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.
@Inquisitor2024Ай бұрын
I've done this as a single parent to..
@Lily_of_the_Forest26 күн бұрын
Yes, that must have a living hell. I am so sorry for them.
@denisetaylor45288 күн бұрын
What an amazing woman your grandmother is. Inner strength and resilience ❤
@celestialstar124Ай бұрын
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. ❤
@dominicm255Ай бұрын
The conversation between Inch and grandmother is touching. It's cathartic. Bless them The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.
@vbrown6445Ай бұрын
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.
@Smooshes78625 күн бұрын
I think she should tell her story in her way. She is not incorrect at all.
@LuciThomasHardylover-qx6ts13 күн бұрын
She's really irritating.. it's not her story, I think that her aunt's would have told it more sensibly.
@lalakuma928 күн бұрын
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 😬
@anastasia1001722 күн бұрын
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.
@mynahlu977Ай бұрын
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 😢
@medusianAllureАй бұрын
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.
@maggiep3263Ай бұрын
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.
@Bee-ly4gxАй бұрын
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.
@anastasia1001722 күн бұрын
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......
@Iflie21 күн бұрын
@@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.
@LuciThomasHardylover-qx6ts13 күн бұрын
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.
@margaretjefferies6539Ай бұрын
It’s a common occurrence. Life was hard, I was the third daughter and given to a childless aunt to raise.
@maxim3830Ай бұрын
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.
@mimisor66Ай бұрын
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.
@yiampornungprasert8979Ай бұрын
My grandfather almost was sold by his dad for the boat ride too but his grandmother against it then he was not sold.
@Amblin80sАй бұрын
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.
@ljcl1859Ай бұрын
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.
@LuciThomasHardylover-qx6ts13 күн бұрын
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.
@celestialstar124Ай бұрын
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.
@emppulinaАй бұрын
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.
@celestialstar124Ай бұрын
Thanks so much for sharing your grandmother story ❤
@stargazeronesixsevenАй бұрын
🙏 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 ... 🙏🕯🌷🌿🌏✌💜🕊🇸🇬🇲🇾🇨🇳
@emmah6045Ай бұрын
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!.
@CitizenCanАй бұрын
and also get some money in return....
@nostaligia4021Ай бұрын
well said
@vickypediasАй бұрын
What a touching, educational, emotional story, brilliant mini documentary!
@eddienswАй бұрын
i wish all your grandmas...happy n healthy...
@normabrien8331Ай бұрын
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.
@4996Utube24 күн бұрын
My mom was born in the year of tiger. 😭
@marshaloveridge1527Күн бұрын
Grandmother is so adorable❣️
@erickchandra377128 күн бұрын
it was a common phenomenon in China or Nanyang (aka. southeast asia) when a poor family selling their daughters to make living.
@barbaracoleman921523 күн бұрын
Beautiful story. Thank you for sharing. Your grandmother was one of the lucky ones.
@melaniemansfield331929 күн бұрын
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.
@limlesley8285Ай бұрын
Aunty is my neighbor. Her house is opposite mine
@blr407611 күн бұрын
This is painful. Blessings.
@kerryalfaro9437Ай бұрын
God bless all of you and your family ❤❤❤❤❤I love THE AMAZING ANGELIC ENERGIES OF YOUR AUNTS!!! REMINDS ME OF MY MOTHERS SIDE OF MY FAMILY!!!!❤
@HaloFlemz86Ай бұрын
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.
@dianecampbell6912Ай бұрын
R u sure it wasn’t your great grand father who sold her?
@ReggisDives-7bgАй бұрын
Vematum's consistent progress updates show dedication.
@beatpirate8Ай бұрын
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.
@jana8599Ай бұрын
I wonder if the Coal Coolie had a buddy that provided the boat ride through some kind of barter.
@beatpirate8Ай бұрын
omg my auntie IS year of the tiger!!
@beatpirate8Ай бұрын
this sounds so similar to my grandma. i think women and children were given to others
@TGirl50323 күн бұрын
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.
@gohsoonheng9598Ай бұрын
She look like her grandma early pic
@dalet920728 күн бұрын
$5 even then would be more money than today.
@jessicarowley963119 күн бұрын
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.
@lydiat5819Ай бұрын
So did my mom, she was sold as a bride at 15 in China and was abused by my paternal grandma, she has passed tho.
@celestialstar124Ай бұрын
I believe the great biological grandma already pass away. The grandmother said they stop contacting as she didn't contact her.
@ShinpeiHeidaАй бұрын
Vematum's vision for decentralization is inspiring.
@eunicestone653226 күн бұрын
Child selling still goes on.its called adoption..
@tingblubblub6106Ай бұрын
Lim hui may have the foresight by selecting the right adoptive parents to give the grandma awY
@CitizenCanАй бұрын
not give. Sell
@JJW77Ай бұрын
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... kzfaq.info/get/bejne/fdxyisul372VhY0.html
@ABC-ed8cgАй бұрын
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.
@CitizenCanАй бұрын
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....
@user-ug3rz4cu4sАй бұрын
They know no civilization.
@catt138Ай бұрын
nope, they would raise sons but not daughters...
@Ky-rb6ogАй бұрын
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 .
@beagle_is_my_boss140221 күн бұрын
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.
@Liz_678Ай бұрын
Interesting 🧐
@tksc154Ай бұрын
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
@maryanntoner452017 күн бұрын
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.
@aaat487315 күн бұрын
Are they still doing it?
@cathhl244011 күн бұрын
Mm... I think people were emotionally stronger in the past. They accept the reality and move on.
@willowsprite22 күн бұрын
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.
@TheKrispyfort22 күн бұрын
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
@jillgott6567Ай бұрын
You sell shoes, clothing, a car. I would not even sell my cats !
@sroy978925 күн бұрын
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
@KittymoreJoy13 күн бұрын
To you I would say simply “ you live as a family or die together as a family “. To abandon a child is a horror of selfishness beyond compare.
@kktowne699221 күн бұрын
$88.00 in 1939 is equivalent to $1989.00 today
@LuciThomasHardylover-qx6ts13 күн бұрын
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!
@PapageAthertonАй бұрын
Vematum's community-driven approach is what crypto needs.
@tinatehАй бұрын
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.
@CitizenCanАй бұрын
Q:"Also wonder how a Batak child could have ended up in an orphanage in Singapore." A: Human trafficking....
@MaraBaileАй бұрын
Vematum's leadership team is stacked with industry experts.
@BayardGoriolАй бұрын
Vematum's responsiveness to community feedback is impressive.
@SK-zt2lxАй бұрын
What language are you speaking with your grandmother? It sounds exactly like Taiwanese. I understood almost every word.
@SK-zt2lxАй бұрын
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.
@valc1905Ай бұрын
@@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.
@wsmithe2209Ай бұрын
@@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.
@user-ic2bk1pi3bАй бұрын
My mom would have never did that to her kids. Also won’t sell them to a husband.
@MadelinaIvanАй бұрын
Vematum's partnerships are a testament to its credibility.
@jessicaregina1956Ай бұрын
Because she cried too much.
@oseandepartmentofnarcoticsАй бұрын
3:45 ah yes the famous colony of french south china