When 63-year-old Ding Liang was found crying
on a street in eastern China’s Hangzhou city, her story attracted
widespread media coverage. The poor woman had traveled five hours from
her village to meet her son and his newborn child. Unfortunately, the
son refused to see her for the strangest of reasons – because she’s too
ugly!
Ding’s confession has pretty much shocked the
nation – her story is currently one of the most discussed in Chinese
social media with hundreds of thousands of hits and comments. It all
started when 53-year-old local man Hsin Pai spotted Ding standing
outside a housing complex. He asked her what the matter was and the
tired old woman spilled her guts to him.
Ding told Hsin that she was from a village
outside Yuyao city, in the same province as Hangzhou. Years ago, her son
moved to the city to pursue a college education – he did well at
school, landed a job at an upmarket car dealership and got married. When
Ding attended the wedding dressed like a peasant, the son was
apparently mortified and too embarrassed to admit his relationship to
her.
Soon after, the son began to ignore Ding and the rest of
the family back in the village. He would never call, and only speak to
Ding when she called him. “I don’t mind, I know he has his own life now,
so I understand that he doesn’t call and only speaks to me when I ring
him,” Ding said. “But when he rang me the other day to say that he had
had a baby, I wanted to visit him and bring my grandchild some gifts.”
When Ding announced her intention to visit her son, he
simply asked her not to come. “He said I would embarrass him because I’m
too ugly.” Ding’s husband also discouraged her from visiting. “My old
man said not to go, and I said our daughter-in-law has given birth, so I
definitely must go, that I’ll bring some stuff to give them. I was
worried for his wife, so much that I couldn’t eat. ”
On the day of her journey, Ding woke up at
4am and dressed in the clothes that she purchased specially for the
occasion. She packed her clothes and the gifts in two cloth sacks, tied
them around the ends of a pole and hitched the pole onto her shoulders.
She then rode a bus and arrived at her son’s city a little after 9am.
Unfortunately, she didn’t have her son’s address, and when she called
him, he didn’t answer the phone.
“Before 10am, I was wandering here
and there searching. Two workers asked me if I was scavenging garbage. I
said I’m not scavenging garbage, I’m looking for my son, he’s a car
salesman. The two workers then also helped me look, but my son still
hasn’t appeared.” Several merchants nearby also tried calling her son’s
cell phone, but he didn’t answer. One of them texted the son pretending
to be a potential customer, but he only got a reply stating that ‘Chief
Xu was on a business trip to Xiamen’.
That’s when Hsin decided to get the media involved. Ding
told the reporters that she wasn’t doing very well financially. She used
to work as a housekeeper, while her husband did temporary work at
construction sites. The couple had borrowed a lot of money to put their
son through college, and he even borrowed money from them after he was
married. Ding had also presented a gold necklace to her daughter-in-law,
when she realized that the young couple were facing financial
difficulties.
After waiting for several hours, Ding finally decided to
return to her village with all the gifts and packages she had brought.
Although her story is incredibly sad, some comments do suggest that
there might be more to it than Ding revealed. Perhaps there’s a
long-standing argument between the mother and son that’s never been
resolved? Well, in any case, most people feel the son should forgive his
mother and permit her to visit her grandchild. What do you think?
via China Smack
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