Behind Her Sunny Smiles, Were the Fifteen Years’ of Loss, She Was Once, Unregistered, a “Ghost”, Who Was Almost Sold by Her Own Mother

Overcoming all the obstacles in her life, and she became, she was always meant to become, from the Newspapers, translated…

From an unregistered person into a sunny girl, the twenty-three-year-old store manager, Shu-Ting Hong would always greet her shoppers with her radiant smiles, and the tattoo on her hand served, as a reminder, of how she is to face “those fifteen years that got lost” optimistically.

It’s hard to imagine, before age fifteen, Hong was almost sold, by her mother, not related by blood, who’d never had a day in school, a “missing” person.  The police department of Hsinchu City said, that back then, Hong’s “mother” took to gambling, and had a long rap sheet, and as she was only fifteen, she was, almost “sold”, gladly, the police stepped in just in time, to save her life.

a photo of the young woman, photo courtesy of UDN.com…

The Hsinchu government’s Social Services Department and the Fund of Children and Families at the Hsinchu Chapter had, helped place her, and gotten her registered, helped Hong finish her high school education; she’d finally learn, that the one she called “mom”, wasn’t even related to her by blood, that she was, a duckweed that’s, unrooted.

Hong recalled, that in the fifteen years she’d been living from before, she was, kept locked in the home, and gotten to know what was going on outside through television, but she was still more than thankful toward her “mom”, teaching her to be courteous, giving her the foods and the clothes she’d needed, and although, to this day, she had no idea who her birth parents were, she’d still used positive thinking, and made herself very healthy and well, “I have a ton of friends who love me, they’d become, my family”.

As she graduated from high school at the age of twenty-one, she’d gotten a tattoo on her arms that said, “Don’t pray for easy lives, pray to be stronger men”, to help encourage herself, to cope with her own bad upbringing.

Hong talks about her life openly, “Accepting yourselves, that way, you can, face your futures with your arms wide open”, but all her friends thought she was joking about the trials of her own life, they didn’t believe, that this soap-opera script was, right next to them.  And now, she works as a manager of a small couture shop in Hsinchu, also taught handicrafts, and, by the end of August this year, she will embark on a journey to Australia, for a work-travel program, she’d smiled optimistically, “I believe, that my world is, boundless and open!”

The social worker from the children’s place in Hsinchu said, that Hong was placed in foster care for two years, and then, lived in a group home for children, but she’d never shown that she was upset by her own pasts, instead, she’d taken a proactive attitude, to learn, and positively, looked toward her futures, and showed her gratitude to those who helped her.

So, this, is how this young woman had, overcome her own misfortunes in her childhood years, and, she was able to become who she is, because of how her bad past had, become a driving force for her to excel in life.