After searching for decades, family reunites with daughter who went missing 24 years ago

published 4 April 2018

He never stopped trying to find his daughter, and after 24 years of searching, Wang Mingqing was finally reunited with Kang Ying.

In January 1994, Wang and his wife, Liu Chengying, brought their toddler daughter, Qifeng, to the fruit stall they operated in Chengdu, China. They briefly took their eyes off of the 3-year-old, and she disappeared into the sea of people. The parents tried everything to find her, including putting out ads in newspapers, but her whereabouts remained a mystery.

In 2015, Wang became a driver with a ride-sharing company, and he put up a sign in his car asking for information on his daughter and passed out fliers to passengers. Last year, a police sketch artist drew a picture of what Qifeng might look like today, and two weeks ago, a 27-year-old woman named Kang Ying saw the drawing and thought it looked a lot like her. She had been told by her parents that they adopted her after she was found on the side of a road, and she wondered if she had found her birth parents.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Kang contacted Wang on social media, and on Sunday, a DNA test confirmed she was Qifeng. It turns out she grew up just 12 miles away from her birth parents. Now married with two children, she brought the kids with her on Tuesday when she met with the family that never gave up hope of seeing her again. "From now on, Dad is here," Wang told her. "You don't need to worry about anything — Dad will help you." Catherine Garcia

Explore More

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.