My Determined Spirit: A Story of Survival

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War is unimaginable until you have lived through it. That is if you live through it. Then you cannot forget it, no matter how hard you try. War was my life as a child. It has followed me halfway around the world and across the many decades of my life. Even today, my heart beats faster when I hear sounds that resemble helicopter blades beating the air or the noise of footfalls on the forest undergrowth. My story is one of a child who grew up with the sounds of gunfire and bombings as her lullaby. My story is one of an adult still living under the umbrella of prejudice just because I am South Vietnamese. Most of all, my story is one of courage, success, and redemption.

I was born in 1957, the Year of the Rooster, in Bac Liêu, a coastal city in South Vietnam. When I was a child, South Vietnam was an independent state, separate from North Vietnam. We had our own capitol city, Saigon, while Hanoi was the capitol of North Vietnam. Viet refers to the type of people who live there, the ethnic groups, while Nam means south. So Vietnam literally means southern land of the Viet people. South Vietnamese people were different than those who lived in the northern part of the country. There was prejudice and discrimination between the two factions.

Two issues primarily perpetuated the mutual dislike between North and South people. First, the language is different from one another. The South Vietnamese pronounce words differently than North Vietnamese people, and words have varied meanings depending if a North or South person is speaking. Secondly, each of us has a negative view of one another. The North people see us Southerners as being lazy and simple, while we view ourselves as friendly, honest and easygoing. We think of Northerners as cold, cunning, and overly ambitious. There is a mindset of us and them.

Bac Liêu was filled with more than a hundred thousand people. Its streets were congested with motorcycles, bicycles and pedestrians. The open-air markets were filled with the smells of fresh vegetables and seafood cooking. People chatted and bartered back and forth. It was full of life when I was a little girl.

Bac Liêu had several temples. We worshipped Buddha and burned incense to him in our temples. The temple was used as a meeting place by the town council and other important citizens, as well as a place where we celebrated festivals. Temples were colorful with red roofs covering yellow buildings. There was a dragon design both inside and outside of the temple that was brightly painted in greens and yellows. A statue of Buddha was prominently displayed.

Bac Liêu was a wealthy city when I was young because of the seafood industry, the flourishing rice crops, and salt farms surrounding it. Bac Liêu’s population was primarily comprised of Vietnamese and Chinese people, with the vast majority, almost 80 percent, being Chinese. I grew up speaking Chinese and Vietnamese since my mother is Chinese. I suppose to be more accurate, I should say that I spoke only one out of more than 100 Chinese dialects.

Vietnam is a product of many cultures. We had been ruled by the Chinese for a very long time. They gave us their religion, writings, and medical practices. Perhaps the most important Chinese influence was Buddhism. Buddhists believe that a person lives many lives and die many deaths, with the ultimate goal of reaching nirvana, which is ultimate peace. Once nirvana is attained, the living and dying cycle ends.

France took Vietnam from the Chinese during the 1800s. Many of the buildings in Vietnam have French architecture. The French also brought Catholicism to Vietnam. Many people chose to become Catholics even though they knew the Vietnamese government could, and often did, punish them for their conversion. I remained a Buddhist up until the time I left the country. Despite French rule and influence, many Chinese people continued to live in Vietnam.

Bac Liêu is a province as well as a city. The province is mostly a river delta area, lying on the coast of the South China Sea. The Mekong River is one of the twelve great rivers of the world and is nearly 2,700 miles long. Bac Liêu is right in the middle of the Mekong Delta. The Mekong River begins in nearby Cambodia and breaks into hundreds of smaller rivers, canals and irrigation ditches that flowed through the area I lived in. These bodies of water eventually empty into the South China Sea. We called the Mekong River Song Cuu Long, which means Nine Dragons’ River because of all the smaller rivers that flow out of it. Rice paddies prospered in my hometown. Fishing was, and still is, a big source of income. The sea tide rises and pushes all kinds of seafood into the rivers for easy catching. Eventually, the water rushes back out to sea, picks up more seafood, pushes back inland and the cycle continues, especially during the rainy season. Additionally, salt farms flourish and encompass hundreds of acres near Bac Liêu.

The seasons are two extremes, monsoon or drought. It is always warm, with the hottest temperatures being in the mid-90s during March, April and May. From April through October monsoons, called gio mua, bring torrential rains. The dirt streets of Bac Liêu become rivers of mud; no one can stay clean. Some storms bring winds and waves that often causes damage to the town. When the sun finally reappears, it becomes a steam bath. The humidity is oppressive, but as a child I really did not notice it as much as I do now when I return to visit. We had no such thing as air conditioning even though some people do now.

The South China Sea was a thirty-minute walk from my home. For about a hundred yards before I got to the water, the mud became so deep it reached my thighs. Walking through it was difficult for a small girl. However, immediately before reaching the water, the mud became a hard, compact sand bar which made running into the ocean possible. The water level only comes up knee high for a long distance into the sea. People walk into the water fully dressed just to cool off their feet and legs.

