Over a decade ago, a woman in Vietnam at the age of 50 owned 13 gold statues weighing around 100kg in total, discovering the assets by chance while plucking vegetables in an ancient tomb.

Now, the woman has turned 60 and become more white-haired. Her face looks gaunt and pale. On meeting a Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper journalist, she wore a simple suit – one that is most common for women to wear to do housework or to go to the local market.

She is Nguyen Thi Bay who resides in the Nhon Tri Village, of Phu Long Town, in Ham Thuan Bac District of the central province of Binh Thuan.

Bay admitted that she felt relieved to finally be rid of the burden the gold had placed upon her, a type of ‘gold-debt’ which she had previously viewed as an unexpectedly wonderful ‘gold-fortune’. However, she said she sometimes feels upset with ‘unexplainable happenings’.

A sudden gold fortune

Bay strolled toward an ancient tomb near her house, one whose age she was unaware of, in order to pluck a few vegetables to use as herbs.

On pulling up the root of a vegetable plant, she discovered a hand of gold bananas buried underneath.

As if hypnotized, she kept herself stuck to the soil and dug with her hands in hopes of finding more. Her hope was miraculously fulfilled. Near the hand of bananas, she unearthed a horse statue which was approximately a foot in both length and height. The right side of the horse was inscribed with the mysterious digits ‘1412’.

Immediately, she returned the statues back to their positions, leveled the soil, and covered it with dry leaves for safe hiding. She was intending to wait for the protective darkness of night to bring them to her house.

With the tomb having been previously abandoned for a long time, the woman decided to keep it as her own asset.

She had to sustain the cold weather at night with her only blanket to cover the gold statues, fearing that someone else may notice the light of the gold statues in her house.

Several days later, she began digging up the area around the ancient tomb at night and discovered even more statues. In total, she grabbed 13 objects, all of gold color and weighing over 100kg.

The horse statue weighs 31kg and the hand of 12 bananas weighs in at 2.8kg.

A sale

Living in poverty, she became even poorer because she could not do anything, except locking herself in at home to keep the assets from being stolen and removed to a third place.

Bay began inquiring contacts for sale in late 2001.

Through a local shopkeeper, Bay was introduced to a man named VL, who was introduced as an antique dealer. VL took samples of the horse statue and returned days later, saying the horse was made of a ‘bronze compound 3’.

VL even confirmed that the digits ‘1412’ meant it was made in the 15th century.

A week later, VL introduced another man named M to meet with Bay to check the statues. After inspecting them with a magnifying glass, M agreed to buy all of the statues for 35 taels of gold, an East Asian unit of measurement equivalent to 37.5 grams. The transfer of the statues and money (paid in commercial gold) was taking place smoothly on November 6, 2001.

Keeping the 35 taels of gold, Bay paid the shopkeeper and VL seven taels of gold for their assistance in helping her sell the statues.

With 28 taels left, Bay used four taels to pay off all her debts and kept the remaining 24 in a small pocket around her waist to prevent theft.

Conflict

But things changed the following morning when Bay was stopped by VL, who demanded that they review the rate of the sharing of the assets, even though things were all agreed on beforehand.

Both sides fell into a bitter quarrel at the house of VL and the conflict was submitted to the local police of Ham Thuan Bac District. The police issued an order to seize the statues for the purpose of identifying their age.

Police also confiscated 29 taels of gold as material evidence of the conflict.

In late 2003, local authorities ordered to fine Bay VND1 million (US$48) and seized the statues themselves as selling and purchasing antiques is banned in Vietnam.

Investigations went on until 2005 when the case was submitted to the Central Department of Cultural Heritage to assess the historical value of the statues.

The department confirmed that all statues were newly-cast objects and had no historical or artistic value.

The statues were returned to Bay to keep. However, Bay has only accepted to give up on her ‘gold dream’ recently after her family has gotten into disputes to compete for the assets.

During an inquiry with police, M, who bought the statues at 35 taels of gold, confessed that he cheated himself for believing that they were antiques found in an ancient tomb.

Bay told Tuoi Tre, “I’d rather be poor and live in peace and love with my children.”

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