A Chinese woman was forced to lie to her grandmother, and even recruit someone to do the same, for 13 years, just to avoid breaking the old woman’s heart.
Chinese media recently featured the heartbreaking story of a young woman who decided to deceive her own grandmother for over a decade, knowing that the truth would be to much for her to bear. Cheng Jing, a 46-year-old woman from Xi’an, recently lost her grandmother, who died at the ripe old age of 100, but for the last 13 years of her life, she did everything in her power to make the old woman believe that her daughter was still alive. Jing’s mother had died in 2003, but knowing that the news would devastate her grandmother, she resorted to recruiting someone to imitate her mother’s voice over the phone to spare her granny the heartache.
Jing’s mother, Cheng Congrong, and her grandmother had always been very close, and even after Cheng developed lung cancer in 2003, she still called her mother as often as she could to let her know she was alright. Knowing that she didn’t have much to live, Congrong even recorded dozens of voice messages and asked her children to play them to their grandmother so she wouldn’t worry.
Cheng Jing respected her mother’s last wish and after her tragic death, they kept playing the recordings their mothers had made for their grandmother, depending on what time of the year it was. In some, Chen Congrong complained about the cold weather and reminded her mother to take her medicine daily, and in other she advised her to get from her bed slowly in the morning, so not to lose balance, and assured her that she would visit as soon as she could.
The voice messages worked for a while, but Chen Jing soon realized that it was only a matter of time before her grandmother realized that the messages were pre-recorded. She found someone to imitate her mother’s voice as closely as possible and asked them to phone grandma and assure her that everything was fine. But that didn’t start out very well…
After hearing Chen Jing’s story and feeling pity for the old woman, Chen Weiping – the woman who Jing approached about imitating her mother’s voice – decided to help. She practiced Congrong’s voice, but that very first telephone call didn’t go according to plan. As soon as the old woman answered, she asked who she was speaking to, clearly recognizing that there was something wrong about “her daughter’s” voice.
Even though Chen Weiping insisted that it was her daughter, the old woman kept asking who was at the other end. Chen Jing had no choice but to pick up the phone and explain that her mother had caught a cold and a slightly different voice because of it. That seemed to appease the grandmother, and from that moment on she seemed to accept Weiping.
Somehow, Chen Jing, her siblings and the imitator managed to maintain the illusion that Chen Congrong was still alive for 13 years. Weiping would call the old woman as often as she could, offering all sorts of excuses as to why she couldn’t come visit. One time she told the grandmother over the phone that she had undergone heart surgery and couldn’t come.
Heart-related reasons always softened the pressure, as the old woman cautioned “her daughter” to take care of herself, and not to worry about her. The grandchildren all visited as much as they could, but it was clear that the 90-something woman wanted to see her only child in person again. Sadly that could never happen, and Chen Jing never had the guts to tell her.
Jing, her siblings and cousins recently celebrated grandma’s 100th birthday; they all came to visit her and even fired fireworks in her honor. A teary-eyed Chen Jing recently told Chinese reporters that her her mother was her grandma’s only child, and that she had sacrificed everything for her. Knowing that she had died in 2003 would have been too much for the old woman, so she didn’t want to risk it.
Jing recalls that even though grandma appeared happy to see them all, she was visibly disappointed that the daughter she hadn’t seen in over a decade still hadn’t come home to her. Jing assured her that her mother was fine, just busy taking care of her daughter-in law’s baby, but that did little to please the old woman.
A couple of months after her birthday, Chen Jing’s mother passed away, not having seen her daughter in nearly two decades. It was a tragic end to a heartbreaking story, and while Chen Jing admits that deceiving her granny wasn’t ideal, she believes that it was the right thing to do, to spare her the grief. The story went viral on Chinese social media and melted the hearts of millions.
