Young, impoverished mother from Chinese viral photo finally found after 11 years, and how different her life is now
- Bamu Yubumu became a symbol of determination in the face of crushing poverty after a photo of her struggling along with her baby went viral in 2010
- At the time she earned around US$90 a month but has since benefitted hugely from China’s poverty alleviation measures
A young woman struggles to stay upright under the weight of an enormous bag spilling over with blankets and bedding, cradling a baby in one arm and keeping hold of a backpack in the other as she shuffles towards her destination.
If a single photograph could encapsulate a decades-long Chinese government policy that has lifted 700 million out of poverty, this was it. For years after he shot the image, photographer and journalist Zhou Ke struggled to track down the determined young mother it depicts.
The moment was captured at Nanchang railway station in Jiangxi province in the country’s southeast on January 30, 2010, during the Spring Festival travel rush, when hundreds of millions of Chinese people travel from cities to their ancestral homes in rural areas for Lunar New Year family reunions.
The photo, titled “Baby, Mama Takes You Home”, went viral, capturing hearts across the nation for the determination it showed in the face of crushing poverty and hardship. The woman it depicted became the face of the largest annual mass migration in the world.
Zhou’s attempts to track his subject down had come to nothing until last month, according to the state-run Xinhua News Agency. That was when Zhou found the woman, Bamu Yubumu, now 32 years old, in her hometown in Yuexi county, in the Liangshan Yi autonomous prefecture in Sichuan province, in the country’s southwest.