If the birth year on her ID is correct, 120-year-old Tran Thi Thu Nguyet of the central Thua Thien Hue Province may be the world’s oldest living person.
The card issued in Phu Vang District shows she was born in 1890. Her neighbors call her a “treasure” for living through three centuries, the only such person in the village.
Nguyet remains in good health and does her own chores, with the only sign of her advanced age being that she is a little hard of hearing.
She had four sons who all died in the war and now has an 80-year-old daughter, 11 grandchildren, 45 great-grandchildren, and 15 great-great-great grandchildren.
Tran Van Kham, a villager, said children enjoy playing with Nguyet.
Four generations of the family live in the same house, mainly eating fish caught in a nearby lagoon.
Tran Thi Nguyen, the wife of one of Nguyet’s grandsons, said she does not eat anything except fish. “I would make meat for her but she would refuse to eat,” she recalls.
“Fish keeps me healthy,” Nguyet said with a smile.
“Eating fish and living simply are the secrets of my long life.”
In 1994 she was honored as a “Vietnamese Heroic Mother,” a title reserved for women who lost their children or husband during the war.
Local authorities are verifying Nguyet’s ID and submitting papers pertaining to her to the Ministry of Labor and the General Population Office.
The Guinness Book of Records claims the oldest person to have ever lived was a French woman named Jeanne Louise Calment who died at 122 years 164 days.
According to the book, the oldest person alive now is Eunice Sanborn of Texas, the US. But at 114, she is a full six years younger than Nguyet.
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