On all kinds of **, we often see information about people who have lost contact for various reasons asking for help, and some** even set up a special section or program to find relatives for those who have lost contact due to poor information, accidents or violations, so that they can find their way home.
Such a thing also happened in Ruian, Zhejiang: 37 years ago, the two sisters left their hometown after listening to the "recruitment" statement, and have not been heard from since. However, years later, a place name in their hometown dialect helped them find their way home.
In Lupu Village, Ruian, Zhejiang Province 37 years ago, there were two cousins named Ah Cai and Mei Cha. At that time, they were 14 and 19 years old, and they were forced to go to school and were illiterate, which became an important reason for their loss of contact for many years.
In that era, due to multiple factors such as topography and history, Wenzhou was known as "seven mountains, two rivers and one field", and the pressure of life was great, and many places were separated from each other, forming the most difficult dialect to understand - Wenzhou dialect.
The sisters grew up in this environment. After harvesting early rice that year, a person from Pingyang who claimed to be here to recruit workers came to the village, saying that there was a factory in Yishan County that needed workers.
At that time, the materials were insufficient, and the use of food stamps and oil stamps and other materials was the norm, and it was not as easy for rural residents to go to the city to work. Therefore, there is no large-scale, standardized labor recruitment system, and there is no timely and effective recruitment between localities, which basically relies on acquaintances to introduce and lead the way, or go directly to the countryside to recruit people.
This Binh Duong native who came to the village to recruit workers did not alarm most of the villagers, because at that time, there were not many people in the village, the income was limited, and the salary of 20 yuan a month was very attractive to many people.
Ah Cai and Micha decide to leave the mountain village and try a job where they can earn more money. According to Ah Cai's elder brother Zhang Yeqiu, the family had just finished harvesting rice that day, and her sister said that she wanted to go out to work as a worker, and it happened that her cousin also wanted to go, so the two happened to be together and had a good time.
So, after having lunch one day, they followed the recruiter away. In addition to their family, there were three other families in the village who were also moved, and finally went with four people, all of whom were about ten or twenty years old.
On the afternoon of the day when the four of them left the village, the family met and talked about it, and the more they talked, the more they felt that something was wrong, and they began to wonder if they had been deceived by someone. So, a total of dozens of people from the four families immediately set off to chase people.
They divided into different routes, such as Lishui, Wenzhou, Fuzhou and other larger directions, and people set out to find it. Zhang Yeqiu drove the tractor to the south, and first went to Pingyang Yishan to look for Zhang who came to recruit workers, but when he finally found the person by name, he found that it was not the same person who came to recruit workers at all.
As a result, the suspicions of several families deepened, and they were more anxious to find the four missing people. However, Zhang Yeqiu's sister and cousin are still nowhere to be found.
According to the information provided by the two people found in Fuding, they said they were going to Fuzhou at that time. The family followed this clue and chased it all the way to Fuzhou, but in the local area, how could they find two people in a huge Fuzhou?
Finding a missing loved one in a sea of people can be as difficult as finding a needle in a haystack, but that hasn't stopped the two families from searching for 37 years. They participate in various "family search meetings" every year, carry with them the prepared "family recognition notice", and leave a variety of ***
They have also considered the possibility of their relatives being adopted, hoping to be able to move around with their loved ones, fulfilling the wish of reuniting their elderly parents. During this long period of time, they focused on Fujian Province, and experienced the search for people in Fuzhou, Ningde, Sanming, Quanzhou and other places, and even went to some particularly remote mountain villages.
They also participated in a DNA tracing mechanism in the hope of finding clues. However, what they didn't expect was that the object they had been looking for had been living in Putian, and it was actually their nephew who found them first.
In June 2019, Lupu Village received an unexpected ** from a young man who asked if two people in the village had ever been missing, and offered tentative questions about their surnames and residents.
Zhang Fengxian, the bookkeeper in charge of receiving **, felt that the other party's problem had a reason, so he began to inquire about the other party's intentions. After testing each other, Zhang Fengxian learned that the other party was looking for his hometown and relatives, and from the information provided by the other party, it was very similar to the two sisters in the village who went out to work and lost contact.
Although Zhang Fengxian did not know enough about the details, she decided to go and verify further. She asked the lad who was looking for her loved ones to stay*** and promised to reply as soon as possible.
Soon after, she told Zhang Yeqiu and his family the news. Zhang Yeqiu immediately got in touch with the young man, and after further checking the information, he basically determined that the other party was his nephew.
To make sure, both parties even made an appointment to do DNA testing. The results of the identification showed that they were related to each other. In this way, relatives who had been lost for 37 years miraculously regained contact.
It turned out that the recruiter brought the two sisters to Putian, but he didn't know why he left them behind. In an unfamiliar and illiterate environment, the two sisters could not find a way to return home, nor did they have a way to earn a living independently, so they could only find a way to integrate into the local community as much as possible.
The two sisters lived in a foreign land for many years and learned Putian dialect, but Ruian dialect was forgotten. Years later, they entrusted their son and nephew to find their hometown and met a Wenzhou business partner.
