Yesterday while having breakfast at the hawker center, I saw my neighbor talking to a group of elderly ladies. Rather animated like they were discussing something very dramatic.
Later in the evening I saw my neighbor asked her what were they discussing. She said one of the elderly woman in her sixties had just returned from China and had lots of stories to tell everyone. The elderly woman stayed at the rental block next to mine. So what happened to the woman in China, I asked my neighbor - "kena robbed is it?". My neighbor said "sort of, but not quite".
20 years ago the woman received a letter from China from a woman who said she was the sister of her late father....separated by the World War. The China woman wrote that her family was very poor and the family lived in poverty. The Singapore woman who was not rich and living in a flat too pity on her china relatives. She verified with other relatives that the China woman was indeed her aunt and really her father's sis. She decide to send $100 to her auntie to help her. 5 years later this auntie died, her nieces in China took over and corresponded with her. Told her china family situation had to gotten worse - hard to find jobs living from hand to mouth. To help she continued sending $100 to the family when when she get year end bonus she would send half to the family. She was very happy to get letters expressing gratitude.
3 months ago, the Singapore woman who was working as a coffee shop helper retired. The Singaporean boss whom she had been working for for 20 years, gave her $20K ask a retirement package. The Singaporean boss now owns 3 coffee shop, had kept all his Singaporean workers is one of the rare "good bosses" - he would give elderly workers $1000 for every year they worked for him when they retired. The woman delighted with her new found wealth decided to book a tour to China to visit her China family personally. A Singaporean nephew who is a regular traveler offered to accompany her the trip - perhaps worried she would get lost in China.
To make a long story short. When they for their way to the China address she had corresponded with for years, they saw a 2 storey concrete house with 2 SUVs parked in the compound. When she introduced herself, nobody knew who she was. They knew her late Chinese auntie but claimed they didn't know they had a cousin or auntie in Singapore. The Chinese auntie had 2 children now in the sixties living in the house. They claimed their mother never told them they had a cousin in Singapore - the person she wrote to apparently did not exist or nobody admitted being that person. They told her since she is a relative she can stay with them for a few days - they were okay with that. She found the family was rather rich by Chinese standards and seemed to live quite well - so where did the $100 she sent every month go? Nobody knows. But they treated her quite okay when she was there but she decided to stop giving them any more money....she felt a bit cheated but didn't tell them that.
No comments:
Post a Comment