"Dad is always with you": after 24 years of searching, a Chinese man found his missing daughter

In 1994, Wang Mingqing and his wife Lui were selling fruit on a street in Chengdu, Sichuan Province in southwest China. Wang left one 3-year-old daughter Qi Feng for a minute to run to a nearby shop and change change for a customer. When he returned, the girl was gone. So tragically began the history of the search, which lasted 24 years.

"My daughter only knew my husband's and my names. But I didn't know where we lived," the girl's mother recalls. — For the first six months I went and searched around, and my husband rode a bicycle. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack." Inconsolable parents hung leaflets about their daughter's disappearance, advertised in newspapers and on various websites. In addition to the missing girl, the couple had two other children, and the family never left the city of Chengdu in the hope that one day their child would be found.

Source: The Guardian

After 11 years, Wang got a job as a taxi driver to expand the geography of his searches. On the back window of the car, he hung an ad that he was looking for his missing daughter, printed out business cards with information and told every passenger who was ready to listen about it. The father had to use a photo of his younger daughter, who looked like her sister, since he did not have any photos of Qi Feng.

Kang Ying flew to Chengdu to visit her parents with her husband and two children

Thanks to this, the story appeared in social networks. Local and then national media became interested in her. The police also tried to find the girl, but without success. When there were similar children, the DNA test result came back negative.

Chengdu residents who followed this story brought flowers for Kang Ying and her parents

A breakthrough in many years of unsuccessful searches occurred this year when an artist working in the police painted Qi Feng as she could have been in adulthood. The sketch went online, and one day 27-year-old Kang Ying, who lives thousands of kilometers from Wang's family, stumbled upon it. The girl was amazed how much this portrait looked like her.

Kang Ying's younger sister

Kang Ying wrote to Wang and they did a DNA test. After 24 years of grief and endless searching, Van finally found his daughter — the result was positive. The girl's foster parents said that they found her very young on the side of the road and she grew up just 20 kilometers from Chengdu.

Wang's family in full force

On April 3, Kang Ying flew with her husband and two children to Chengdu to meet her long-lost family. After so many years of despair and disappointment, Wang finally hugged his daughter and said, "From now on, Daddy is with you. Dad will always help you."