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She always yearned to return home. However, every move she made was being watched by her Chinese husband and his family.
She lived in a house surrounded by forests and mountains. Meanwhile, all she could do was work in the fields and stay at home as she was stuck in a foreign land with no money, no ID, and no Chinese-speaking ability.
“I missed my family so dearly. I was angry because I was gullible and got tricked into being trafficked to China. But all I could do was cry,” the mother said.
She was lucky that her Chinese husband was not an abusive person. But when Chieu said she wanted to go back to Vietnam, the man asked her to have the baby and take care of it until the girl goes to college.
In 2004, after being forced to be a wife for 10 years, she had a daughter.
After 28 years, Mai’s daughter went to college in 2021, and her husband’s family kept their promise and called the Vietnamese Embassy to find a way to get her back home.
She didn’t have any proof of who she was, but she knew her former address and all her children’s birthdays. She was also able to name everyone on both sides of her family.
Through social media, she was able to get in touch with a taxi driver in Hanoi whose sister had also been tricked into being sold to China.
The driver went to Mai’s relatives’ house in Nghia Hoa Commune to help her family reconnect through social media and obtain the needed information for her to reapply for a passport in China.
Another life
After their mom left, Mai and his brother lived with their biological uncle. The uncle was poor, so he took care of his two grandchildren until they finished eighth and ninth grades. Then both got jobs to support themselves.
Mai and Dinh worked as hired helpers in both the northern and southern regions to make a living. At almost 40 now, they both have families with wives and kids. They make up for the bad things that happened to them as kids by loving their small families.
“We’re proud that we manage to live a good life,” Mai said.
When Mai heard that his mother could go back to Vietnam at the end of 2022, he took a day off to bring his sister-in-law, his daughter and his nephew and nieces to pick Chieu up at the Mong Cai International Border Gate in Quang Ninh Province.
“My brother couldn’t ask for a day off, and my wife couldn’t go because she was pregnant,” Mai said.
The day they picked up Chieu was a day after her husband’s death anniversary.
The brothers’ families made some simple dishes so that Chieu could burn incense and “talk” to their father when she got back.
On the morning of December 22, Mai drove the packed car to the border gate and the family was reunited. He took a picture of his the family reunion and posted it on social media with the caption: “After 28 years apart, I was able to see my mother again.”
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Mai (L) with his mother and brother on December 27, 2022. Photo courtesy of Mai |
Since that day, the brothers are still regularly congratulated by friends, neighbors and family. Theirs is a well-known story around town. And it’s brought them closer together. They live in two different houses but now they visit each other much more regularly that they used to.
Though they are living in two different houses, they have been visiting each other more often.
Dong Van Thuan, Chairman of Nghia Hoa Commune People’s Committee, said that Mai used to have a local household registration, but because she had been gone for so long, the government and everyone else who knew her thought she had d run away from home.
“When receiving the news that she was trafficked to China and is now reunited with her family, the government sent village officials and police to visit, encourage and congratulate her on her reunion,” he said.
Her two children and relatives filed a complaint with authorities accusing Chieu’s nephew of trafficking his aunt. They are demanding justice for their mother.
“We don’t want any more families to suffer the pain of separation like what our family had experienced,” Mai said.
“My father died, mother was not around, but my brother and I lived properly and did not harm anyone. So why should we let such a cruel and evil person [Chieu’s trafficker] live comfortably and happily?” he continued.
Hundreds of thousands of women from Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar have been smuggled or taken to China to wed local men, activists say. Some end up happily married, but many others suffer violence and forced labor.
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