People
Exhausted but not defeated:
Man-hon's mum keeps up 7-year search
But Mrs Yu said getting more compensation was not on her mind. What made her more frustrated was the government’s failure to conduct a thorough investigation into her son’s case.
“I didn’t mean to blame anyone in the government but they just refused to investigate (further). Actually there are many doubts needed to be clarified. I just want my son back,” Mrs Yu said.
The mother said the government should find out whether the mainland officers had maltreated her son and why they released him although his identity remained unknown after he was referred back by the Hong Kong immigration officers.
Man-hon’s disappearance marked the beginning of Mrs Yu’s nightmare of exhausting search. She has hoped for good news from every phone call on the whereabouts of Man-hon.
Trails of hope were marked in more than 20 schedule books that have recorded the reported sightings of Man-hon throughout the years. But chances of finding the boy dwindled as the schedule books thinned – Mrs Yu received almost 100 informants’ phone calls each day seven years ago, compared with just one in several days or weeks now.
The latest one was a report from Zengcheng, near Guangzhou, received on January 23, said Mrs Yu after running through the notes she scribbled on her schedule book during every search. But that has turned out to be just another false hope.
Mrs Yu has also been subjected to repeated cases of fraud, intimidation and extortion. She once bought a statue of Guanyin, the goddess of mercy, for HK$20,000 after she was told that it could see things from a great distance and could find Man-hon in Shenzhen. Mrs Yu said she was promised a ritual ceremony to search for Man-hon when she bought the statue, but she could not find the seller again after paying the money. Similar frauds happen all the time.
Mrs Yu estimated that she had spent more than HK$1.5 million on searching for her son, including the money being cheated. Knowing well that many tried to take advantage of her desperation, she said she would still choose to believe in any information obtained, even if she was to be tricked “the thousandth or the ten-thousandth time”.
The parents print poker cards to search for Man-hon in the mainland.
Mrs Yu looks at Man-hon’s items kept in a box reminiscing about her son.
