text: Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Wang Qi was happy to be reunited with family members. 
   
   A Chinese man who was trapped in India for more than 50 years has finally been reunited with his family. 
   
   The BBC had reported how Wang Qi, an army surveyor who says he accidentally crossed into India in 1963, had not been given the necessary documents to leave the country. 
   
   Following the report, he was visited by Chinese diplomats, who told him efforts were being made to take him back. 
   
   Mr Wang was met by family members when his flight landed in Beijing. 
   
   Later, in his home city of Xianyang, crowds met him with banners reading "Welcome home, soldier, it's been a rough journey". 
   
   Mr Wang flew out from Delhi on Friday night accompanied by his adult children. 
   
   Chinese officials took him and his family shopping in a Delhi mall before they boarded the flight. 
   
   Mr Wang had been given a document by the Indian Foreign Ministry stating that he was cleared to leave. His family were given Indian passports so that they could leave with him if they wished. 
   
   His wife, an Indian citizen, was sick and did not accompany him. 
   
   Image caption It is not clear if Mr Wang will return to his Indian family 
   
   Image caption Mr Wang's mother died in 2006 before he could go back to see her 
   
   It is not clear if Mr Wang plans to return to India. He was never granted citizenship and was given a Chinese passport in 2013. 
   
   Mr Wang says he was "tasked with building roads for the Chinese army" and was captured when he "strayed erroneously" into India's territory in January 1963. 
   
   "I had gone out of my camp for a stroll but lost my way. I was tired and hungry. I saw a Red Cross vehicle and asked them to help me. They handed me over to the Indian army," he said. 
   
   He spent the next seven years in a number of different jails before a court ordered his release in 1969. 
   
   Police took him to Tirodi, a far-flung village in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. He had not been allowed to leave the country since. 
   
   Instead he worked at a flour mill, eventually marrying a local woman and raising a family. Neighbours said they lived in "utter poverty". ||||| Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Wang Qi yearns to meet his family in China 
   
   In 1963 a Chinese army surveyor crossed into India and was captured, weeks after a war between the countries. Wang Qi has been unable to leave India ever since - and longs to see his family in China. BBC Hindi's Vineet Khare met him. 
   
   Tirodi village is a nearly five-hour drive from the nearest airport in Nagpur in central India. 
   
   I am here to meet Wang Qi, a Chinese army surveyor who entered India in 1963 but could never go back. For over five decades, he has been longing to see his family back home. 
   
   Sporting cropped white hair, black trainers and a body warmer, Mr Wang, who is now in his eighties, hugs me when we meet. We are about to try and make video contact with his family more than 3,000km (1,864 miles) away in China. 
   
   Together we go to the government office, which is the only centre equipped with internet for miles around. 
   
   Image caption "I couldn't recognise him. He looked so old. He said he was alive just for me." 
   
   He watches in anticipation as I dial and then his eyes light up as the image of his elder brother Wang Zhiyuan, 82, appears on the screen, seated on a sofa in Xianyang, a city in China's Shaanxi province. 
   
   The two brothers are seeing each other after more than 50 years. The conversation in Mandarin lasts 17 minutes. 
   
   "I couldn't recognise him. He looked so old. He said he was alive just for me," Wang Qi, also known by his Indian name Raj Bahadur, tells me in strongly accented Hindi as his three Indian-born children gather around to comfort him. 
   
   Mr Wang's story is a long and sad one. 
   
   Born to a farmer family in Shaanxi with four brothers and two sisters, he studied surveying and joined China's People's Liberation Army in 1960. 
   
   Mr Wang says he was "tasked with building roads for the Chinese army" and was captured when he "strayed erroneously" inside India's territory in January 1963. 
   
   "I had gone out of my camp for a stroll but lost my way. I was tired and hungry. I saw a Red Cross vehicle and asked them to help me. They handed me over to the Indian army," he said. 
   
   Image caption Mr Wang's mother died in 2006 before he could go back and see her 
   
   Indian officials said Mr Wang "intruded into India" and gave "false background and the circumstances" about his whereabouts to the authorities. 
   
   He spent the next seven years in a number of different jails before a court ordered his release in 1969. 
   
   Police took him to Tirodi, a far-flung village in the central state of Madhya Pradesh. He has not been allowed to leave the country ever since. 
   
   It's still not clear whether Mr Wang is a prisoner of war. But he has been denied official Indian documents or citizenship and also been denied permission to travel back. His family says Mr Wang needs a document to exit India. 
   
   Senior local official Bharat Yadav agrees that there have been "deficiencies" and a "lack of interest" in the case. 
   
   "There are no suspicions about his actions. If he wants to go back, we will try and help him," he said. 
   
   An official at the Chinese embassy, which helped him secure a passport in 2013, acknowledged he was aware of the issue. A response to questions sent to India's federal home ministry is still awaited. 
   
   It has been a long, excruciating wait for Mr Wang. 
   
   Image caption Wang Qi joined China's People's Liberation Army in 1960 
   
   Be it language, food or a vastly different society, Mr Wang has had to adapt every step of the way. 
   
   "I began by working in a flour mill. But I cried in the night as I longed for my family. I missed my mother," he said. 
   
   "I wondered what I had got into." 
   
   Mr Wang married a local girl, Sushila, under "pressure from friends" in 1975. 
   
