According to Mrs. Nguyen Thi Dung - Secretary of Thanh Van Forest Protection Station, since 2001, after announcing "holy work", Ms. Nguyen Thi Thanh called people to her house and sold all herds of cattle.
"A total of 15 children earned more than 13 million VND, which was quite a large amount at that time", said Mrs. Dung.
Ms. Thanh then went around the commune to buy tens of thousands of bowls, thousands of plowshares, many steel weights, chains. "In the area, how many bowls and plowshares, Ms. Thanh bought them. Estimate how many car trips", Mrs. Dung said.
Ms. Dung said that the bowl was buried by Mrs. Thanh in the garden, while the plow was partly buried, partly by Mrs. Thanh tied to the tree and then stood up like a flagpole in front of the house. The house is also full of steel wire and chains. Mrs. Thanh also erected 8 tiny huts and used steel wires to connect the huts together, which is very confusing…
Seeing this strange work, Mrs. Dung tried every way to dissuade her, but to no avail. Ms. Thanh bought so much that the iron and steel dealer in town ran out, she had to go elsewhere to buy it. After buying, Mrs. Thanh and her husband and their children were entangled in the garden.
The steel system spread throughout the garden of Mrs. Thanh's family, along with the plows plugged into rows along the trunk. (Photo taken in 2017).
As someone who has approached inside Mrs. Thanh's house, Ms. Mai Thi Tinh (Mr. Mai Hong Thai's sister) describes: "Inside the house, the smoke is not lit and no one worships anyone. In the beginning the house was made of solid wood. After that, Ms. Thanh ordered her husband and children to tear down that solid house and build a few small huts to live in. Every tent bury piles of dishes underneath".
Not only burying the bowl, Ms. Tinh said, Ms. Thanh also sent her husband and children to buy fruits and spread them all around the garden. Pots, pots and pans are thrown into the well.
"After that, she also bought the glass panels and smashed them, wrapped them in small bundles and hung them up in the tents. Husband and children have to work hard from morning to night. At 12 o'clock, she let her husband and children rest", Ms. Thanh shared.
Ms. Tinh also said that when she was sick, her sister-in-law forced her children to drop out of school. Herd of cows, taking advantage of when Mr. Thai returned to get a salary in Nga Son, Mrs. Thanh sold it when no one knew. After selling the cows, the three children had their hair cut bald like a monk, crawled around the house burying bowls for their mother until they bruised their knees.
"The plowshares, porcelain bowls, and iron are considered treasures by her family, no one has the right to touch or move them.", said Mrs. Tinh.
The journey to approach the family living like a "mad" in Thanh Hoa. (Video recorded in 2017).
Pointing to the four corners of the garden, Mr. Le Van Dung - Vice Chairman of the People's Committee of Van Du town - said that this place used to be a gathering place for tens of tons of steel, corrugated iron, porcelain bowls...
He said, after Mrs. Thanh passed away for a short time, he received news from the head of the neighborhood that Mr. Thai and his two children wanted to go back to Nga Son district to live, and asked the government to help transport all his belongings.
"If I remember correctly, on January 10 of last year (February 10, 2), just finished Tet. At that time, Mr. Thai's father and son were very happy, always saying a hundred things to everyone so that my family could return to their hometown. The leader of Van Du town has mobilized about 2022 people to help Mr. Thai remove the house, trees, excavate iron and steel", said Dung.
More than a dozen workers and an excavator worked hard for 2 days to clean up the land. The sharp plowshares hanging from the treetops to the ground were dismantled, hundreds of porcelain bowls were dug up from the ground, many nearly brand-new steel coils… piled up, had to hire 2 trucks to carry them all.
"It must be 15-20 tons, Toan? Now sell or keep where? Are you bringing it up here?', asked Dung.
Listening to the story between me and the Vice Chairman of the Town People's Committee, Toan replied: "Bringing people back home did not agree very much. Thach Thanh land is a sacred land, we wanted to leave but we couldn't. People are also not very satisfied. Heaven and earth are not satisfied. Temple Bui is not satisfied. If I sell it, I will feel guilty in my heart...".
In the kitchen of the Thanh and Toan sisters, there is still a steel coil weighing hundreds of pounds.
Walking around the garden, seeing in the kitchen a large iron coil weighing about 100 kg, Mr. Dung asked: "Why is there iron here, just bought it or did you bring it up from Nga Son?". Toan laughed and said: "You must have iron, how can you not live without ...".
It is strange that during the conversation, Mr. Dung and I mentioned many times that we wanted to enter the house, which was built of corrugated iron, the only entrance was locked, but Thanh and Toan's sisters flatly refused: "There is nothing in it, only a few blankets. Do you want to steal something from my house, Mr. Dung?"
Maybe they're trying to hide something from us. Mr. Dung said that the corrugated iron sheets that built this house were bought and rented by Mr. Thai when he was alive, riding a bicycle to Bim Son district (30 km from the house).
Saying goodbye to sisters Thanh and Toan, we went to Mrs. Le Thi Dung's house, located not far away. Listening to us recount the conversation with Ms. Thanh, Mr. Toan, Ms. Dung commented:
"Her sister is very stubborn. After the death of their parents, the local authorities, neighbors, and relatives under Nga Son advised them all, but they still decided to stick to this land, living a life like no other. There are also changes, but I don't know when I will fully integrate into the community".
Mrs. Dung said, when Mr. Thai and his two children decided to return to their hometown in Nga Son, the neighbors were very happy. People think that Mrs. Thanh has some mysterious power so she can control the whole family to do as she pleases, when she died, her husband and children returned to normal and wanted to return to their hometown to be close to their relatives.
"We joined hands to dismantle the house, clean up things for his father and son, and everyone encouraged him and his son to go back to his hometown to build a stable life. But after a few months, father and son brought each other back, after more than a week, Mr. Thai died", Mrs. Dung said.
After Mr. Thai died, Mrs. Dung encouraged the two sisters to try to integrate, she would buy new clothes and apply to work in the company, but Thanh and Toan firmly disagreed.
"In the past, my parents were still alive, and my salary was 6-7 million VND to maintain my life, now I don't know what to eat. But what worries me most is the two children of the opposite sex, with poor awareness…”, said Mrs. Dung.
Referring to the departure of Mrs. Thanh and Mr. Thai, Ms. Dung could not hide her sympathy for the fate of her close sister's family, who worked for decades at Thach Thanh Forest Enterprise.
Dung said it was because of their eccentric lives that when they died, people came mostly out of curiosity:Perhaps their greatest consolation is lying next to each other in their father's hometown, ancestral land".
"DUp to this point, I don't understand everything that happened to Thanh and Thai's family. Why do they live like that? Why did they buy tens of tons of iron to store in the house, until I excavated it, I calculated that I had to sell 150 million dong? Why is it that when her brother and sister are dead, the two children are still living like that?". Ms. Dung posed a series of questions that both she, her neighbors and the government have yet to find answers to.
To find out why Mai Van Thai's father and son decided to leave Thach Thanh and return to Nga Son but then came back to live here, we asked for the address to find the home of Mrs. Mai Thi Tinh - Mr. Thai's biological sister.
And it was through meeting Mrs. Tinh in Nga Thach commune, Nga Son district that we knew the reason why sisters Thanh and Toan wouldn't let us into the house that was covered with green corrugated iron sheets.
Nguyen Thi Thanh's two children share about their current life.
Read part 4: The mystery inside the green corrugated iron house of the "yin soldier" family
The biological aunt talked about the reason why the two sisters Toan and Thanh decided not to return to their hometown to live, but returned to the "evil land", living in a mysterious green corrugated iron house.
