A Woman Took Her Four Children, Begging on the Streets of Tainan, and the Police Helped Them Get Back Home to Chiayi

The kindness of police officers in Taiwan, fulfilling up their roles as “nannies of the people”, translated…

A woman, Chen, from Chiayi took her four young children on Christmas Day, to live in the public restrooms of the Tainan Garden night markets, after the local police learned this, early yesterday morning, they’d brought the woman and her children back to the station, to give them a roof over their heads for the night, and sent them home to Chiayi in the morning; the woman told, “We couldn’t get by, that, was why I’d needed to take my children to beg on the streets of the nightmarket in Tainan.”, and because her eldest daughter is already eight years old, and should be in school, the Tainan Social Services Department stated, that after they were called by the police, they’d already referred the family to Chiayi’s Social Services Department, and followed up on the woman and her children’s lives, and made sure that the kids are all going to school like they were supposed to.

The city’s Fifth substation’s Hewei Subprecinct pointed out, that Chen was a low-income help receiver, because she has a handicap manual, as the police got to her, her two-year-old toddler was sleeping in the shopping cart, and a three, seven, and eight year old children followed closely behind her, they’d NOT see the woman and her kids begging, but, one of the younger kids had a small cardboard box, with some change in it, and, the woman claimed, “We were just strolling in the night markets, and not realized how late it was getting, and that she’d wanted to beg for spare change at the night markets from the passersby.

The police stated, that she’d told them that her husband is serving his time, and, she couldn’t work and look after her four young kids at the same time, and only lived off of the low-income assistance provided by the government, that it can’t keep all of them fed, that, was why she’d traveled from Chiayi, to the night market in Tainan, to find a way to make a living.

The officer drove the family back to the subprecinct, and, because the earliest train back to Chiayi wasn’t until the morning, the police put the family up into a motel in the northern regions, and, after the hotel owner knew of the family’s story, she’d waived the fees, and, early in the morning, she’d taken her kids and got on that ride back home, and, thanked the police, as well as the hotel owner for their kindness toward them.

So, this, is a heartwarming story, how kind the officers as well as the hotel owner had been, and, this family clearly needed some of the warmth that are still out there, in the society, and this lit up that almost put-out light of hope in the world here, knowing, that there are still, kindness from strangers offered to those in need.