Baby Girls for Sale!!

 The practice of selling off girls by poor Chinese has been an Asian phenomenon. Stories abound in Chinese as well as foreign literature.

Sun Yat Sen was one of the first men to voice out about the evils of female children trafficking and western missionaries started children's homes to save the female babies.

Many landlords in China and later on the rich landowners of Sibu had the opportunities of buying baby girls who were sold by poor farmers.

This was a practice especially during the Northern Famine period in China in 1876-9 which was around the time my grandfather was born. So he was very much in the know about the consequences of girls being sold (into good families, into brothels etc). Besides he had also become a Christian which opposed to slavery, gambling, opium smoking, drinking, etc.

Early Chinese pioneers all over South East Asia who grew rich "bought" daughters who became their maids or part of their families depending on individual family outlook in those days.

When my grandfather was fairly well off, he was approached by many poor farmers in Sibu. Thus I have a few aunties who were "bought" and adopted by him and they were all given the Tiong surname. Most of them, after having lived with the family, married well. That's the good ending to their sad birth stories. But they are dearly loved by us and remain in touch like biological aunts and cousins.

However here is a story of a family with two adopted daughters, as told by my school teacher who wanted to teach us about fairness and equal treatment. She was one of the first Chinese teachers to make us aware of gender equality. She had come from China where selling of baby girls was a common practice. Most of my classmates were horrified by the story.

When my China born teacher was growing up she lived near a rich man's house. The rich man had two bought or adopted girls, three sons and one daughter. One day his mother passed away (at quite a young age) and he had to bring two of his sisters to live with him. So the family became bigger and his wife had more power over the family and the business.

The rich wife made sure that her sons would not look at the adopted daughters and she used to beat them badly with rattan and feather duster. She half starved them and would never allow them to eat at the table. When her sisters in law came to live with them, she was doubly mad with them for no reasons and forced them to rear ducks, chickens and pigs so that they could "earn their food".

Soon the sons were old enough to go to college away from home but the ill treatment went on. Her own daughter, who never did any house work, liked to hit the adopted sisters with pieces of wood from the fire place. One day, she accidentally hit one on the head and the adopted sister started to bleed badly. It was like a murder scene in the big house.

The local head man heard about it and he decided to say something to the rich man. If the stories went out to the community he might not be elected as chairman of the school board, even though he had a lot of money. He thus arranged with the school to help his daughter get a good school leaving certificate to study in Shanghai. 

The household became smaller and the rich couple soo decided to marry off one of the adopted daughters. She did well in the marriage and became a business woman with her husband who loved her. She was later to "buy" out her adopted "sister" and they lived well together, perhaps both will never know who their biological parents were.

The two sisters of the rich man were blessed too for their intelligence was recognized by a foreign missionary and they were put in the local convent where they excelled in their studies. Both became school teachers. That was how my China born teacher met the two sisters again. the time was changing in China and people were already talking about reformation and the New China. My teacher went to Taiwan to further her studies and then she came to Sarawak.

From my teacher I learned about buying and selling of baby girls (child trafficking) at a young age and most of the stories were unbearably painful. 

As I grew up I tried to collect such stories, listen to story tellers and write down some when I remember. It is good to document all our social stories and issues related to our lives.

The practice of buying and selling girls went on for a long time in Sarawak.