Dad Finds Daughter 24 Years After She Went Missing

Wang Mingqing's daughter was only three years old when she went missing in Chengdu, China. The dad was selling fruit with his wife 24 years ago but once they finished serving customers, they realised that Qifeng was nowhere to be seen.

They did what anyone would do and sparked a massive search for their toddler. Wang took out ads in the local media, set up missing posters around his city and went to the local hospitals and homeless shelters.

But as the weeks turned into months, hopes of finding her were getting slim.

Fast forward 21 years and Qifeng was still missing, but Wang had an ingenious idea of how he could step up his search efforts: become a taxi driver.

Any time he would pick up a passenger he would ask them about whether they knew anyone around his daughter's age that might not know who her parents were, and would give them a card with Qifeng's picture and information.

Usually when a taxi driver tells you their life story it can be a tortuous experience - but clearly Wang's story struck a chord with his passengers and they shared his story to as many people as possible.

After two years of this operation, he'd given away more than 5,000 cards, according to Medium.

By that time, his story had gone viral on the internet thanks to local Chinese media, which only helped his search effort. He told one news agency: "My biggest wish right now is that someday my daughter will sit down in my car, and shout 'Dad!'"

A woman named Kang Ying came across Wang's story and she reached out to him.

They did a DNA test and two days ago, the results came back positive.

With that date being April Fool's Day, you might imagine Wang was prepared for this to be a pretty soul-crushing practical joke played the people who delivered the news - but this was no prank. The results confirmed that Kang was Wang's long-lost daughter.

The now 27-year-old woman has today flown nearly 3,000 kilometres from Jilin to Chengdu to be finally reunited with her parents. She was apparently adopted and grew up just 20 kilometres from where her parents lived and moved out when she became an adult.

The family was flanked by dozens of media and cameras who all wanted to capture the reunion that's been nearly a quarter of a century in the making. They've now got a lot of catching up to do.

Featured Image Credit: People's China Daily

Topics: World News, Awesome, News, Feels, China

Stewart Perrie

Stewart Perrie is a Trending Journalist at LADbible. His first job was as a newsreader and journalist at the award winning Sydney radio station, Macquarie Radio. He was solely responsible for the content broadcast on multiple stations across Australia when the MH17, Germanwings and AirAsia disasters unfolded. Stewart has covered the conflict in Syria for LADbible, interviewing a doctor on the front line, and has contributed to the hugely successful UOKM8 campaign.

@stewartperrie