almost identical. It seems it was very easy to mix them up when the mothers were taking them home."
 
The hospital carried out an investigation, claiming that they could not have made the mistake, because the nurses had only worked according to the rules, which were proved to have no loopholes.

"We could only work according to the rules and regulations set down by the state."

Anchor: The two families were angry with the hospital. Without saying sorry, the hospital, on the contrary, put the fault on the families' side.

Narrator:
 
"How could it be that it was our fault? No mother would willingly make such a mistake in the hospital. If that was our desire, we could have saved ourselves a lot of pain and gone to the orphanage to pick one up. "

"It must be the hospital's fault. Once the nurse gave me the baby, I already regarded it as mine."

Cai Yan said the two mothers didn't know each other and they were staying in different bays.

"We didn't know each other. I was in bed 35. She was in bed 38. The two beds are in different bays. But we were giving birth on the same day. "

At the time, all babies stayed in the same room before being brought back home. Cai Yan deduced that it must have been during bath time that the nurses had made their mistake.

"Each new baby must be given a necklace number after their first bath. Since we both gave birth within a period of no less than an hour, the mistake simply must have been made while washing the babies."

"We were operating strictly according to the rules set down by the state. If we made mistakes, it can only be because the rules themselves had faults. "

The two families had to go back home without having received any explanation. However, they found that both of the boys had become different. They had become silent in school, and no longer worked hard on their studies.  They realized that the boys had already discovered the truth, despite the efforts made by the two families.

"I felt a great burden. It had not been easy for my parents to take care of me over the past years. I could not tell anyone about it. I could only hide it in my mind. "

"Inside, I was beaten. Only time could soothe everything. I needed a period of time to adjust myself."

Anchor: The psychological changes inside the boys worried the two families. They could only wait for time to solve everything. But just at this time, the hospital found an important clue in the medical record, and was accusing Cai Yan of trying to cheat money out of the hospital.

Narrator:  The hospital said that Cai Yan's family should have known that the boy had the wrong blood type much earlier. Why should they have waited for so long to expose the truth? They thought Cai Yan did it deliberately.

"Cai Yan should have known long before August 2004 that her son's blood type didn't match theirs."

And the records showed that Cai Yan's family didn't try to find their real son immediately after their suspicions were raised.

"They knew in August 2004 that the blood type was not right. But not until march 2005, did they come to us. By then, 7 months passed."

More than 10 years had passed since the birth. The hospital had experienced a lot of renovations and personnel changes, all of which, the hospital said, might possibly hinder further investigation. According to the Chinese law, once two years have passed, the hospital cannot be held responsible – certainly not for a mistake occurring more than ten years ago.

"They came to us more than 10 years later. Should our hospital be held responsible? This is questionable."

Cai Yan explained that the reason why she raised the issue 7 months after she knew of her husband's blood type was that she was afraid her son could not accept the truth.

"I was afraid that he might run away and become a bad guy. Even though he was not mine, I felt I loved him, since I have raised him for so many years."

On Liu Qing's side, she had suffered more. Her husband had left her because ‘their' son didn't look like him.

"He assumed that the baby was the product of my adultery."

Liu Qing lived with her son after the divorce. When thinking back, Liu Qing said it was as if destiny had played a joke on her.

"We had experienced a very difficult few months. I and my son, however, had lived through it, only to find that he was not my real one."

But for the two boys, their destiny had been changed from the very beginning.

"Considered illegitimate, I could not have the chance to enjoy the happiness of other boys when I was young. I could enjoy it now we are relatively prosperous. But now this has happened. I wish that the hospital could shoulder some of the responsibility, since everyone involved has been hurt severely."

Anchor: Now, both families had found their real sons. But they faced the question of whether or not to change their sons back again. Different families have different ways of living, and the way they educate their kids are often different. Neither Cai Yan nor any of the parties knew what to do. After consultation, they sued the hospital in November, 2006, demanding compensation of 900 thousand yuan, or more than 120 thousand US dollars.

Narrator: In March this year, the case reached its first ruling. The court said that parents' feeding and educating kids and kids being taken care of are natural born rights based on blood bondage. If one party stops the relationship by any means, it should be held responsible. The defendant - the hospital - didn't provide enough evidence to prove its innocence. Standard procedures could prevent such things from happening. Therefore, this incident was not accidental. The defendant should be held responsible. Though the two families had long questioned their sons' identities, they could not be sure of it until DNA test results were revealed. The valid suing time should be adjusted to accommodate such cases.

The court's ruling was that the hospital was held guilty, and that it should deliver a written apology and compensation to both families, amounting to 140 thousand yuan.

Although they won the case, the two families fell into the abyss of trouble.

"The two boys' personalities are totally different. They did not agree with each other and often quarreled. As their parents, we didn't know what to do. Moreover, the two families had different views on how to educate their children."

Cai Yan and Liu Qing didn't change their sons back. But they managed to send their boys to the same school. Both families visit each other often. They hope that it will help the two boys build up their relationships with their real, biological parents.

Anchor: A seemingly small mistake in someone else's eyes changed two boy's destinies. It also irrevocably changed the lives of a pair of couples. Although the mistake was corrected 15 years later, it led to life-long regret in both families. We sincerely hope the efforts taken by the two boys and their parents can give this sad story a happy ending.