Man drives ride-hail car in search for daughter

Girl went missing 23 years ago on a street in Chengdu

CHENGDU: A driver, whose daughter went missing 23 years ago, has accepted 4,839 orders from a car-hailing platform in the hope of finding his daughter among his passengers.

Though his efforts haven’t yielded any results yet, many of his passengers have been moved by his efforts and have helped him by turning every short run into a marathon of spreading the message.

Wang Qingming lost his fouryear-old daughter when he and his wife were selling vegetables on a street here on Jan 8, 1994. They went to police and rounded up their relatives to look for the child at every railway and coach station, but all the efforts proved futile.

In the past 23 years, he has continued to visit the police station and children welfare associations in the hope of finding any information, has placed notices for missing person in newspapers, and even gone through official records of missing people.

“I have to see my daughter, even if it is just for a second,” said Wang, who drives across Chengdu, the capital of Southwest China’s Sichuan province, daily hoping to see her again. “My wife and I can feel assured only if she is living a good life”.

He became a driver of car-hailing platform Didi Chuxing in 2015. In order to widen the search for his daughter, Wang placed a note about her in his car and pasted an old photo of his other daughter on a specially-made card.

“We don’t have a photo of our daughter. As her sister looks very similar to her, we use her photo,” said Wang.

He tells every passenger the story of his daughter and offers them the specially-made card, and the response from many passengers has been overwhelming.

Wang once met a pair of father and daughter who asked him about his girl and left a phone number in December 2016. Some days later, the father called Wang to have a meeting, and gifted him various things to help him spread the word about his daughter, including a display stand, posters and 8,000 cards.

In the summer of 2015, Wang met a passenger, surnamed Lin, from Guangdong province, who was on a business trip in Chengdu. She took several cards from him and distributed them to her network of colleagues.

“I accept many requests from many people asking me to add them on WeChat every day,” said Wang, adding that most of them are his passengers.

“I do not expect them to find my daughter. I just hope that they can help let others know the story. I thank those who have listened to my story and have taken my card,” said Wang. — China Daily/Asia News Network