FW: The Things She Carried.

[Hai-Tri Le <haitril@microsoft.com>]

For those who have made the trip back to VN, don't you see yourself in this
story ?
Hai-Tri

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Hong, Binh
> Sent:	Monday, October 18, 1999 10:40 AM
> To:	Carlos Ortiz; Chaffee Tran; Colin Crook; Damon Truong Vu; Dave Shin;
> Dien Nguyen; Fong, Michelle; Hai-Tri Le; Kelley Yan (Medical Education);
> Kemba Johnson; Kim Vo; Nicole Arisumi; Susan M. Metcalf; suzie v hong;Thao
> Nguyen; Tina Nguyen; trang dang; Valerie Chinn; Van Ngo; vinh; Vu Hong
> Subject:	The Things She Carried.
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> This ran in my paper Sunday, Oct. 17, 1999. For those of you who didn't
> know I
> went on vacation a couple of months ago, oops, sorry, I ran out of
> postcards.
> :P Anyway, thought I'd share.
> 
> Binh
> 
> 
> The Things She Carried
> 
> Story and photos by Binh Ha Hong
> Staff Writer
> 
> 
> How do I cram promises and heritage into 70 pounds of luggage? My family
> weighed me down with gifts to take back to Vietnam. It had been five years
> since I last set foot on the soil of my birthplace. 
> 
> My mom sent along a food processor and blender. My dad sent wrenches for
> my
> cousin who repairs motorbikes for a living. My "ba noi" (paternal
> grandmother)
> sent an entire suitcase to her older sister. A second-cousin sent medicine
> and
> makeup to his siblings. My aunt's sisters sent ginseng tea, eyedrops and
> arthritic medicine to their mother. 
> 
> My gifts consisted of clothing, crayons, paints, lotions and a set of
> Monopoly.
> 
> International airline regulations allow travelers two suitcases, weighing
> 70
> pounds each. It was frustrating work, packing, weighing, repacking and
> reweighing. Despite the weight of the luggage, I couldn't refuse their
> gifts.
> Each item was a token of what people thought their left-behind relatives
> needed; each was a promise that family and heritage have not been
> forgotten. 
> beyond the war
> 
> Vietnam in America's imagination is inextricably tied to the war. Most
> travel
> stories reflect on G.I.'s experiences, or the lack of bitterness visitors
> received from people. The fact that I now live in the United States may be
> because of the Vietnam War, but my journey back had little to do with it.
> I,
> like 50 percent of Vietnam's population, am under the age of 25. For me
> and
> for them, the war is but a distant memory. 
> 
> Someone once told me that being Vietnamese means being able to endure.
> That's
> how Vietnamese have been able to retain their culture despite 1,000 years
> of
> Chinese rule, French colonialization and American intervention. That's how
> Vietnamese have been able to move beyond the bitterness of the past in
> order
> to build the future.
> 
> In Vietnam, I asked my mom if she ever regretted leaving our homeland.
> Twenty-four years have passed. My parents once feared that we would never
> be
> able to get an education, and yet now my niece is going to college in
> Saigon.
> My parents passed along their work ethic and sense of responsibility.
> Surely,
> if we had stayed, we might be doing alright. Does my mom regret her
> actions?
> Does she worry that her children may have "mat goc" (lost our roots)? No
> longer isolated, 
> Vietnam's meandering rivers, lush forests and red earth are as much a part
> of
> me as the neon lights, brown hills and endless stretches of freeway in
> Southern California, which I now call home.
> 
> The Vietnam my parents knew lives only in their memories. The country has
> embraced the rest of the world. In Saigon the signs of consumerism and pop
> culture are inescapable. A poster of a grinning Ricky Martin holding a can
> of
> Pepsi leered from the wall of my niece's dorm room. Christina Aguilera's
> "Genie in a Bottle" blasted from the sound system of a "pho" (Vietnamese
> beef
> noodles) shop. Cargo and capri pants were worn by trendy young Vietnamese.
> The
> recently opened Southern Fortune Commercial Complex, an eight-level mall
> with
> fixed price tags, escalators and a video arcade, lured fun-seekers in. So
> much
> so that one Saturday night the arcade ran out of coins.
> 
> And yet, lest I ever forget that communism always looms in the background,
> it
> cost me $20 to bribe the clerk so I could bring my Discman into the
> country.
> (The average yearly income in Vietnam is $300.) All my compact discs had
> to be
> approved by an inspector so I wouldn't bring any "social evils" into the
> country. I slipped $5 to a guard to get through the initial check with my
> passport. The hotel required registration with an itinerary of how long I
> intended to stay, where I was headed next and when I planned to leave.
> 
> 
> "que huong" (homeland)
> 
> 
> My destination laid nine hours north of Saigon. I woke up just when I
> crossed
> the railroad bridge that signaled my entry into Tuy Hoa, the city of my
