A tearful reunion between parents and their missing daughter after an agonising 24-year search has put a spotlight on the vexed issue of child trafficking and disappearances in China. Wang Mingqing and his wife
Liu Dengying, from
Sichuan province, lost their three-year-old daughter in 1994 when she vanished after being momentarily left alone at the family's fruit stand.
The couple gave up their fruit business to focus on their search. But the efforts were in vain and their daughter became one of the thousands of children that go missing in China every year, often kidnapped and trafficked by illegal adoption rings.
Refusing to give up, Wang became a taxi driver in 2015 in the forlorn hope of one day picking up a passenger who might miraculously turn out to be his daughter. And then a breakthrough. Earlier this year, a woman living thousands of kilometres away in Jilin province contacted Wang after spotting a sketch of what his daughter may look like today along with the family's story on the internet.
Results of a DNA test confirmed the woman,
Kang Ying, is Wang's lost daughter and on Tuesday the family had an emotional reunion. "From now on, dad is here. Daddy never forgot you, never stopped searching for you," video of the event showed a tearful Wang telling Kang.
"The whole world told me I didn't have a real (biological) mother - but I do!" she was quoted as saying. Unaware of her origins, Kang said she had lived as a child with her adopted parents, less than 20km from Wang's home. The exact circumstances of Kang's disappearance remain unknown.
