Chen Shu-yi (陳淑怡), her husband and two sons were asleep in their apartment in Tainan at 3:57am on Feb. 6 last year when a devastating earthquake hit, violently shaking the building before razing it to the ground.
Chen clambered around in the dark searching for her sons and found 10-year-old Lien Yen-kai (連彥凱) alive, but trapped under rubble, with water from a broken pipe filling the space.
Despite her increasingly frantic efforts she was unable to pull him out from the debris and she watched helplessly as he drowned.
Photo: CNA
Unable to locate their 15-year-old son, Lien Yen-hsiang (連彥翔), whose room was pushed to the bottom of the rubble by the force of the collapse, Chen fled the building, where she was reunited with her husband, Lien Huang-wen (連晃汶).
Together, they waited for news of their 15-year-old son, only for his body to be recovered by rescuers five days later.
The magnitude 6.6 earthquake killed 117 people, 115 in the Weiguan Jinlong apartment complex.
After the tragedy, the 37-year-old mother decided she wanted to “bring her sons back” by having more children, despite undergoing a tubal ligation several years previously.
Through artificial fertilization, the couple conceived a girl in June last year, but the pregnancy was difficult.
Chen underwent an emergency caesarean section on Dec. 28, resulting in her baby being born two months premature. She also suffered acute liver failure after giving birth and has undergone three rounds of dialysis.
Speaking at a news conference on Thursday last week, Chen, who is still recovering, said she was aware of the risks of giving birth when not in the best physical or mental shape.
“I knew it was dangerous, but life is about taking risks, isn’t it? I could not give up,” she said.
Chen said she often dreams of her sons and her yearning to see them made her determined to “bring them back” by having another child.
Since the tragedy, “there is not one day I do not cry,” she said.
Tainan Mayor William Lai (賴清德), who visited the couple on Thursday last week, said the birth of the girl represents the beginning of a new life and hope.
Lien Huang-wen thanked the public for their kind words and expressions of support for his family, adding that the couple plan to visit the columbarium where their sons’ ashes are interred on the anniversary of their deaths to tell them: “You have a baby sister.”
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