It's the kind of story that sparks only one reaction: how could it happen? Chinese twins are suing a hospital in Beijing, after they allege a mix-up led to them being separated for two decades - with one believing someone else was his identical sibling.
The incident began 21 years ago when Xiang Nan and his twin brother Wang Yiwen were born just minutes apart. But Xiang somehow went home with the wrong family, and another child was given to his real parents. That infant grew up as Wang Yiwu and everyone thought he was Yiwen's twin brother.
That was the unknown lie everyone lived with for more than two decades until a strange series of circumstances led to the truth. The real brothers grew up not far from each other and when mutual friends of both men began commenting on how similar looking they were, they decided to introduce them to each other. No one thought much of the resemblance until neighbours started wondering why a man they thought was Wang Yiwen was ignoring their friendly greetings and treating them like a stranger. It turned out they'd been talking to Xiang, who had no idea who they were.
Word got back to the real Wang, who immediately thought of the guy his friends had introduced him to two years earlier. That started the suspicions rolling and both men had blood tests. The results: Xiang was a 99.999 percent match for Yiwen, while the kid who grew up as Wang Yiwu had absolutely no biological relationship to the people he knew as his mother, father and brother.
The long separated real siblings and their parents are now demanding more than $150,000 in compensation, but the hospital so far isn't interested in a settlement. A spokesman calls the incident "hypothetical" and claims too much time has passed for a case to be made.