Pan Yunkai, in red, is carried by his father. (Photo/Sina Weibo)
A three-year-old boy in East China's Fujian province missing for 63 hours was finally found by locals on a mountain five kilometers from his home, according to Taihainet.com on Monday.
A local hospital said the boy was in good physical condition after an initial health check.
The boy, Pan Yunkai, lost his way at a crossroad after secretly following his mother and grandfather after they refused to take him to harvest millet at Shantou village, Wuping county, Longyan city, at around 3:30 pm on Wednesday.
More than 400 police officers and locals began to search for the little boy in the mountainous area, but found nothing in the next two days.
Good news came early Saturday morning when some villagers on their way to build a cement road found the little boy.
At 6:20 am Lan Conglian and three others were passing heard what sounded like a child weakly crying "Grandma, grandma" from halfway up a heavily forested mountain.
Lan stopped and listened intently to make sure it was a human's voice. Then the four villagers climbed up the mountain and found the crying boy lying on boskage. The villagers immediately picked up the boy and discovered he was the missing child.
The boy's father, Pan Xuanchong, could not help crying when he reached the mountain on a motorcycle after hearing his son was found.
"My boy is really very strong," the father said, estimating the child probably drank water in the fields to survive 63 hours on the mountain.
Although the boy was said to be in stable condition after an initial checkup at local hospital, "he has been crying for most of the time, and woke in horror sometimes," his father said. His son told him he intermittently slept in a place where there was water and stones.
The little boy was not the only child missing in Longyan city recently. In mid-September, a two-year-old girl was lost near her home. Luckily, the girl was found after five days by five workers at a high voltage tower six kilometers away from her home.
It's traumatic for both parents and children when children are lost. What can be done to comfort and help the children?
"As for the missing children, it's a traumatic experience and they undoubtedly will feel fear. Under this condition, if the children are not guided in a timely manner, they may feel a lack of parental protection when they grow up, and even feel insecurity and distrust toward society. So after the children return home, parents should talk with their children about what happened to them and what they experienced", said Yang Liyuan, chief psychologist at Deyi Psychological Consultation in Xiamen city.
Yang advised parents to praise the children for their courage and tell them they are very important, since all their family members were anxious to search for them after discovering them missing.
