A mother's journey to China to find her child's body

(Baonghean.vn) - A daughter crossed the border to the other side to make a living, unfortunately encountered a disaster and passed away before she was 21 years old. The mother did not mind the hardships and difficulties on the long journey to bring her daughter's ashes back to her hometown. That is the story of Ms. Tran Thi Hoa (born in 1972) in Hamlet 10, Hoi Son Commune (Anh Son).

Death in a foreign land

Nguyen Thi Huong - Hoa's daughter was born and raised in an unhappy family, without the love and care of her father and mother who worked hard all year round to earn enough to eat. Life was hard and difficult, so at the age of 13-14, while in 6th grade, Huong dropped out of school and decided to go far away to work and got married about 3 years ago.

Huong's husband was from Thanh Hoa, and was a type of person who liked to show off and hang around, so they soon separated. When her son was 1 year old, Huong had to send him to her mother to help her continue working far away, occasionally sending money back to support her son.

About a month before the Lunar New Year of the Fire Monkey, Ms. Hoa received a phone call from her daughter informing her that she would find a way to go to China to do business.

Ms. Tran Thi Hoa was in pain when talking about her daughter's death.

Ms. Hoa tried to stop her, but Huong just mumbled and said yes to get it over with, and a few days later called her mother to inform her that she had arrived in China, was looking for business, and would arrange to return home to visit her mother and children during Tet.

A few days before Tet, Huong called to say she couldn't come home and would send some money for her mother to prepare for Tet and raise her grandchild. Several times, Ms. Hoa asked someone to go to town to check her ATM card but the money her daughter had transferred was not there.

During the Tet holidays, Ms. Hoa called her daughter, the phone rang but no one answered, she continued to call in the following days but there was no contact signal. Not long after, the village chief found Ms. Hoa and reported the bad news: "Huong had an accident in China, someone just called to report". She did not believe that her daughter could die, she could only have crossed the border illegally and was being detained or had a conflict with someone.

Several weeks later, there was still no news of her daughter. Huong's siblings and friends searched on Facebook but could not find her. They told her to go to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to verify the information. There, she received a notice that Nguyen Thi Huong had been stabbed in the stomach and was taken to the hospital for treatment but did not survive. Her body is currently being kept at Cong Thanh, Trieu Chau City, Guangdong Province (China).

And the journey to find the child's body

Some people advised Ms. Hoa that since her daughter was dead anyway, she should let the other side handle it themselves. But her conscience did not allow her to do so, she had to bring her daughter back at all costs. With that determination, she managed to borrow 120 million VND from a loan shark and then went to Hanoi to exchange Chinese currency. After much hesitation, she finally decided to go alone to the other side of the border to find her daughter's body, hoping to meet a good person who would help her.

The plane landed at dusk, and while she was still wondering what to do, Ms. Hoa met a group of young Vietnamese people who had come here to do business. These fellow countrymen helped her by calling a taxi to take her to the Vietnamese consulate in Guangzhou. It was late at night, so she had to sleep in the hallway until the next morning.

Ms. Tran Thi Hoa at the altar of her daughter Nguyen Thi Huong.

The next day, a consulate employee named Thien helped her complete the procedures and gave her directions to Guangdong, about 500km away. But without an interpreter, the job would have been impossible to complete. Finally, the employee named Thien helped her by contacting a young Vietnamese man named Thinh. Thinh's mother had been tricked and sold to China, Thinh came all the way here to find her and stay with her. He is currently working as an interpreter for the Chaozhou City Police (Guangdong).

Thinh went to the bus station to pick up Ms. Hoa and take her to the police station to process the paperwork that night, then rented a cheap hotel room for her to stay. Regarding her daughter's death, Ms. Hoa only had a little information. Due to a conflict with a Vietnamese friend in the group, an argument broke out and that person used a knife to stab Nguyen Thi Huong to death.

The next morning, the local police took her to the place where her daughter’s body was being embalmed. When she saw her daughter’s body, the mother cried out in pain, the world seemed to spin. In the afternoon, they took her to the crematorium and gave her a jar of warm ashes. She was about to collapse, but this was a foreign land, she had to get up to take her daughter home.

Ms. Hoa had to work hard picking tea leaves to pay off a heavy loan with high interest rates to go to China to bring her daughter's ashes back home.

The amount of money Ms. Hoa brought with her was only enough for ¼ of the expenses to solve the problem (hospital fees, 45-day body preservation fees and related expenses). With no other choice, she had to share with Thinh, a kind fellow countryman, and presented it to the local police, who accepted the money she brought with her. Knowing that she had no money to return, the Chaozhou City Police raised 2,000 yuan (equivalent to 7 million VND) for travel expenses. Finally, Nguyen Thi Huong's ashes were brought back to her motherland, where she was born and lived her short childhood years.

Ms. Hoa stood up, walked towards Huong's altar to light some incense sticks, then burst into tears. When she recovered from her emotions, she shared: "Now, I have to hurry up and pick tea to import it this afternoon, to have money to pay the interest, the interest every day is up to hundreds of thousands of dong, and I also have to raise a small child..."

Cong Kien