"Rich man" from Nghe An province left the country after finding a 2.1kg gold nugget

(Baonghean.vn)- After picking up a 2.1kg gold nugget, Mr. Lo Van Oi, in Hao village, Yen Hoa commune (Tuong Duong), Nghe An, became a tycoon but quickly went bankrupt and had to go to China to work illegally.

Becoming a tycoon overnight like Lo Van Oi, in Hao village, Yen Hoa commune (Tuong Duong), is probably not a big deal in the whole Western Nghe An region. However, when returning to find the "tycoon" in the once-famous "4 Yen" gold region, many people have to think about a land after the gold thirst.

The 2.1kg gold nugget that Mr. Oi found in 2009 changed his life.

We traveled hundreds of kilometers of mountain roads to Hao village on a sunny morning in early spring. The villagers were mostly women, the elderly and children, and there were no young men in sight.

The wooden house built with the money from selling gold by Lo Van Oi was also locked. Seeing a stranger, Mrs. Lo Thi Xuan, Lo Van Oi's mother, came back from the garden and quickly said: "He has gone to work far away." After the conversation gradually became more friendly, Mrs. Xuan said that Mr. Oi and his wife are currently "working in China".

Lo Van Oi's house is what remains after more than 5 years since he picked up a 2.1 kg block of pure gold.

Looking tired, the old woman in her sixties recounted the story of finding gold and the royal life that passed by like a dream of her second son Lo Van Oi. Mrs. Xuan and her husband, Mr. Lo Van Viet, had 3 boys and 1 girl, and Oi was the second child in the family. When he was in 6th grade, he saw his older brother drop out of school and wanted to drop out too. From then on, the boy followed his parents to pan for gold in the stream, which had been the livelihood of many generations in the family.

In 2009, Oi and a group of 9 people pooled their money to buy machinery to mine gold in Khe Pu stream. At that time, the small stream flowing from Yen Tinh commune to Yen Hoa had hundreds of people digging. Oi's group continuously suffered losses.

Mrs. Lo Thi Xuan (mother of Lo Van Oi) tells the story of her son finding gold.

Having quit his job several times, Oi thought of selling his machine to pay off his debt and give up his dream of gold, but then a chance came. While panning for gold in a stream, he found an unusually heavy rock. He was about to throw it away, but his intuition told him to pick it up again. After removing the outer layer of dirt and rock, Oi was overjoyed to realize that it was a giant block of gold, weighing 2.1 kg. God had saved the poor.

Later, a trader bought the gold block for more than 1 billion VND. After dividing it in the gold mining group, he had more than 300 million VND left. It was also the largest gold block ever known in the "4 Yen" region. After 6 years, the "tycoon" Oi now has to live a life of wandering to make a living.

“With gold, he was able to build a house, buy a herd of buffalo, reclaim rice fields… and also save quite a lot of money,” said Ms. Lo Thi Xuan. But it seems that tycoons who became rich overnight like Lo Van Oi in the 4 Yen gold area often do not have peace.

A distant relative, knowing that Mr. Oi had a lot of money, came to him and promised to sell him a quantity of wood to build a stilt house. At first, he agreed and gave this person 100 million VND, but then he gave up the idea of ​​building a house. That relative only paid back a small amount, sometimes five or seven million, sometimes about ten million VND. It was not until 2015 that Mr. Oi received the full amount of 100 million VND. That was also the time when the "golden region tycoon" fell into a state of bankruptcy. When he ran out of money, he went to work for hire to earn money.

After the Binh Than New Year (2016), the wife followed some people in the village to illegally go to China to work for a company. At first, Oi promised to stay home and work in the fields while waiting for his wife. By mid-March 2016, he also left to follow his wife. The two young children, who were still in school age, had to be left with Mrs. Xuan to look after. "She promised to come back at the end of the year, but I don't know how." - The old woman sighed deeply.

In the beautiful wooden house built with the money from selling gold, there are still two safes to store money, one of which is rusty. According to Ms. Xuan, there is no money left. Next to the house is a rice mill that the owner bought to provide services in the village, which has not been used for a long time. The scale lies alone against the wall.

Mrs. Xuan lamented that if only her husband and wife worked hard together, they would have more than 5 sao of rice fields (over 5000 m).²(according to the way of thinking of the mountain people), there is no need to worry about rice to eat. Mr. Oi and his wife left, and the remaining 3 buffaloes had to be sent to a relative on his wife's side to look after.

One of the two safes that Mr. Lo Van Oi bought when he first found gold is now left in the corner of the house unused because, according to Ms. Xuan, "there is no more money left."

Tools such as rice threshers, milling machines, pumps... purchased by Mr. Lo Van Oi for service purposes are now also put aside.

The communes of Yen Thang, Yen Hoa, Yen Na, Yen Tinh (Tuong Duong - Nghe An) are still called the "Four Yen" region, the gold center of Nghe An. In this land, people used to pass on the folk song: "a place where it is as easy to find gold as picking silkworms in a basket".

This is understandable because this land is the “gold navel” of Nghe An, exploited since the Nguyen Dynasty and the French colonial period. From the late 1980s to the early years of the second decade of this century, the “4 Yen” area was disturbed by large gold mining sites. People from the province and the North flocked here to seek opportunities to change their lives.

In the area, there are also people who have bought houses, cars, built hotels and motels thanks to gold, and there are also many stories of tycoons going bankrupt because of gold.

"In the past, people made money so easily. Now that there is no gold, no one wants to touch their fields anymore," Mrs. Xuan sighed again.

Mr. Vi Van Phong, secretary of the Hao village party cell, said: Currently, the gold rush in the village has completely subsided. There are no more scenes of machines digging up streams and creeks. Many young men leave the village after Tet. "They just say they are going far away to work. The village doesn't know where they are going."

Huu Vi - Ho Phuong