Parents’ 24-year hunt has fine end
CHINA: Wang Qifeng was just three years old when she wandered away from her parents’ fruit stall by the side of the road in south-western China.
When they noticed she was missing, Wang Mingqing, her father, and Liu Chengying, his wife, frantically shouted out her name, and desperately asked shoppers if they had seen her.
They spent weeks wandering the neighbourhood, late into the evening, before returning home and crying at the sight of the young girl’s clothes still hanging in her bedroom.
It would take a further 24 years of searching before they were finally reunited with their child.
Yesterday, Wang and Liu greeted their long-lost daughter, who is now named Kang Ying, at the airport in Chengdu, the city where she went missing 24 years ago.
‘‘From now on, Dad is here – you don’t need to worry about anything – Dad will help you,’’ Wang said, after the family held a tearful embrace in front of local media.
Later, Kang, weeping, told reporters: ‘‘The whole world told me I didn’t have a mother – but I do!’’
Kang had wandered off when her parents were serving customers at their family fruit stall by a roadside in 1994. After their initial hunt, her parents put their search on hold and had a second child. But they never gave up looking for their daughter.
They contacted local welfare authorities and websites which are set up in China to help parents be reunited with offspring who have gone missing.
Wang was contacted by several women who believed they may be his daughter, but DNA tests ruled them out.
In 2015 Wang decided to become a taxi driver for Didi Chuxing, a ride-hailing company, hoping his new vocation might help find his daughter. He told the newspaper
‘‘I have received 4839 requests for rides since I became a Didi driver. In the past two years, I have been waiting for one passenger – my missing daughter.’’
Wang handed out thousands of cards’ with his daughter’s photograph and details, and begged customers to share information about the girl on messaging app Wechat.
After seeing Wang’s campaigns bear no fruit, a police sketch artist volunteered to help with the search. A sketch of what the missing girl might look like as an adult was circulated widely online.
The drawing made it thousands of kilometres across China to where Kang was living with her husband and children. Kang was said to have been shocked by the likeness.
When she got in touch with the authorities, she learned that other unlikely details matched, including a small scar on her head.
She was living on the other side of China, in the north-eastern Jilin province, when she contacted Wang, and a DNA test confirmed she was the missing daughter.
Some media have speculated that as many as 200,000 children in China have been separated from their parents at a young age.
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