Lost & Found: A Xiaohongshu Tale Of Reunion

A Chinese woman’s quest to find her long-lost family in Malaysia that began with only two clues.

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A woman from China who hoped to reconnect with her long-lost Malaysian family turned to Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (XHS) by sharing an old photo of her grandfather’s Malaysian cousin on the app.

Cai Jiaru, 27, only had two clues to work with: her grandfather’s cousin’s name, and Tanjung Malim.

However, just 17 hours after posting the photo in December last year, she successfully reconnected with her Malaysian relatives after two decades of lost contact.

Jiaru’s grandmother (left) and her grandfather’s cousin are seen here in a photo taken during the latter’s visit to mainland China in 1991. Image: Xiaohongshu

The story of Cai Yanmo

Jiaru, who is based in San Francisco, shared her lifelong curiosity on XHS about her grandfather, and her grandfather’s cousin Wang Deng Gao, who lived in Malaysia. She said she had often heard of her grandfather, but he passed away before she was born.

She later found out that her grandfather, Cai Yanmo, migrated from Yongchun County in Southern Fujian, China, to Slim River, Perak, in the 1920s to help out his aunt.

After the outbreak of World War II in the 1940s, her grandfather returned to China and maintained a long-distance correspondence with his cousin Wang in Malaysia over the years.

Sadly, after Yanmo’s death in 1991, the families lost all contact with each other.

Lost and found

Within hours after Jiaru posted the photo on XHS, one user from Singapore replied, claiming to be Yanmo’s daughter and asked Jiaru about her identity, while another user from Malaysia pointed out that the picture depicted their grandfather.

Technically, that meant that she had just discovered a long-lost aunt and sibling!

The Xiaohongshu user from Singapore who claimed to be Yanmo’s daughter, asking Jiaru about her identity and why she was seeking out her father. Image: Xiaohongshu

A Xiaohongshu user from Malaysia telling Jiaru that the man in the photo is her grandfather. Image: Xiaohongshu

The two families were then reunited during the recent Chinese New Year’s celebrations when Jiaru’s father visited Wang’s descendants.

A XHS Global spokesman said the number of posts searching for relatives has increased five-fold over the past two years, with a large portion of user IP addresses originating from Malaysia.

“From a tech perspective, it’s a small example of how algorithms are capable of connecting people together ina good way, often forgotten about in today’s sceptical environment,” they said.

This story was first published on Malay Mail

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