With the hope of reuniting with her father, a Vietnamese woman came to Taiwan to work as a domestic helper, only to find that her previous employer was her long missing dad, police said yesterday.
In a story similar to that of a soap opera plot, the woman, identified as Tran Thi Khang, 40, came to Taiwan in June 2004 and worked as a domestic helper looking after the seriously ill wife of her 77-year-old employer, Tsai Han-chao (蔡漢朝), in Taipei County, police said.
But Tsai's wife died seven months later and Tran found another job with a family on Kinmen Island.
PHOTO: AP
"She came to us last year, hoping we could help her find a ring and a picture she said were very important to her," a Kinmen police officer said by telephone.
She told police the golden ring, engraved with the name "Tsai Han-chao," and the picture of Tsai were left to her by her late mother and might be useful in helping her find her long-lost father, the officer said.
"We figured that she must have left the things at her previous employer's home. So we contacted him and asked him to see if any of the items had been left there," the officer said.
Tsai was stunned to find the items were the things he had given to his separated lover whom he met in Hong Kong in 1967 before she returned to Vietnam to see her ailing mother, the officer said.
Tsai told local TV he quickly flew to Kinmen and burst into tears on seeing his daughter.
"Life is such a drama and I never knew I had a daughter," he was quoted as saying by cable news network TVBS.
He said he lost contact with his Vietnamese girlfriend because of the Vietnam War.
He later returned to Taiwan from Hong Kong, still hoping that he might see her one day.
Tsai said his daughter told him she only realized she had a biological father in Taiwan on the day of her wedding.
At that time, her aunt told her that her biological mother died two months after she was born in North Vietnam and left the baby in her care.
Her aunt also gave her the ring and the picture of her biological father.
Tran then decided to look her father up and came to Taiwan in 2004 after her own children had grown up.
Police confirmed DNA matching of the two and said Tran is now in Vietnam preparing official papers for the final reunion of the long separated family.
The inspection equipment and data transmission system for new robotic dogs that Taipei is planning to use for sidewalk patrols were developed by a Taiwanese company, the city’s New Construction Office said today, dismissing concerns that the China-made robots could pose a security risk. The city is bringing in smart robotic dogs to help with sidewalk inspections, Taipei Deputy Mayor Lee Ssu-chuan (李四川) said on Facebook. Equipped with a panoramic surveillance system, the robots would be able to automatically flag problems and easily navigate narrow sidewalks, making inspections faster and more accurate, Lee said. By collecting more accurate data, they would help Taipei
STATS: Taiwan’s average life expectancy of 80.77 years was lower than that of Japan, Singapore and South Korea, but higher than in China, Malaysia and Indonesia Taiwan’s average life expectancy last year increased to 80.77 years, but was still not back to its pre-COVID-19 pandemic peak of 81.32 years in 2020, the Ministry of the Interior said yesterday. The average life expectancy last year increased the 0.54 years from 2023, the ministry said in a statement. For men and women, the average life expectancy last year was 77.42 years and 84.30 years respectively, up 0.48 years and 0.56 years from the previous year. Taiwan’s average life expectancy peaked at 81.32 years in 2020, as the nation was relatively unaffected by the pandemic that year. The metric
TAKING STOCK: The USMC is rebuilding a once-abandoned airfield in Palau to support large-scale ground operations as China’s missile range grows, Naval News reported The US Marine Corps (USMC) is considering new sites for stockpiling equipment in the West Pacific to harden military supply chains and enhance mobility across the Indo-Pacific region, US-based Naval News reported on Saturday. The proposed sites in Palau — one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies — and Australia would enable a “rapid standup of stored equipment within a year” of the program’s approval, the report said, citing documents published by the USMC last month. In Palau, the service is rebuilding a formerly abandoned World War II-era airfield and establishing ancillary structures to support large-scale ground operations “as China’s missile range and magazine
A 72-year-old man in Kaohsiung was sentenced to 40 days in jail after he was found having sex with a 67-year-old woman under a slide in a public park on Sunday afternoon. At 3pm on Sunday, a mother surnamed Liang (梁) was with her child at a neighborhood park when they found the man, surnamed Tsai (蔡), and woman, surnamed Huang (黃), underneath the slide. Liang took her child away from the scene, took photographs of the two and called the police, who arrived and arrested the couple. During questioning, Tsai told police that he had met Huang that day and offered to
RSS