Why Did My Grandma's Mom Sell Her At 3 Years Old? | On The Red Dot: Family Mysteries | Full Episode

Inch Chua has always known she comes from a tough stock of women. The actress and singer-songwriter's biggest role model is her grandmother. Despite being abandoned as a child, Grandma raised a family of seven girls of her own. Grandma’s biological mother who sold her to a washerwoman after she arrived in Singapore from China remains a mystery. Who was she? What drove her to sell her child? And was her life better for it?

00:00 Who is Inch Chua?
00:48 My grandmother's two mothers
05:55 Why were baby girls abandoned or sold?
08:25 What happened to some girls who were sold?
10:05 How much did my adoptive great-grandparents earn?
13:29 Hard work of samsui women, Asia's first feminists
18:20 Conversation with my grandma
20:29 Would she ever have sold her own daughters?

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About On The Red Dot: CNA's weekly programme documents the stories of ordinary Singaporeans and celebrates their resilience, identity and sense of belonging.
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[Amblins]

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.

[vbrown]

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.

[maggiep]

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.

[medusianAllure]

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.

[celestialstar]

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. ❤

[dominicm]

The conversation between Inch and grandmother is touching. It's cathartic. Bless them

The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.

[mynahlu]

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 😢

[margaretjefferies]

It’s a common occurrence. Life was hard, I was the third daughter and given to a childless aunt to raise.

[Bee-lygx]

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.

[lalakuma]

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 😬

[yiampornungprasert]

My grandfather almost was sold by his dad for the boat ride too but his grandmother against it then he was not sold.

[ljcl]

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.

[celestialstar]

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.

[emppulina]

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.

[Amblins]

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.

[stargazeronesixseven]

🙏 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 ... 🙏🕯🌷🌿🌏✌💜🕊🇸🇬🇲🇾🇨🇳

[celestialstar]

Thanks so much for sharing your grandmother story ❤

[emmah]

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!.

[vickypedias]

What a touching, educational, emotional story, brilliant mini documentary!

[dianecampbell]

R u sure it wasn’t your great grand father who sold her?