Veteran soldier's 60-year journey home

File photo of Lei Guodian, a 90-year-old war veteran. [Photo: www.dahe.cn]

For 60 years, home has been a vague concept to Lei Guodian, a 90-year-old war veteran who has slept rough and begged for income in cities across China after an unfortunate chain of events.

On Saturday, thanks to a charity initiative inspired by a Xinhua feature, his dream of returning to his hometown finally came true. His story has been a long and sad one, but with a result to warm hearts as China comes to the end of its Tomb-sweeping Day holiday, an occasion for honoring ancestors.

Lei was born in the early 1920s in a small village in Luohe City of central China's Henan Province. After his parents died, he turned to his elder sister in Henan's Nanyang City, where he joined an independent regiment of the communist army.

The teenager wound up fighting in provinces in southern China in the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1937-1945), and then the War of Liberation (1945-1949).

After the wars, he made a living as a manual laborer. Yet his wife's death in 1954 inspired Lei to leave home and begin work in a number of northern cities. One day, while working in Jilin, he was crippled in a work accident and kicked out by his boss.

Drifting from city to city, he lost not only contact with his family but also all his identity documents, so that nowhere would give him asylum.

In 2009, the handicapped veteran arrived in Beijing. In the daytime, leaning on a crutch, he begged around Beijing West Railway Station. His daily income varied between 30 yuan ($4.8) and three yuan.

When night fell, Lei initially slept in a nearby underpass nearby before later finding himself a shelter in a wooden shack of less than 3 square meters, which cost him 200 yuan ($32) a month.

It had no water, electricity or toilet. It was so cold on windy nights that he couldn't fall asleep, and the roof leaked whenever it rained.

Lei's fate was changed thanks to a feature story about the homeless in Beijing West Railway Station released by Xinhua News Agency on Sept. 23 last year. The article drew the attention of many readers, among them Sun Chunlong, chairman of the Longyue Charity Foundation -- a charitable organization for Chinese veterans.

Founded in 2011, Longyue works to bail veterans out of poverty, to bring them home and call for respect for these "national heroes." Sadly, many of them are stranded far from home and suffer from disability due to the war. Some were even wrongly persecuted during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976).

Due to reliable evidence lost during and after the war, it often takes years before they are officially identified by the government and can receive social relief. "But time is ticking out. Last year, 89 veterans we knew passed away," said Li Na of Longyue Charity Foundation.

By the end of 2013, the foundation had raised a fund of 2 million yuan ($321,800), covering over 1,500 veterans.

After a week's investigation to verify the identity of Lei Guodian, Longyue decided to sponsor his journey home.