A Phone's 5,000-km Journey Home, from Xinjiang to Guangdong

Caption: The phone was found by Chen Qi while trekking along Xinjiang's Wusun Ancient Road.

After three years, a phone lost in Xinjiang found its way back to its owner — 5,000 kilometers away in Huizhou, Guangdong Province — last Saturday.

The story went viral after the owner, known online as Zongguan, shared the unexpected reunion.

According to Yangcheng Evening News, Shenzhen native Chen Qi discovered the weathered device in July while trekking along the Wusun Ancient Road in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. The phone, tucked inside a yellowed case, still had a Huizhou residential access card attached.

In October, Chen happened to buy an apartment in Huizhou and later realized the address on the card was just 4 kilometers from his new home. On November 15, he returned the phone to the community's property management office.

Zongguan told the newspaper she was stunned when property staff contacted her about the long-lost device.

That evening, she and her husband invited Chen to dinner. Once strangers separated by thousands of kilometers, they ended the night as friends bound by a story almost too unlikely to be true.