When two brothers finally found their long-lost sibling last month, he was lying in a street near a shopping mall in Rizhao city, Shandong province, lame in his left leg, missing his front teeth and his face scarred by a knife.
The men, who had been searching for Liu Hongjiang for more than a decade, could barely speak to him for weeping.
Mr Liu left home in 1990 at the age of 29 to become a construction worker in Dalian . One year later, he left for another construction site in Rizhao, closer to home and offering better pay.
But before he could send home his first pay packet he was reduced to a cripple by a boss who refused to give him his salary.
Mr Liu approached his boss to collect the 30,000 yuan due to him in the autumn of 1991 but what awaited him was a severe beating and a severed tendon, which left his leg useless. When he regained consciousness the next day he discovered he was lying in a road-side ditch near the border with Jiangsu province .
He began to crawl back to Rizhao. When he finally arrived three months later people were already moving into the block of flats he had helped to build and his former boss was nowhere to be found.
Penniless and disabled, Mr Liu survived on discarded food.
