Chinese driver reunites with lost daughter after 24 years

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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 on Tuesday in Chengdu. "Daddy and mommy love you," said her father as they met again.

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 to change money. When he returned, Qifeng had disappeared.

Kang Ying arrives at the airport in Chengdu with her husband and two children. /CGTN Photo

The frantic couple resorted to all means to find their missing daughter, including working with the police and placing ads in newspapers. Hoping their daughter would remember her way back home, the couple never left Chengdu.

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. “One day, the passenger sitting next to me might just be Qifeng,” he told CGTN when we met him in 2017.

Wang Mingqing printed posters to find his lost daughter. /VCG Photo

Word did spread and 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. Yuhui first came to fame with his sketch in the case of Zhang Yingying – a Chinese scholar who was believed to be kidnapped and murdered in the US.

Kang, who’s 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. Liu said it lasted no more than 20 seconds, “the shock was too strong for any of us to continue.”

Kang and the parents took a DNA test. The results of the test showed she was an exact match.

Wang Mingqing handed out leaflets in search of missing daughter. /CGTN Photo‍

Kang said she grew up in a loving adoptive family in a town just 20 kilometers away. She had no recollection about how she ended up there, and as a little girl, she wondered where she came from. “They told me I jumped out of a rock,” she said. “Now I want to tell the whole world I have a mother.”

The Wangs have been in touch with their daughter’s adoptive parents. “They told us they’d found her on a roadside, dirty and hurt,” said Liu, struggling to hold back her tears. “My heart was broken. Her kidnappers must have hurt her as a punishment. She was a naughty little girl." Then she turned to Kang, “Mommy never meant to lose you.”

Kang says she will move back to Chengdu to be closer to her parents. “It won’t be easy,” she said, “because my husband also needs to take care of his parents.” But she said she will find a way, to make up for the 24 years that’s been lost.