As soon as the partner heard the place name "Lupu", he knew that it was the pronunciation of Wenzhou dialect. Although there are many Lupu in Wenzhou, by checking one by one, I finally found Lupu Village in Pandai Street.
The two cousins, Ah Cai and Mei Cha, set foot on the road back to their hometown again one day many years later. Although their sideburns have not yet faded, the passage of time has taken them far too long away from their homeland.
At the end of June, they took a bullet train to Rui'an, and according to the clues found by their children, they returned to Pandai Lupu Village step by step. Unexpectedly, as soon as they got off the train, they were surrounded by their families, and more than 20 close relatives waited at the exit of the station early to welcome them home.
Their older brothers, sisters, younger brothers, and younger sisters all came, and everyone cried and hugged each other in the pick-up area of the station, some said, "How many years have I been looking for you", and some urged "Hurry up, Abba is waiting for you at home".
This scene makes people feel the warmth of home and the longing of their loved ones.
When the group returned to Lupu Village, they were surprised to find that there were more people here than they expected. It turns out that most of the villagers are natives and generations, and they support and care for each other.
They discover that not only their childhood friends but also villagers they have never met before, and although they don't know them, they know they are separated from childhood.
The procession grew, and the whole scene was lively, and they also prepared salutes, red flowers, welcome banners and salute bands, and greeted the procession all the way to the entrance of the village. Many people said: "It is a great joy for their family to be reunited, and we are all happy." ”
This small mountain village hasn't been so lively in decades.
Time passed, and Ah Cai's father became the only surviving old man of the two families. Since learning the news of his youngest daughter, he broke the habit of not showing his emotions easily on weekdays, and was so excited that he burst into tears, often looking and wandering at the door of his house, hoping that his daughter would come home as soon as possible.
Finally, when the two sisters and their husbands were delivered to the door of their homes with big red flowers by their neighbors, the old father hugged his daughter, who had been separated for 40 years, and couldn't help crying bitterly. This touching scene deeply touched the neighbors in the countryside who sent people home.
Some stood by silently witnessing, and some took out their mobile phones to record this good deed, which symbolizes good fortune.
After the two sisters found their long-lost relatives, their husbands joined the conversation. The family no longer feels troubled by the past experience, and the old father said with emotion: "She just married far away." ”
He encouraged his daughter to come back often, after all, now that transportation is convenient, there should be more family reunions. Ah Cai returned to her hometown after a 37-year absence, and felt the warm reception of her hometown and the warm embrace of her childhood friends.
Although she is not fluent in Mandarin, she still expressed her excitement in simple words to the reporters who came to report, and she was so moved that she did not want to leave.
Even though they are thinking about other places, the two sisters have taken root in Fujian. This time I returned to my hometown to find my roots, and my husband went with him, and I was able to meet my relatives in Zhejiang. When we get together, we have planned to move around more in the future to make up for those missed kinship.
In Putian for more than 30 years, the sisters have had children and watched the children grow up and become independent. Today, Ah Cai and Mei Cha are already grandmothers.
Before the son began to search for his biological parents, the husband of the two sisters also set out on several journeys to find his wife's hometown. However, just as the two sisters only spoke Ryan when they left home, their husbands also spoke a thick Putian dialect and could only speak a few simple words of Mandarin.
As a result, even if they find a place nearby, they often miss out on many possible opportunities due to the language barrier, which leads to them not being able to connect with each other for many years.
According to recollections, Meicha's husband recently came to Tangxia, which is not too far away, in the process of searching for relatives, but in the end he passed by due to various coincidences.
Ruian Lupu Village is no longer a closed mountain village, and the improvement of the transportation network has made the transportation between the two places more convenient. With the flow of social information and the popularization of transportation methods, it should not be the case that they left their hometowns like they did back then.
Now, relatives in Zhejiang and Fujian are living their own lives. Although Ah Cai and Meicha called their hometown as early as January and tried to invite relatives and friends from their hometown to Putian to play, considering the impact of the epidemic, several families finally decided to celebrate the New Year on the spot to ensure each other's safety through ** discussions, and temporarily postponed their plans to Putian.
Ah Cai wiped her tears through the screen of her mobile phone, she understood that she was getting older, and her days were probably getting fewer and fewer. At the moment, she only longs to see more relatives and friends in her hometown. Zhang Yeqiu comforted Ah Cai with a honest smile and said to her: "Don't be afraid, we have been waiting for so long, and we are not afraid to wait for these few days." ”
Meicha also nodded in agreement, their sisters used to wander the streets of Putian helplessly, and now they can reunite with their relatives in their hometown, which is the greatest blessing. The two old sisters got together in private, discussed again and again, and decided to find a suitable time for the young man to go to Wenzhou to "visit relatives".
They want to see where their mothers and grandmothers grew up, and they want to meet their relatives by blood. At the same time, they also have to take real family portraits.
The separation 37 years ago was reunited because of a dialect. A pair of Ryan sisters, after a long separation, finally hugged and cried at the entrance of a village of hundreds of people, and at that moment, all the waiting and hard work became worth it.
This touching story proves once again that dialect is not only a symbol of regional culture, but also an important link between people.