The strength of these construction women is amazing. They did manual labor during the daytime and also raised children in the evenings, while for men, once you were done with work, you were done with work. For women, you gave your 100% on the job, then came home to a bunch of children needing you to cook and wash their clothes and clean the house. There was no rest. On top of that, they often suffered abuse at the hands of their husbands. I can't even imagine how hopeless many of them must have felt.
I agree. Perhaps the strength of those construction women started making some people feel so angry while being stuck behind their desks most of the time and so they started letting their imaginations run too fast while they were doing their investigations at the time.
I think the narrator should pay attention to how her mother and aunts refer to her grandmother's parents. The narrator keeps saying "real" mother, and her mother and aunts say biological mother, which I think is more correct. The adopted parents who cared for and nurtured her are her grandmother's "real" parents.
My own grandmother give away my 4th aunt to her nanny. She hire a nanny to raise her daughter when she came Singapore. But after sons years stop paying and visiting them. Luckily the nanny raise my 4th aunt really well. She became a nurse and married a successful doctor. Now both her children are in doctors too. I was delivered by my 4th aunt. She saw my mum's name and requested to be part of the delivery team. ❤
Not sure why the historian didn’t point out that Lim Hey shouldn’t be called Samsui Woman, a fact that one of the aunts had pointed out at the beginning of the documentary. I had a distant relative who worked as a female construction worker in the early days of nation building. Like Lim Hey, she was also from the same region of the Fujian Province. If I remember correctly, I was told these women were neither allowed to be identified as Samsui women nor to don the red headdress that Samsui Women from the village of Samsui of the Canton Province wore. In fact, they were considered a lower class of workers than the Samsui Women at the construction sites and were paid less for their job. So they definitely had a harder life than the Samsui Women in general 😢
Selling a child to a couple who genuinely want to adopt and care for the child is one thing. Selling a child bride to a family who want to use her as a domestic slave is a completely different thing 😬
that happens a lot in India and the far east. the bride is considered the mother in law's servant that the son gets to f**k. When she delivers a child, the child belongs to them, not her.
My 姥姥 was the youngest daughter in a farming family. The local landlord/warlord took a liking to her because she looked like a 洋娃娃/porcelain doll also around the age of 3. She was given to the man's sister after he tired of her. She was only able to escape through joining up with Mao's army as a nurse. She made a life for herself, eventually becoming a doctor whose greatest accomplishment was stopping a plague from spreading. I just want to hold space for all of our grandma's and aunties who were sold during such a harsh time.
My grandfather was born in Fujian province, China in the late 1890s. I recall him saying he had a brother who was bought. He said it was common in China to do this. Poor families would sell their children to families who could afford a child. Anyhow, my grandfather left home when he was about 14yrs old and went to the Philippines because life in China was hard. His adopted brother left too and went to Indonesia. I don't know how old he was. I do know he became a businessman and in the 1950s, he visited my grandfather in the Philippines.
The mother that sold her child was most likely devastated to do so. It’s easeasy to say that we would never do such a thing when we have means to provide survival for our children.
I dont think they really had any attachment to their kids and dont think that the child has any feelings or preferences. I know a man in the Philippines who came from a poor family with too many kids. As a toddler, he was given away to a rich aunt who was childless. She spoiled him and raised him well and then years later, when his original family wanted him, they came and yanked him back. They really have no concept that the child has any feelings or just dont care. The Chinese woman who works at my manicure place has left her kids in China and yes, I presume she sends money back for them, but the way she talks about them is as if she is talking about her investment condo back in China. I know another Chinese man whose mother met a couple who were going to the USA and she talked the couple into taking her toddler son with them. So one day he was with his mom, the next day, he was on a boat with strangers and ended up in the US. I get that the mom thought he would have a better life in the US, but still......
@@anastasia10017 I think it's certainly not universal, my grandmother was taken from her mother to be raised by nuns because her dutch father wanted her to be raised well and all we have for her mother is a first name. But that poor woman was crying at the playground's gate years later looking at her daughter. My grandmother asked one of the nuns who that crying lady was and she was told that was her mother and she was very confused and asked "But are you not my mother?" , as nuns were obviously often "mother so and so". She was very young so had no real concept of parents. I think her mother would have loved to keep her but there is no question she was raised to be of a higher class and have a different future than she would have had with her mother. The poorest people have less power and survival is more on their mind, more children that will come and have to be fed.
And it's so easy to judge when none of us have lived with starvation. And contraception. Everyone forgets just what a total revolution it was for women to actually CHOOSE when to have a child. It is hard to imagine how anyone might feel with endless pregnancies that drain the mother's health, don't always make it to term, don't often survive infancy and need constant feeding when there simply isn't enough to go around and keep everyone alive. We should all be humbled thinking about it.
There's a difference between giving the child to a known, trusted person and thus keeping it within the family or community, or to sell it. The latter happened too and still happens, but should never be normalized.
I know people that were given by a mother with many children to a childless close relative to be grown as theirs, but the families stayed in contact, as the mother was usually the sister of one of the adoptive parents.
