Some 3,700 kilometers separate New Delhi from Beijing, but it took 78-year-old Chinese army veteran Wang Qi half a century to make the journey.

“Today is the happiest day of my life. I just can’t express how excited I am,” Wang said the moment he set foot on his motherland for the first time in 54 years on Saturday.

Wang lost his way in a forest on China's border with India while constructing roads for the People's Liberation Army of China in January 1963. He was arrested by Indian troops and was later sentenced to seven years of imprisonment for alleged espionage. After his release, police arranged for him to relocate to a remote village in southern India where he has lived for 47 years.

For decades, Wang never gave up his efforts to contact his family and attempt to go back home. Since 1977, he had repeatedly applied to return to China but never received any response from the relevant Indian departments.

Intense media coverage about his story last week worked as a catalyst for Wang to make it back home.

Thanks to his persistence and joint efforts between Chinese and Indian authorities, his long-cherished wish finally comes true.

Together with his Indian wife and kids, Wang was warmly welcomed by tearful friends and family when he arrived at Xi'an's Xianyang International Airport at around 6:00 p.m. on Saturday. 

Since he sent the first letter to his family in Xianyang, Shaanxi Province in northwest China in 1986, correspondence had remained the most important – and almost the only way for him to get contact with his family for the past three decades.

Wang Yingjun, his nephew, is the only relative whom he met during his stay in India. Wang went to India in 2009 as a tourist. The “gifts” Wang asked his nephew to bring were a Chinese dictionary and a pair of home-made cloth shoes.

“He doesn’t want to forget Chinese and that’s why he asked me to give him a Chinese dictionary. And it’s our family tradition for kids to wear home-made cloth shoes when leaving home for a long journey. He loves his country and his family so much,” Wang Yingjun told reporters, with tears in eyes. 

Lu Qi, Deputy Director General at the Department of Consular Affairs at China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that both Chinese and Indian authorities have made lots of efforts to help him come back. 

He also said his ministry is contacting India to find out if there are other army veterans like Wang who are staying in the country, for China to offer the assistance needed.