A WOMAN, 25, dwelling in Bao’an District, reunited with her parents Saturday in Luohu, nearly two decades after she lost her way and was taken away by a stranger at Shenzhen Donghu Park in 1999, the Southern Metropolis Daily reported.

With the help of volunteers from www.baobeihuijia.com, a website for finding missing children, and the public security department’s DNA database, the woman named Li Aimei finally met her mother in a tearful embrace at the park Saturday.

Li, originally from Hunan Province, went missing when she was only 6 years old while visiting her father who was a gardener at the park in Luohu District at the time. Li had arrived in Shenzhen with her mother three days before she went missing.

The father recalled that his daughter had gone out alone to look for her cousin who was living in Wenjindu, Luohu. The girl thought she was not very far from her cousin and decided to go alone, but that was the last time the father saw her daughter for the following 19 years.

When he realized that the girl had gone missing, the father rode his bike to look for her, but could not find any trace of the girl. Police stepped in after the father made a report, but no clues were found.

According to Li, a middle-aged man who would later become her adoptive father took her away and brought her to a coach station where they left the city. For the next 12 years, she lived with her adoptive parents in their home in Chaozhou, eastern Guangdong.

Although she was apart from her biological parents, Li cherished the only memories she had about life in her hometown and Shenzhen.

Li came to Shenzhen with her boyfriend in 2011. She revisited the place where her adoptive father had taken her away and felt thrilled to see that the roads appeared to be similar to how she remembered. However, she could not locate where her biological parents lived.

It turned out that Li’s parents had stayed in Shenzhen, but moved from Luohu to Futian for work.

In March 2016, when she was 23 years old, Li was determined to find her parents, so she registered on www.baobeihuijia.com.

Li’s parents also had not given up on looking for her. Last November, upon learning that DNA matching technology could help find missing family members, the couple went to the police station where they had reported their daughter missing and provided blood samples for a DNA test.

Earlier this month, the couple was informed that their daughter had been found and was living in Bao’an District with her husband.

The family finally reunited at the park Saturday.   (Zhang Qian)