Double trouble

Twin brothers Wang Yiwen and Wang Yiwu of Beijing have been celebrating their birthdays together for 20 years. This year, there was a special guest at the party named Xiang Nan, who is of the same age.

Together, the three soon sank deep in an animated conversation. But occasionally, Xiang Nan would pause and gaze at the twins. Their appearances reveal some similarities and differences.

Wang Yiwu, the younger of the twins, is thin and weak, and wears glasses. His looks, along with an outgoing personality, reminds Xiang Nan of his late father, who died eight years ago following an illness.

But when Xiang Nan, the visitor at the party, looks at one of the two brothers, he couldn't help but feel the need to glance at a mirror. And his instincts are only natural.

Both Wang Yiwen and Xiang Nan have big eyes, bushy eyebrows and long thin fingers. They are tall, strong and introverted. They look so similar to each other that a stranger could call them twins.

The parents tried to stay calm during the June party which was punctuated with awkward moments. It was an unusual dinner for the two families in Tongzhou District of eastern Beijing.

The event that linked the two families together occurred 21 years ago inside a hospital: a switch at birth.

After the mothers gave birth in 1986 at the same local hospital, Wang Yiwu and Xiang Nan were raised by the wrong biological parents.

Although they had seen such heart-wrenching stories on the news and on television dramas, the two families never expected their lives would reveal similar secrets. And as they struggle to deal with newly discovered truths, they're also forced to deal with legal issues and tackle complicated moral dilemmas.

As they reflect on the past 21 years, the parents cannot help but wonder about the times when they were suspicious, even for a moment.

Since the first day the twins arrived at their homes, their resemblance and personalities were frequent topics of discussion between relatives and neighbors. Their differences became even more obvious as they grew up. But Wang Jiang and his wife, surnamed Pan, who live in Tongzhou's Shangpo Village, weren't about to take it seriously.

"People joked a lot that the younger brother (Wang Yiwu) didn't look like a member of the Wang family," Wang Jiang says. Wang Yiwu is short and often sick. He was diagnosed with hereditary near-sightedness in middle school. But Wang and Pan's families don't have this illness.

"We thought it was all because he was nutritiously deficient. We blamed ourselves for not taking good care of him," Wang says.

The couple first started to feel suspicious last year when many neighbors said they saw a boy in town who looked nearly identical to one of their sons.

The eyewitnesses said the boy wore jeans and thick hair covered his ears. Wang dismissed it because he knew that Wang Yiwen doesn't wear jeans. As a student at the police academy, he's not allowed to have long hair.

After several months, the couple told their son about their dilemma and asked if he was willing to take a test. The young man agreed but became less vocal at home.

Pan remembers the day when the test results came out in March. She was preparing pies with cabbage stuffing and the phone rang. It was the testing center. Pan learned that Wang Yiwu was not her biological son.

"I felt weak all over," she says. "My legs shook fiercely. I was so shocked that I knocked over the sesame oil bottle."

Later, the couple went to the hospital where the three children were born, hoping that the hospital could help them locate the other twin they heard about from neighbors. Unfortunately, the staff brushed them off, saying that the doctors and nurses in charge of the delivery were no longer working there and were unreachable.

They sank into despair, but after Wang Yiwen came back from college, he told his parents that he actually knew the boy who looked like him.

He was introduced to Xiang Nan in 2005 through a mutual friend in high school. Both were astonished to the resemblance. However, Wang Yiwen told the local media he lied about his age to "avoid gossip among classmates".

On the other hand, Xiang Nan told his mother Rao Xiurong about his encounter with Wang Yiwen. She didn't pay much attention to it but asked her son to invite the friend to their home.

The Wang couple met Xiang Nan in May and immediately recognized him as their son. They showed him some of Wang Yiwen's childhood photos that surprised Xiang Nan.

"Isn't that me? But I didn't remember having taken pictures in the countryside," he said, realizing the couple were his birth parents.

The news hit Xiang Nan's mother like a thunderbolt. She burst into tears. Xiang Nan held her tightly, saying: "Mom, I will never leave you."

The tests later proved the genetic relation between Rao and Wang Yiwu, the Wang couple and Xiang Nan. The two families have since filed a joint lawsuit against the hospital and demanded 400,000 yuan ($52,600) for each family.

"When we asked for their help at first, they were so indifferent and kept avoiding us. And no one has ever spoken a word of comfort to us," says Wang Jiang, adding they don't care how much money the hospital will pay, for the hurt is irreparable. They also wish for an official apology from the hospital.

Outside the court, they are also embroiled in a different dilemma: Should they switch back the children? It's a topic they've been unable to talk about.

"We are a big family. We care a lot about the bloodline," says Wang Jiang. The couple hopes that Xiang Nan can return to the Wang family.

"My mother doesn't want to remarry since my father passed away and devotes herself to me. I will take care of her forever," says Xiang Nan.

Meanwhile the Wang couple finds it equally hard to give up Wang Yiwu, who left the family after learning the truth. He didn't contact his parents for two weeks. He was distracted from work and returned home to take leave.

"I am totally confused about the future. I will stay with my foster parents. I will also pay filial respect to my birth mother. They are all very important to me," he says.

The matter goes to the Tongzhou District Court on August 28.

(China Daily 08/09/2007 page20)