The story of a 50-year-old man reuniting with his lost daughter after 24 years has captivated people across China.
A decades-long search by Wang Mingqing for his missing daughter, Wang Qifeng, ended with a tearful reunion this week in Chengdu.
After 24 years, family in China find long-lost daughter 💕 | https://t.co/NSSvrSClk7 pic.twitter.com/xUq9wlS40f
— RTÉ News (@rtenews) April 4, 2018
Wang Qifeng, who now goes by the name Kang Ying, went missing in the winter of 1994.
Wang Mingqing and his wife Liu Dengying were selling bananas with their daughter on a roadside stall in China's southwestern city of Chengdu.
Wang stepped away briefly. When he returned, Qifeng had disappeared.
The couple resorted to all means to find their missing daughter.
In 2015, Wang took up a job as a taxi driver in order to meet more people and spread their story.
He put up a large poster with his missing daughter’s information on the rear window of his vehicle and gave out cards to every passenger he met.
Eventually Lin Yuhui, a senior engineer and portrait expert at the criminal investigation bureau in east China's Shandong Province, offered to help by creating a sketch of what the girl would look like as an adult.
Kang, who is now 28 years old and living with her husband and two children in northern China, saw the picture and was shaken by the similarities between herself and the sketch.
After exchanging some text messages, they set up a video chat.
After the video chat, Kang and the parents took a DNA test, the result of which test showed she was an exact match.
Kang grew up in a loving adoptive family in a town just 20km away and had no recollection about how she ended up there.
She says she will move back to Chengdu to be closer to her parents.
"It won't be easy," she said, "I'll try hard to get back here, get back to Chengdu and be as close to them, as close as possible."
