To have your child go missing is every parent's nightmare.

But of the many children that go missing each year in China -- some never to be found again -- this is a story with a happy ending.

After 24 years of searching, a couple in Chengdu, China, finally reunited with their missing daughter on April 3, 2018.

The woman had responded to her parents' appeal for information on social media.

Daughter wandered off as a toddler

Wang Mingqing said that he and his wife Liu Dengying were selling fruit on the street of Chengdu in 1994 when their daughter Qifeng went missing.

According to an interview with local media, they were swamped with a large number of customers and briefly took their eyes off her for just "five minutes".

When they looked up, they realised their daughter was nowhere to be found.

She was four at that time.

Dad became a driver to find her

The couple abandoned their stall to search of their daughter.

They contacted the police, put up missing persons signs, and combed the city's children's shelters.

But their efforts were in vain.

To better improve his chances of finding his daughter, Wang Mingqing even became a driver with ride-hailing company Didi Chuxing three years ago.

He printed cards with his daughter's information and handed them out to his passengers, telling them to share it on WeChat, China's most popular social media platform.

However, since he did not have a picture of her when she was young, he used a picture of his other younger daughter when she was young in the cards, saying that they had looked similar.

Daughter grew up in neighbouring town

Wang also circulated on social media an image of what his daughter might look like today.

In late 2017, a police sketch artist wanted to help Wang and drew a portrait of what Qifeng might look like as an adult.

Two weeks ago, their daughter saw the drawing and could not help but notice that she looked extremely similar to the girl in the image.

After realising she might be the girl they were looking for, she contacted the couple.

Turns out their missing daughter grew up in a town that is only 20 kilometres away from her birth parents.

She was told that she was adopted as a child and had no mother.

Now a mother of two children, the woman grew up under the name Kang Ying, but whose real name is Wang Feng, took a DNA test on Sunday which confirmed she was the couple's missig daughter.

She has since flown to Chengdu from Jilin province on Tuesday to meet them.

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You can watch a video of her emotional reunion with her mother here:

[video width="1280" height="720" mp4="https://static.mothership.sg/1/2018/04/reunion-family.mp4"][/video]

Top image via The Cover

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