Kang’s memories of what happened are hazy, but she was later adopted by a man living about 20km (12 miles) away from her home, adding she was sure she was not abducted.

Her parents, however, never gave up hope of finding her and earlier this month the story attracted national headlines after they finally succeeded in tracking her down.

Kang touched her mother’s face and embraced her tightly on their reunion, crying out: “I’m a child who has a mother. I’m not motherless,” Chinese state TV reported.

Her tearful mother murmured, “It’s all my fault”, while her husband pushed away crowds of reporters and onlookers to pull his daughter into his arms, the reports said. 

Kang was told as a small child she had been adopted and wondered who her real parents were, according to the news website Thecover.cn.

“The whole world told me I didn’t have a mother, but I do!” the report quoted Kang as telling reporters.

“I really need time to absorb the change. Everything’s happened so fast. It’s like the people in my dreams have walked into reality and are standing in front of me,” Kang said.

Kang grew up in a town in Sichuan province after she was adopted by a single man in a village near Ziyang.

He drowned when she was 10, but his family continued to raise her and gave her a happy childhood.

She got married four years ago and moved with her husband to Panshi in northeastern Jilin province.

“My adoptive father passed away many years ago and his family treated me very well. They forgave my naughtiness and stubbornness. I never thought I was not part of the family, but people said I was adopted,” Kang was quoted as saying by Xinhua.

Wang and Liu constantly looked for their daughter.

After Wang became a taxi driver in 2015, he distributed fliers about his missing daughter to customers and asked them to spread the word on social media.

After learning their story through news reports, a police officer specialising in drawing portraits sketched two pictures of what the daughter might look like based on the couple’s facial features and a photo of Kang’s sister when she was three.

Kang came across the sketches and reports and had a feeling she was the daughter in question.

“It was like I was under a spell during those days. I kept looking at the reports and the drawing. Like the reports said, I have a scar on my forehead and I feel nausea whenever I cry,” Kang told Xinhua.

Kang contacted her father two weeks ago and confirmed she was their child after taking a DNA test on Sunday. 

She then flew with her husband and two children to Chengdu for the decades late reunion.

Her parents also brought Kang to visit her grandmother’s tomb on Tuesday where she knelt and said in tears: “Granny, I’m back.”