> birth
> in central Vietnam. It was the same bridge where my ong ngoai and my ba
> ngoai
> fell in love more than 70 years ago. 
> 
> Ba ngoai's house faces the Tuy Hoa river which used to be a thriving water
> marketplace decades ago. The backyard rises into a mountain, and at the
> top
> there is a temple built by the Cham, an ancient civilization forced out of
> Vietnam some time in the 15th century.
> 
> Five years ago, I had just completed my first year of college. It was the
> first time in 15 years that my entire family - father, mother, younger
> brother, kid sister and I - came back to the country from which we
> escaped. I
> looked on that trip as an adventure - a chance to meet my mother's
> relatives,
> see my birthplace and experience the culture firsthand. 
> 
> But this time, I vowed to be less intent on fun. The mature me was going
> to
> spend time with "ba ngoai" (maternal grandmother). I wanted to hear
> stories
> about her past and to revel in my family's history.
> 
> Reality dispelled my illusions. My 88-year-old ba ngoai could no longer
> walk.
> The woman whose first words to me after 15 years were, "Do you have a
> boyfriend?" could no longer greet me at the front of the house. Cataracts
> have
> made her virtually blind. She recognizes people by touch. A pat on my
> forearm
> here, a gentle glide down to my fingers there, lingering in between her
> journey when her palms hesitated on my wristwatch. 
> Thankfully, she couldn't see the tears I was unable to hold back. 
> 
> 
> honoring the past
> 
> 
> Before heading out to visit my grandfather's tomb, I stopped by
> grandmother's
> bed to ask if she wanted me to tell him anything.
> "Khong." (No.)
> "Do you miss him, ba ngoai?"
> "Of course I do," she said as her eyes misted. "How could I possibly not
> miss
> him?"
> 
> They were married for 52 years before my "ong ngoai" (maternal
> grandfather)
> died in 1980. 
> 
> My grandparents had survived a famine which killed 2 million Vietnamese;
> World
> War II; the French Indochina War, when they lost everything after a bomb
> dropped on their home; the Vietnam War, which separated their family
> across
> three continents; the birth of 10 children and the loss of four.
> 
> I tended ong ngoai's grave, an uncle's and two cousins'; one who died in
> combat at Ban Me Thuot in 1973. I lit incense sticks, made food offerings
> and
> pulled the weeds that had grown over their mounds. Vietnamese superstition
> holds that if grass is allowed to grow on a grave, the descendants cannot
> become prosperous.
> 
> Pulling weeds was also the only way I could connect with the loved ones I
> never had a chance to know.
> 
> 
> retracing footsteps
> 
> 
> I walked the same roads my parents walked in their youth. I played on the
> same
> stretch of beach. I ate "banh canh" (a seafood noodle soup) from the same
> vendor who used to sell the dish to my mom when she was a child.
> 
> On the last night at ba ngoai's house in Tuy Hoa, my mom laid next to her
> mother. I crept downstairs and sat beside her bed, holding ba ngoai's hand
> through the mosquito net. 
> 
> My mother was reassuring my grandmother, who grew despondent because we
> were
> leaving. 
> "Mom, don't worry," my mother said. "Concentrate on taking your medicine
> so
> you can be well enough for my next trip back." She snuggled beside her
> mother,
> stroking her chest and murmuring words of comfort.
> Ba ngoai asked when we were leaving.
> "Six o'clock in the morning," my mom replied.
> Ba ngoai cautioned her to get some sleep because we had a long journey
> ahead.
> "I'm going to sleep with you tonight," my mom said.
> 
> 
> returning home
> 
> 
> On my return journey I thought I could squeeze the few souvenirs I bought
> for
> friends into my carry-on bag. 
> 
> I was wrong.
> 
> Relatives in Vietnam sent back cookbooks, red watermelon seeds, "dep"
> (flip
> flop sandals), tea, banana chips, lotus seeds, dried squid, pickled tuna
> and
> fermented shrimp paste. All these items are easily obtained in Southern
> California. Yet the memories of a faraway home and sentiments from loved
> ones
> aren't so easily purchased.
> 
> My everyday items were more valuable than my gifts. 
> My cousin, who had surgery on both eyes, wears a pair of sunglasses over
> his
> prescription eyeglasses to avoid the sun's glare. I gave him the clip-on
> sunglasses from my prescription frames. It was simple enough for me to
> replace
> back here but an absolute marvel for him.
> 
> I left behind my nail clippers because they were much sharper than the
> Vietnamese versions. Ba ngoai's nail clippers were so inadequate that her
> toenails had curled underneath and cut into her skin. I sat at the foot of
> her
> bed, painstakingly clipping until her toenails were a normal length.
> 
> I brought back a head full of stories and memories of family. My backpack
> carried one valuable item - my only photograph taken with ba ngoai.