Returning home after 22 years of being trafficked to China.

Ms. Bau recounted that during a trading trip, she was hypnotized by a woman who took her to China and sold her as the wife of a young man. Fortunately, she met a loving husband, but it took her 22 years to finally find her way back to her hometown.

At the end of April, the small house in Tan An town (Hiep Duc district, Quang Nam province) of Mrs. Le Thi Ngu (86 years old) was filled with laughter. Hearing the news that her daughter, Pham Thi Bau (52 years old), had returned after 22 years of being thought missing, neighbors and relatives flocked to share in the joy. With so many villagers present, the usually quiet little house of the heroic Vietnamese mother suddenly became crowded.

Ms. Bau recounted that in mid-April 1994, she traveled by passenger bus to sell fruits in Hue City. During one delivery trip in Hue, she took a bus back to Quang Nam. The bus broke down halfway through Hai Van Pass, forcing passengers to disembark. “It was around 3 PM, and I was sitting drinking water by the roadside with several other passengers. Suddenly, a woman came up and patted me on the shoulder, and then I felt dizzy,” the woman, who at the time had a husband and two sons, recounted.

Ms. Bau now has Chinese citizenship after being missing for 22 years. Photo: Tien Hung.

Ms. Bau said that after that pat on the shoulder, for some reason she felt like she had lost her mind, silently and obediently following the woman to catch a bus to the North. Along the way, she couldn't remember where they stopped, and when she regained consciousness, she found herself in Guangxi Province (China). “It was like being hypnotized; I didn't know anything. I did whatever she told me to do. When I woke up, a woman told me I had been sold to China, and that to return to Vietnam I had to pay 2,000 yuan. If I didn't have the money to ransom myself, I had to stay there and wait for someone to buy me,” Ms. Bau recalled.

At that time, about 10 other Vietnamese women were being held captive alongside Ms. Bau. Without money and knowing no one to turn to, Ms. Bau and all the others had no choice but to wait for Chinese men to come and buy them. “Many groups of men were brought to see us, they chose us, and then paid the madam. They sold us like commodities. Everyone was terrified, but we didn't know what to do because we couldn't escape. No one could speak Chinese, and we didn't know the way,” Ms. Bau said, glancing towards her Chinese husband who was surrounded by curious children from the neighborhood.

“The day she disappeared, I spent over two months searching across many provinces for her, but to no avail. I went to a fortune teller who said she was dead and told me to set up an altar, but I didn’t believe them. My intuition told me she was still alive. For 22 years, every night I prayed for my daughter to return. Thank God she was reunited,” Mrs. Ngữ, sitting beside me, interjected, her voice trembling and tears streaming down her face. She had nine children, five of whom had passed away.

Leaning her left hand on her hip as if recalling stories from over 20 years ago, Ms. Bau continued, recounting how, nearly 10 days after being taken to the other side, a young Chinese man approached the human trafficking group and offered 2,000 yuan to buy her as his wife. That young man was Yang Jianfeng, only 19 at the time, almost a decade younger than Ms. Bau.

Ms. Bau is pictured next to her 86-year-old mother. Photo: Tien Hung.

After the transaction was complete, Yang took his wife home on his motorbike to Dailun Town (Beiliu City, Guangxi). Although called a town, Yang's house was located in a remote, impoverished rural area. It took Yang and his wife, Bau, half a day's journey to get there. "The human traffickers said that if I didn't agree to be their wife, I would be beaten. It was a foreign land, unfamiliar surroundings, and I missed home and my family, but I had no choice," Bau said.

The Yang family was very poor. Orphaned at a young age, the three brothers supported each other as they grew up. Because of their poverty and lack of work, Yang was not favored by the girls in the village, so he had to save money to buy a wife, even though he knew that Mrs. Bau was older than his eldest brother. Two days after bringing his wife home, Yang's family prepared a meal as a wedding ceremony.

"Because we couldn't understand the language, my husband and I initially communicated through body language, and we understood the basics. It took almost half a year before I started to understand and speak Chinese, which made life easier," Ms. Bau recounted.

This woman believes that, compared to others sold into marriage in China, she is fortunate because Yang loves her very much. Every day, Yang works as a motorbike taxi driver while his wife works in the fields. Although their marriage was arranged through a transaction, they quickly developed feelings for each other and fell deeply in love. A few years later, two sons were born, and Ms. Bau also obtained Chinese citizenship under the name Ly Tu.

“Yang loves me very much; I’m never beaten or verbally abused like other Vietnamese wives here. Yang is very gentle, and sometimes I even bully him,” Ms. Bau said with a smile, hugging her young husband tightly. Ms. Bau explained that in China, many Vietnamese women sold into marriage couldn’t bear the abuse and ran away. Initially, she missed home and wanted to leave, but after falling in love with Yang and having two children, she temporarily forgot she had a family back in Vietnam.

“I missed my mother, my children, and my hometown terribly, but my husband's family was struggling financially. At that time, I had to raise two children, so I kept putting it off. Now that my husband's family is better off, we've built our own house, and our two children are grown and working, we can finally arrange to return to Vietnam,” Ms. Yang explained to her family about her long disappearance without a single letter.

Ms. Bau's Chinese husband is nearly 10 years younger than her. Photo: Tien Hung.

When Yang told her husband about her intention to return to her hometown, she insisted on going along. Her husband feared she wouldn't come back. Upon arriving in Tan An town, having lost her way, Mrs. Bau had to find her way to the market hoping someone would recognize her or that she would meet an acquaintance. Fortunately, many people in the village still remembered her. Immediately, news of the woman who had been missing for 22 years spread throughout the region. The entire Ngu family, upon hearing the news, rushed out to welcome her, overjoyed. Mrs. Ngu said that although her health had been failing and she had been constantly ill for a long time, she felt much better over the past 10 days because she had seen her daughter.

After Ms. Bau disappeared, her husband also left, abandoning their two sons for the elderly woman to raise. However, due to difficult circumstances, a few years later, the elderly woman reluctantly agreed to let the two grandsons be adopted by a Canadian couple. To this day, the two grandsons have stable lives abroad and occasionally visit their grandmother.

Hearing her elderly mother mention her two grandchildren, Ms. Bau's eyes welled up with tears. "For 22 years, I've only longed for the day I could return home to see my elderly mother and young children again. Now, mother and children are separated; I don't know when we'll ever see each other again. I wonder if they remember my face, because they were so young back then," Ms. Bau said, adding that she plans to go back to China in a few weeks and will return to visit her hometown later if she has the chance.

"By the time he comes to visit again, I'll probably be gone," said Mrs. Ngữ, sitting beside him, her voice choked with bitterness.

Mr. Nguyen Van Canh, head of An Nam neighborhood (Tan An town), said that for a long time he and the residents thought Ms. Bau was dead. "I remember her family searched extensively but found no information. Now she has returned on her own, which is truly fortunate," Mr. Canh said.

According to VNE