San Francisco Gate-Sun Zuo, a gregarious 3 1/2-year-old, was lured off by a stick of sliced mango and a toy car, an abduction that was captured by police surveillance cameras.
Peng Gaofeng was busy with customers when a man snatched his 4-year-old son from the plaza in front of his shop as throngs of factory workers enjoyed a spring evening. "I turned away for a minute, and when I called out for him he was gone," Peng said.
These and thousands of other children stolen from the teeming industrial hubs of China's Pearl River Delta have never been recovered by their parents or by the police. But anecdotal evidence suggests the children do not travel far. Although some are sold to buyers in Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam, most of the boys are purchased domestically by families desperate for a male heir, parents of abducted children and some law enforcement officials who have investigated the matter say.
The demand is especially strong in rural areas of south China, where a tradition of favoring boys over girls and the country's strict family planning policies have turned the sale of stolen children into a thriving business.
Su Qingcai, a tea farmer from the mountainous coast of Fujian province, explained why he spent $3,500 last year on a 5-year-old boy. "A girl is just not as good as a son," said Su, 38, who has a 14-year-old daughter but whose biological son died at 3 months. "It doesn't matter how much money you have. If you don't have a son, you are not as good as other people who have one."
The centuries-old tradition of cherishing boys - and a custom that dictates that a married woman moves in with her husband's family - is reinforced by a modern reality: Without a real social safety net in China, many parents fear they will be left to fend for themselves in old age.