There was noone giving your great grandmother food and money for survival. Perhaps she had noone to care for your grandmother while Lim Hai was working in construction. As a washerwoman the adoptive Mom could have watched her while she worked. Lim Hai probably couldn't afford to care for her. Keeping a child to only watch her starve would have been terrible. She saw someone that could give her child a better life. I'm sure she loved her child, and it hurt to give her up.
And they did sort of know each other. Enough to take her back to visit her mother when she wouldn't stop crying. Prosperity has made many people blind with judgement.
It's heartbreaking how commonplace this was, but I'm glad this video was made and uploaded because for the first time, I could mentally categorize it as simply "an adoption"-an umbrella term under which I could then view every horrific thing that happened to my grandmother afterward. Even in other countries, people give up their children for adoption every day, but we all know that not all of them reach good homes. My great-grandparents sent money to my grandmother overseas to help support her, but my grandmother's adoptive family pocketed that money and used her for domestic labor. This she only found out when she was able to reunite with her older brothers when she was in her 60s. A lifetime of hardship, the extent of which she and her family of origin pieced together 60 years later, after her parents had already passed, all of it is so heartbreaking. And of course I also feel so sorry for those who suffered different fates. I hope their souls are able to find peace.
I believe the biological mother choose to sell the daughter so that her own daughter can have a better life. I know of a women who pass away already. She give birth to 9 children and give away the 2nd daughter because she got many health issues. She is a tiger zodiac too. But the old lady insist she only sold her because she know the new family will give her better medical care. And they are staying near by too.
You should not judge the mother as I have heard from your interviews women were not appreciated and it shows how hard their lives were. Your grandmother was very lucky to have parents that took good care of her so maybe it was for her benefit. We don’t know how much women suffered in those times.
Parents giving children to kind of open adoption was pretty common on the 1950s Finland also. My mother was supposed to go, but her potential father died and the mother didn't want the burden without his income. She seems to have trauma of it. My mothers older brother was adopted by their childless aunt. Also one of my older collegues during my early career told story of her mother trying to adopt her out, and one of my older current collegues was as a self arranged foster-child in a local family after her mother died and before her father remarried. I don't know about money changing hands, I think it was more about better changes for the child. All of these children already talked and witnessed the situation. My mother's potential family was pretty walthy as was also my great aunt. My mother is by far the best educated in her family, although her later education was paid by working, however she could not have done that without good bases her aunt paid, when she was still a child.
🙏 Thank You So Much Inch Chua for sharing your personal journey to find out your grandma Mimi Mama's childhood & finding out that she being sold to adoptive parents that loved her & given her a better life in Singapore. We should apologize for the billions of our past lives' doings , as we might had created many bad karma through our ignorance & unskilful means & to be thankful for the many life experiences & insights gained to be reborned in this precious human life as compared to the lower realms of the animals , ghostly & the Hellish realms & to found strength & wiseness to be abled to forgive others & to ourselves as we all didn't possessed these much life experiences & insights in our past! Most importantly , we be Good Persons & be Responsible Citizens in our respective countries to make this World a Safer , Healthier , Manageable , Comfortable & respectable place for all of us before our respective Unions face their respective Dissolutions in due time & space ... 🙏🕯🌷🌿🌏✌💜🕊🇸🇬🇲🇾🇨🇳
It is so important to do research about the history and context of the time when a event like this took place. We cannot look at something only within the context of our current affluent lives. There were so many people (all over the world) for whom starvation and poverty were all they had to offer their children. Sometimes the desperate alternative is to find someone who can give them what the parents cannot- even life!.
This is an extraordinary documentary. Grandmother is obviously content, but she must have been traumatised at the time. The love her adoptive parents gave her must have been really strong.
Inch is so lucky to have a loving and supportive family. Her grandmother was sold but I’m sure her mother regretted it. It was a different time and when you face extreme circumstances and wanted to give Mimi a new life but accepting money for the mother’s new life is wrong. Sorry that happened to Mimi. I’m glad the story was a happy ending.
Similar story here. My father in law was abandoned at a Buddhist temple when he was 2. When his parents came to reclaim him several years later, he had a 2 (!) year old brother. Life was so crappy for him that enlisted in the Japanese army at age 13, where he was fed 3 meals a day and sent to school. He was captured by the Russians and spent 5 years in a Siberian POW camp. Until his dying day, he considered those years in Siberia the best years of his life.
At least they were sold and not killed at birth many were killed. Because they were born a female. That happened too. Seriously you don’t want to know how. I’m in the U.S. This gentleman I knew came from this area matter off factly told what they did to these beautiful babies. It haunts me to this day. I also know he loves his granddaughters.
my grandma was left . it was war and poverty and they left china. my aunt was given to a neighbors ship. she was too small to sneak in the dark to hong kong.
It is easy for us to judge because we can’t know whwt it was like to live this life. She sold her child to good people. Perhaps she searched good people out for her. There are many ways to love someone, and sometimes that is giving them a better life while doing the same for yourself. I love that you researched the background for yourself and shared that with us. I am 70 and may great grandmother left Ireland after she was widowed during the great potato famine. So many hardships.
