Hello, and welcome to another edition of Frontline, the features segment brought to you by China Radio International. I'm your host, Wu Jia.

Our protagonist for today's story is a girl who desperately wants to go back to her own mother after having lived with another family for fifteen years. The girl, Li Li, is from a village in southwest China's Sichuan Province. When Li Li was just a baby, she was found in a pile of wheat straw and carried back home. Fifteen years later, Li Li tried every way to find her own parents. But when she finally found them, Li Li's mother Li Guifang insisted that she was only Li Li's aunt and not her mother. Let's follow our reporter Yang Lei to learn more about this story.

Reporter: When asked if she was Li Li's birth mother, Li Guifang replied that she and Li Li were strangers. The mother said with conviction that she and her husband had no intention of keeping the girl in their family. According to the neighbors, this was not the first time that the couple had refused to accept the child. Here is a short conversation between the mother and the child.

"You came here to make us suffer, didn't you?"

"How can I make you suffer?"

"How? You are making us suffer by not staying with the other family. And you want money."

Anchor: Although her real parents kept her at a distance, Li Li still wanted to leave the home where she had been raised and this was very difficult for Li Youhua and his wife Ye Juhua, who had treated her like a daughter for all these years.

Reporter: The wife, Ye Juhua says that she and her husband were very good to Li Li, trying their best to make sure the girl had a happy life.

This was repeated by Zhong Changming, the director of the village where the couple lives.

"Li Youhua and his wife treat Li Li as if she were their own child. People who live here have never said that the couple treats the girl differently from their own children."

Ever since the day they carried the girl home fifteen years ago, Li Youhua and his wife have kept the baby's misfortune to themselves, guarding the secret with great care.

Fourteen years passed by and Li Li grew from a baby into a teenager. The family lived in peaceful happiness. However, on Mid-Autumn Day in 2005, Li Li suddenly disappeared. Li Youhua recalls.

"To celebrate Mid-Autumn Festival, the school had given all the student's several days' off. Li Li didn't come home for several days and nights. We looked for her everywhere. We contacted our relatives, her classmates and even went to the school to ask her teachers. We walked 10 kilometers in search of her but couldn't find her. No one can imagine how we felt at that time."

His wife, Ye Juhua adds that it was a very difficult time not knowing where the girl was.

"We looked for her for three days and nights. Actually, one morning at three o'clock, we tried to find her in the village's pond. We thought she might have fallen into the pond while playing nearby."

Anchor: Li Youhua and his wife were anxious with worry and looked for their daughter everywhere on Mid-Autumn Day in 2005. In the meantime, just six or seven kilometers' away, a villager named Kang Wenlin had a visitor. The sight of the visitor standing at the doorway stopped Kang Wenlin and his wife Li Guifang's hearts for a moment.

Reporter: The person at the door was a fourteen or fifteen-year-old girl. Li Guifang carefully looked at the girl that somehow looked very familiar.

"She looks almost the same as our fourth child. Our fourth child had been out working part-time and she had not called us, why had she come back home? Then I looked at her more carefully and realized that she was not our fourth child."

Standing at the doorway, the girl didn't come in nor did she go away. She merely stood there and cried in silence. Li Guifang hurried to ask her husband to come out and have a look. Kang Wenlin realized that the girl was not a stranger.

"The girl is my own daughter. I sell food on the street and I see her almost everyday."