Often he was physically present, but his mind was lost," said Nguyen Thi Luyen, Canh's wife, who felt her husband's loss every day. He went on to work as a carpenter and painter worker for eight years before getting married to a woman from the northern province of Thai Binh when he was 37. Photo by VnExpress/Phan Duong.Ĭanh did not know that his blood parents and siblings were living just eight kilometers away, in the same district as his "mistaken parents" in Hai Duong Province. I felt alone and wept in the middle of the night." "When I arrived (in the south), I had VND20,000 ($0.87) – ten notes of VND1,000 and two notes of VND5,000. He was 30 when he left the family and headed south, after getting divorced. He continued to live with them and got married with a local woman. The family had all of these, too, incidentally," Canh, now 48, recalled.īut he soon realized that was not his real family, since their real son had been lost in a different situation. "All I could remember was that I had older brothers, the house had a coconut tree and a pond. His adoptive parents, actively looking for Canh's family, believed what the woman said and let their son follow her to Kim Mon Commune in Kim Thanh District, northern Hai Duong Province. When Canh was in grade 11, a woman told him she was his blood mother. In three years, the mother gave birth to three babies, and Canh got busy caring for his new siblings. Surprisingly, the couple was able to give birth after Canh started living with them. The father, a military man, had a decent income to bring up his new son in reasonable comfort. When they adopted him, his adoptive parents had not had any child after 11 years of marriage. He got used to living with his adoptive parents in Bac Ninh Province's Tien Du District. He was five then.īut he had food to eat, hot water to bathe in and new clothes to wear. One of Tran Van Canh’s enduring childhood memories is of waking up one winter morning and bursting into tears on seeing a strange woman instead of his mother and siblings. Reduced to three, the family went on to Lang Son, trying to make a living in different places. Later, her second and fifth children also separated from the family, sent to work as house help with other families. Lien carefully noted down her sons' new addresses, wanting to reunite with them later. Thanh was given to a family in Bac Giang and Canh to one in Bac Ninh. She was also desperate to get some money for her husband’s treatment. Desperate to save her children from starvation and have enough food to eat, Lien decided to give her twin sons Thanh and Canh to two families. Moved by the family’s plight, many people advised Lien to give up some of her children for adoption. As they passed Bac Ninh Province, Trang suffered another attack of acute pain. The seven-member family begged for food on the way to the promised land. Trang and Lien (front) and their sons behind, from left to right: Truong, Thanh, Canh, Ty. He had been suffering from a stomach ailment for years, needing frequent treatment.Īfter they sold the house, the poor family left their hometown and moved to northern Lang Son Province, where they were told they could find a stable livelihood. It had to be sold to meet her husband Tran Van Trang’s medical expenses. Not long after, the mother, Pham Thi Lien, lost the house in Hai Duong Province’s Kim Thanh District. All they had for company was a grapefruit given by a neighbour. Mother was off taking their sick father to the local clinic. Five children cowered underneath a bed in fear. One night in 1977, strong winds blew the roof off a house during a thunderstorm.
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