Family reunites after 39 years of separation from mother, 2 daughters

Nearly four decades later the scattered pieces of that family have finally come back together.

In January Thai, 43, of Ba Xuyen Ward in the northern Thai Nguyen Province had just finished work when an acquaintance sent her a link to a video on social media. In it, a woman identifying herself as Nguyen Thanh Truc, now living in China, was searching for her family in Vietnam. She remembered only two names: her father, Nguyen Duc Khanh, and her youngest sibling, Nguyen Thi Thai.

“I recognized my sister immediately just by looking at her face,” Thai says.

Truc, now 51, is the third of four children of Nguyen Duc Khanh, 78, and Nguyen Thi Thi, 74. Her return brings closure to a family ordeal that spanned 39 years after beginning in 1987, when Thi the mother showed signs of mental instability and left home. After more than a year of searching without success, Khanh remarried.

In 1989 the couple’s second daughter, Nguyen Thi Thuy, went missing. In 1993 Truc also disappeared without a trace.

“I didn’t know where to look for my wife and children,” Khanh recalls. “All I could do was report it to authorities and ask for public announcements.”

Years passed before any answers came, but eventually, one by one, they returned.

In 2005, after 16 years of knowing nothing, the family received a letter from Thuy in China. She said she had been trafficked to China and forced into marriage there. Two years later she came to Vietnam with her husband and children on a visit.

In 2017 authorities found Thi on the China border in Lang Son Province. She had lost her memory but was able to recall her husband and children’s names, as well as her childhood address, enabling officials to reunite her with her family.

During moments of lucidity, she recounted being taken across the border and forced to collect scrap.

The return of his wife and second daughter gave Khanh hope that Truc might still be alive and one day come home. That hope was realized this year.

Nguyen Thi Thai (standing) with her mother Nguyen Thi Thi during a reunion celebration in 2023. Photo courtesy of Thai

Through a translator, a Vietnamese student studying in China, Truc shared her story on social media since she had forgotten her native language almost completely after 33 years. In the summer of 1993, then 18, while working at a brick kiln, she was lured by a woman promising a high-paying job near the border.

She was taken to Guangdong Province and forced to live with a mentally impaired man. Every day she climbed mountains to gather herbs to sell. Without money, language skills or any way to contact home, she remained trapped.

She later remarried and her life gradually stabilized.

With the advent of social media, she began posting videos on Vietnamese platforms in search of her family despite remembering only her father and youngest sister’s names.

Two days after she posted one such video, she reconnected with her family.

In a video call in early February she spoke with her father, youngest sister and also Thuy. For the first time in 39 years all the members of the family were together again, if only on screen.

Duong Thuy Hang, head of Neighborhood Group No. 2 in Ba Xuyen Ward, where Khanh and Thi currently reside, says the two now live in a modest home, relying on his disability pension and her social assistance.

“Thi has returned, but is not mentally stable and sometimes wanders off collecting scrap,” Hang says. “Fortunately, their children live nearby and regularly care for them.”

Despite growing up without their mother’s care, Thai and her siblings see her return as a blessing.

“She might not have raised us, but she gave birth to us,” Thai says. “Having our parents to care for now is a source of joy and happiness.”

Khanh says he spent much of his life burdened by the guilt of losing his wife and two daughters, but now, with his family reunited, feels a sense of peace in his old age.

This year Thai’s sisters in China plan to return to Vietnam to visit their parents. For the first time in decades, the family will be able to hug one another.