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
