Compatriots
Since 2014, Tran Thi Hoa has been working with migrant workers, none of whom she had known previously. For the past several years she’s been using crowdfunding on Facebook to cover the cost of the migrants’ expenses. To date, she has helped at least a thousand migrant workers. Warmhearted and generous, Hoa was herself once a runaway.
When she first came to Taiwan in 2001, Hoa looked after an elderly man in Changhua. After he died, she was sent to Taichung to care for an elderly woman.
Although Tran Thi Hoa’s job description listed her duties as “domestic cleaning,” the 70-year-old woman wanted Hoa to massage her for two hours twice a day, once from five to seven in the morning, and once again in the evening, from ten to midnight. What’s more, the woman expected Hoa to do the washing and cleaning in the homes of her five sons. “After only a week, I’d lost four kilos,” Hoa says, eyes glistening with tears.
“The eldest son’s wife was very nice!” says Hoa brightly. “She told me her mother-in-law had already gone through several caregivers in the space of a week. She said I wouldn’t be able to bear it and urged me to run away. She even gave me three or four thousand NT dollars to pay for a taxi.” While on the run, Hoa worked in a restaurant in Dayuan’s Zhuwei neighborhood, where she met Xu Haisong, a Taiwanese citizen. Ten months later the couple were married in Vietnam, and then returned to live in Taiwan.
After working in a factory for several years, Hoa opened a hardware store, and now has three shops in Nankan and Dayuan. Moreover, she has the financial means to help others.
Tran Thi Hoa’s rented two-story apartment is a home for runaway migrant workers.