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China Elevator Stories
“How Can a Person Do Such a Thing?”
I chat with a cab driver in Tai’an City (Shandong Province).
03/09/2025
Ruth Silbermayr
Author
It’s June, 2025. I take a cab in Tai’an to the train station and chat with the driver. He asks where I’m going.
“I’m going to Northeast China to visit my sons.”
“How come they live in Northeast China?”
“They live there with their dad, who is Chinese. I haven’t seen them in person for almost six years, and I’m looking forward to meeting them.”
“Why hasn’t your ex-husband allowed you to see them?”
“He simply hasn’t. He tricked me into moving to Austria to prepare his residence permit, telling me he’d come to Austria with our children a few weeks later. I trusted him and moved to Austria. He didn’t allow me to take our children with me. Once I was in Austria, he sent me a message saying he’d put them in school in China and wouldn’t allow me to ever see them again.”
“Oh, that’s really awful. How can a person do such a thing? When someone does this to children, they’re depriving them of their mother’s love. This isn’t right—it harms the children. They’ll grow up missing their mother’s love.”
“I agree. I see it the same way. Are you from Tai’an?”
“Actually, I grew up in Northeast China. I was born in Tai’an, but my family moved to Northeast China when I was a child. I went to school there.”
“Where in Northeast China did you live?”
“In Heilongjiang Province.”
“People in Jilin Province tend to think Heilongjiang is cold—even for those who live in Jilin Province. My ex-husband lives in Jilin Province. I think Tai’an is a much better place to live—it doesn’t get as cold, and the city is very beautiful. When did you come back to Tai’an?”
“I came back as an adult. My parents had moved back here, so I did too. All my relatives had moved to Heilongjiang because there was a food shortage back then. There wasn’t one in Heilongjiang, so we moved there. Now, none of my relatives live there anymore—they’ve all moved back to Shandong.”
Have you ever visited Tai’an?
This is part of the series ‘Conversations with Locals in China,’ where I share conversations with Chinese people on my blog.