According to my grandmother, her mother in law was a monster and her husband my grandfather was not much different. My grandmother opted to live as a tainted divorced woman than to stay in that house.
My mother was given away. When she got older, the bullies in the village would taunt her about it. Mother would face her tormentors and tell them that she feel sorry for them, for they only got 1 mother, she was lucky enough to have TWO mothers. After a while her intimidators left her alone... ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-GvBWhtzW1UY.html
It doesn’t work like that but okay. 2 mothers are more like if one’s parents divorced and one has a step-mum who also cares for one as much as one’s own biological mother. I was given up for adoption too. I’m 36 this year unlike all the older adoptees you’ve come across. My birth mother couldn’t care less about me. Some may have given their children away so the latter can have a better life, but not in my case cos my parents favored son over daughters.
I don't know. There's a difference between giving your child to a family to be raised by them because of hard circumstances and giving your child to family to be raised by them because of hard circumstances but still profiting off of it.
The narrator sounds very ignorant and self righteous when she is trying judge people that lived in another time and in whose shoes she has not walked. She may do far worse if she were put in a similar situation or even half of it imho
Well, you have to give it to the Chinese. They are extremely pragmatic people... Can't afford to raise your child? Might as well make some money by selling her.... When life gives you lemon, make lemonade....
First of all, thank you so very much for sharing your family history. After watching your video I was able to gain some insight as to possibly why my Popo was raised by another lady. Popo was born in the year of the metal tiger(1890) in the Kingdom of Hawaii . Her parents immigrated from Guangdong to Kauai Hawaii. I began researching my family genealogy and still cannot find a birth certificate, marriage certificate for her. US federal census(1900) shows her residing in Honolulu with her guardian. She married my grandfather( he immigrated in 1896 from Guangdong to Hawaii) in 1906. My Dad told me he recalled having an adopted sister as a child because Popo lost two sons in infancy and the soothsayer said they must adopt a daughter so any sons born after this will survive. Popo had one daughter and six sons after that but sadly the adopted daughter, her guardian “mother” passed after 1920( no record again) from a influenza and my grandfather passed in 1925 from a heart attack leaving Popo at the time eight months pregnant with my youngest uncle. The company my grandfather worked for gave her a home but hardships ensued. My aunty quit school(6th grade education) to stay at home and care for the younger siblings so Popo could work at the pineapple cannery and my Dad(#1 son) and his brother(#2 son) sold newspapers, shined shoes and worked in a restaurant as a dishwasher as youths all the while attending school to subsidize the family income. She never remarried, never complained, and lived a full life passing at the supreme age of 97. It wasn’t till her funeral (Taoist services) that I realized how through her golden years she instilled in me and my female cousins a sense of self worth in a Chinese family .
My FIL's grandmother was 'adopted' by a family and taken to New Zealand in exchange for 'help' paying the rental arrears owed by the desperate mother and drunken volatile father
What a silly question- What do you mean why the adoptive parents treated her well and even DOTED ON HER???? They obviously wanted a child and they came to love and value their adopted child very much, lucky child. You know, like how i adopted a rescue dog who's become an extremely well and much loved member of my family, but even more so for a 3 year old Human baby girl. And could she have fared better in China with a mom who wanted to sell her baby for some bucks vs a loving family that doted on her all through her life?? Great concept and investigation, but not very well thought out questions.o
Sadly, there are stories of adoptive parents who paid a great deal of money to shady “baby brokers” for a baby that they would then neglect or abuse. The fact is, some people should never be allowed to raise children, whether biological or adopted. But I agree that living in poverty with her biological mother (who might have gotten pregnant out of wedlock) would have been far worse than the life she had with her adoptive parents in Singapore.
I wonder if they tried looking at heritage websites that look for ancestry through dna to find if the bio great grandmother had other children after? It could be an option to see if they have accounts on how she felt about selling her daughter.
It's an interesting story rather blighted by the presenter feigning shock and ignorance of a story she's obviously heard many times. It wouldn't detract from her grandmother's experience for her to admit, yes I've heard this from the family. 🤷 It's not that shocking, it's still going on across Asia!
I wonder if there is any way to trace orphans who grew up in the convent in the 1800s. My great grandmother was in the convent before she married. We know nothing much about her except her name and the possibility that she had Batak origins. Also wonder how a Batak child could have ended up in an orphanage in Singapore.
Did a deep dive and today I learned about the Hokkien language. Apparently there is a commonality with all the Hokkien languages, but with some differences depending on region. As a first generation Chinese American, who was only taught Taiwanese, this is really eye-opening.
@@SK-zt2lx I think the language u learned is called taiwanese hokkien, i havent really heard any call a language taiwanese? Taiwanese used more for nationality.
@@SK-zt2lx - There is no such thing called taiwanese language. Ppl made thing up or created the language. Mandarin, Hokkien, Cantonese and other Chinese dialecgts are spoken in that island.
I magine to be sold in 1936 was about political instability and war with Japan who were very brutal. If the adoptive family was ging to Singapore it would have been a safe place and they werent expecting a world war and the fall of Singapore a few years later
