said from Kuala Lumpur. Her husband, David Tan Size Hiang, was also a flight attendant on the plane.
Chinese relatives of those on board said they wanted authorities to be 100-per-cent certain the part was from MH370. Even then, they say, it should not dampen the resolve to find the rest of the wreckage, the whereabouts of all the passengers and the reasons for the disappearance.
The Reunion debris may finally rule out that missing passengers might still be alive, said Wang Zheng, an engineer in the southern Chinese city of Nanjing, whose father and mother, Wang Linshi and Xiong Deming, were aboard the flight as part of a group of Chinese artists touring Malaysia.
“All hope is truly gone now,” Mr Wang said. “I’m feeling very confused and emotional at the moment.” However, Mr Wang also said that closure still remains a distant prospect for him.
“For now, we’ll just follow the investigation and see what it shows,” he said.
The disappearance has been difficult for relatives in China, where the culture places a heavy emphasis on finding and seeing the remains before true grieving and the process of moving on can begin.
Zhang Qian, whose husband Wang Houbin was among the 153 Chinese citizens aboard the flight, said she had seen reports of the discovery but remained unconvinced.
“We still can’t be sure. How could it have travelled so far?” Ms Zhang, 29, said. She quit her job after the accident and turned to Buddhism to find solace.
“They’ve given us so much contradictory information so far, how can we believe them now?” she said in a telephone interview in Beijing before breaking into sobs.
Sara Weeks in Christchurch, New Zealand, whose brother Paul Weeks was on flight 370, said it was hard to believe that, after so long, a large piece of the plane could show up.
“If it is from MH370, then I still have all the same questions: Where is it? Where is the rest of it? What happened to it?” Ms Weeks said. “It’s a great big gaping hole in everybody’s life,” Ms Weeks said. “We need to find out what happened to get closure, and move on.”