"From now on, Dad is here - you don't need to worry about anything - Dad will help you," Wang said, after the family held a tearful embrace in front of local media.
Later, Kang, weeping, told reporters: "The whole world told me I didn't have a mother - but I do!"
After their initial frantic hunt for their daughter, the parents put their search on hold. The couple eventually had a second child, but they never gave up looking for Kang.
They contacted local welfare authorities and websites, which are set up in China to help parents be reunited with missing offspring.
Wang was contacted by several women who believed they may be his daughter, but DNA tests ruled them out.
In 2015 Wang decided to become a taxi driver for ride-hailing company Didi Chuxing, hoping his new vocation might help him achieve his dream of finding his daughter.
He told the China Daily: "I have received 4839 requests for rides since I became a Didi driver. In the past two years, I have always been waiting for one passenger - my missing daughter."
Wang handed out thousands of cards with his daughter's details and photo, and begged customers to share information about the girl on messaging app Wechat.
A police sketch artist volunteered to help the search after seeing Wang's fruitless campaigns. A sketch of what his daughter might have looked like as an adult was circulated widely online.
The sketch finally made it thousands of kilometres across the country to where Kang was living with her husband and children. Kang was said to have been shocked by the likeness.
When she got in touch with the authorities she learned that other unlikely details matched, including a small scar on her head.
She was living the other side of China, in the northeastern Jilin province, when she contacted Wang, and a DNA test confirmed that she was the missing daughter.
"I can't tell you how much hope, disappointment and despair we have gone through these past 24 years. Now we can finally meet again," Wang was quoted as saying in the Beijing Youth Daily newspaper.
Kang had been raised by adoptive parents in a nearby town, Chinese media reported.
Shanghaiist reported that her adoptive family had told her that she was found on the side of a road in Chengdu.
There are no official figures about how many children go missing in China each year, although some media have speculated that as many as 200,000 have been separated from their parents at a young age.
Up to 20,000 Chinese children are thought to be trafficked each year, state media said, and China is thought to have up to 1.5 million homeless children.