   "I was livid with my parents for marrying me off to an outsider. I had trouble understanding his language. I tolerated him for a few months. Then I got used to him," she says with a smile. 
   
   Mr Wang tried his hand at business but his undefined legal status meant visits by local police. 
   
   Image caption Mr Wang married a local girl, Sushila, under "pressure from friends" in 1975 
   
   "I remember Mr Wang being beaten by the police for not bribing them. He was an honest man," says BB Singh, his neighbour for many years. 
   
   "He always talked about his home in China. His family lived in utter poverty. He would cycle for miles with no break," another former neighbour Jayanti Lal Waghela says. 
   
   Mr Wang wrote letters home but received his first reply only in the 1980s. Family pictures were exchanged. 
   
   He spoke to his mother for the first time in more than 40 years on the phone in 2002. 
   
   "She said she wanted to see me as her last days were near. I said I was trying to return. I wrote letters to everyone who mattered to provide me with exit documents but nothing moved." 
   
   She died in 2006. 
   
   Image caption Mr Wang's family in China 
   
   Mr Wang's nephew met him when he came to India as a tourist in 2009. 
   
   It was he who helped him to get the necessary documents for his passport. 
   
   It is still not clear whether Wang Qi will be able to go to China - and if he did, would he want to return to India? 
   
   "My family is here. Where would I go?" he says, playing with his granddaughter in his lap. 
   
   Sushila is worried though. "I hope he comes back." ||||| China has changed quite a bit in 54 years. In between, there was the Cultural Revolution, the economic revolution and a revolution in how people communicate. 
   
   For Chinese Peoples Liberation Army surveyor Wang Qi, the five decades also meant the inevitable greying of years and hair. Maybe memories too. 
   
   He was 23 when he strayed across the inhospitable and mostly disputed border between India and China, two countries that had once gone to war over it. 
   
   On Saturday, at 77, Wang returned home. Along with family: Vishnu Wang, daughter Anita Wankhede, daughter-in-law Neha Wang and grandson Khanak Wang. 
   
   Read | Chinese soldier trapped in India despite relentless efforts: Foreign ministry 
   
   Online China erupted over Wang’s return. 
   
   “Left home young and return old, the accent has not been changed but the hair has been gray. Welcome the veteran back home, and welcome him to watch the Yellow river and have a bowl of noodles,” said one user. 
   
   India got both bricks and bouquet. 
   
   “He is a surveying and mapping soldier. It’s humanitarian for Indian that do not kill him at once. It’s also reasonable that do not allow him to come back. Now after decades, they finally let him back,” said one user. 
   
   “In 1963, Wang, a Chinese army surveyor, got lost, crossed the border and was captured by Indian authorities. He was moved from one jail to another for nearly seven years when he was finally released in 1969, police escorted him to the remote village of Tirodi in Madhya Pradesh and told him to start a life there. He married a local woman, and they had three children and grandchildren,” state-run China Daily said in a widely followed report. 
   
   Last week, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, Lu Kang subtly indicated that Indian diplomacy and bureaucracy held up Wang’s return. 
   
   Read | Five decades and counting: A Chinese POW in MP still waits for permit to go home 
   
   “In recent years, Chinese embassy to India had kept in close touch with Wang Qi and made relentless effort to help him return to China including pushing Indian side on exit and entry procedures for him,” Lu said. 
   
   “In 2013, the Embassy issued a 10-year Chinese passport to him and provided living allowance for him every year since then. I believe that with the joint efforts of China and India, and respecting the will of Wang Qi himself, the case will be properly solved,” he said. 
   
   The China Daily report said that on February 4, Luo Zhaohui, China’s ambassador to India, spoke by telephone with Wang and expressed sympathy over his suffering over the years. 
   
   “Yan Xiaoce, a counselor at the Chinese embassy in India, visited Wang’s village on the same day,” the report said. 
   
   “Liu Shurong, another Chinese veteran, underwent the same plight as Wang and lives in the same village. But Liu said he had no intention to return to China because he no longer has family there”, the embassy told China Daily. 
   
   Wang is eager to taste noodles, a local specialty in Shaanxi, after arriving home. Yes, the bowl of noodles is warm and waiting. 
   
   Read | MEA checking details of Chinese soldier who crossed over in 1963
target: – In 1963, a 23-year-old surveyor for the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army accidentally crossed the border into India. He remained stuck there for 54 years, making it back to his homeland only last week, reports the BBC. The strange tale of Wang Qi starts with a nighttime stroll away from camp. He told the BBC in a previous interview that he got lost and was "tired and hungry." He found a Red Cross vehicle and asked for help, only to be turned over to the Indian army. After nearly seven years in various jails, authorities relocated Wang to a remote village, the Hindustan Times reports. He was not allowed to return to China, however, but nor was he given Indian citizenship. He lived in a kind of limbo. "I cried in the night," Wang says of those first years in India. "I missed my mother." He eventually married, worked at a flour mill, and had children and grandchildren, but he never stopped hoping to return home. A spokesperson for the Chinese government blames Indian bureaucracy for preventing Wang's return over the past half-century. But after being visited by a delegation from the Chinese embassy in recent weeks, visas were procured for Wang and his relatives. His wife was too sick to travel, but Wang arrived in Beijing on Friday with his adult children, where they were met by his surviving relatives. This is only a visit, however. "My family is (in India)," he says. "Where would I go?" (For this soldier, WWII didn't end until 1974.)