My Vietnamese birth name was Pham Phuong Anh. I was called Anh, which is pronounced like the American name Ann. I was happy living with my parents, Vui Pham and Bac Tran, my twin sister Tám Út, and our three older sisters, Lai, Lô and Bây. There were numerous extended family members who lived nearby our home. My three older brothers, Ðuőng, Quang and Tinh, and another sister, Kiên, had left the family home by the time of my earliest memories. Tám Út and I, being twins, were inseparable. We went everywhere together, even venturing into the jungle from time to time. We especially loved to play in the ocean, splashing each other, catching clams, dreaming the day away.

Our nephew, Phi, who was two years older, never paid much attention to us. His father was our older brother Ðuőng. Phi was often busy helping our father, Vui, and did not have time for silly little girls. Our niece, Thùy, Phi’s sister, who was a year younger than us, was a pest, always following us around, wanting to do everything we did. We tolerated her, feeling so much older and wiser. Phi and Thùy had lived with us for about a year, arriving when I was three years old. Their parents had left Bac Liêu to work in another province. Phi and Thùy had initially gone with them, but when I was two years old, Father had had a dream in which he was shown the children were in danger due to the war that had been going on ever since I could remember. So he went to wherever they had been living and brought them back to Bac Liêu. Their parents had not yet returned, so we were stuck with them.

My early years were a carefree time. My parents loved me and life was good. Mother took care of us; she cooked, cleaned our house, and was available to answer our childish questions. She did all these things in spite of not being a well woman. She often seemed to have something wrong with her, either a headache, a backache, or a vague ache elsewhere. Father had to pay a lot of money for her medicine and doctor bills. Even so, she still did her best to take care of us. Years earlier, while living in another area of Vietnam, my parents’ first seven children had all died from a mysterious illness, which everyone suspected to be caused by poison that had been sprayed on the rice crops. I was told the children had died within a short time of each other and none had been sick before their sudden illness and death. After their last child died, Father and Mother moved to Bac Liêu, away from the poisoned rice and sad memories. It was in Bac Liêu they started their second family, beginning with my brother Ðuőng. I remember Mother often cried.

Mother had a small sugarcane business. Sugarcane was a big crop in South Vietnam because the wet weather was perfect for growing it. She would cut the cane with a long, very sharp knife and then sell it. People drank the cane juice as a treat, much like soft drinks in America. One day, while she was busy cutting the cane, I stood nearby watching her. I decided to reach in for a quick snack when, whack! Mother brought the knife down on the cane and caught my hand too. Fortunately, the wound healed without developing an infection. I learned my lesson the hard way about playing around knives and busy people.

Father worked hard to give us what we needed. He was a rice and salt farmer, which made him rich. He was able to afford Mother’s medical expenses and owned lots of jewelry and a herd of water buffalo. In addition to being the owner of numerous rice fields, Father and several other families also gathered salt from the ocean to sell. He was known locally as the salt manager.

Our home was large by Bac Liêu standards because it had five bedrooms. No one had indoor plumbing for their toilet. Father had built the family toilet on the river behind our house so the current would take our waste out to sea twice a day. We were lucky compared to others who lived in town. Most people had to use public toilets that had privacy doors that came up to their shoulders so as others walked past them, their heads were visible to everyone. The body wastes then collected into ditches dug at the toilet areas, and the smell was awful when you walked by on your way into town. To compound the indignity of doing one’s private business where everyone could see, people could only buy a small ration of toilet paper to use each time. The paper was of poor quality, and the amount was hardly enough to do the job properly.

My father was a quiet man who took the time to teach me to swim and laugh. Father was an enthusiastic Buddhist. We had a picture of Buddha hanging on a wall in the house surrounded by several cups of sand that held sticks of incense. Father would light the incense daily and pray to Buddha. Sometimes I prayed to Buddha as well. The whole family would go to the temple on special occasions when several families would meet together to eat, much like church picnics in America.

Near our home was the Giong me River, where I swam every day from ages six to eight. Giong means small river. Me is known as tamarind. It is a sticky brown pulp from the pod of a tree of the pea family, widely used in Asian cooking. We commonly used me to add flavor to soup.

Giong me was a saltwater river so dirty that the water was brown, resembling Worcestershire sauce! It was composed mostly of sediment and silt the sea swept in during the tides plus all the human waste from the town’s population. But I did not care what the water held, for I would swim in it, naked and free. I swam alone most of the time, diving to the bottom and resurfacing with a face that had turned as brown as the water. People who lived nearby would see me in the river, day after day. Some of the older people thought I was an alligator since they could not imagine a human being would play in such a filthy river. But, I felt supremely liberated in that river, my river, floating on top of the saltwater, safe from drowning.

People in their boats would drift nearby me on their way to the market to sell fruits and vegetables. It was common for them to sort through the fruit during their boat trip and toss damaged pieces overboard into the river. I would retrieve the discarded fruit from the brown water and eat it. Sometimes people who lived on one side of the river would ask me to swim to the other side and buy them noodles to eat at the market. I would swim on my back carrying the goods like an otter, holding them on my chest. Life could not get any better than this, I often thought. Every week or so, Mother had to clean the brown grime of the river off me by using lamp oil. She had to scrub my delicate skin raw to get me clean again.

During the summer when I was around four, on a really hot and humid day, my older brother and sister returned home from Ca Mau, a town that was about a four hour drive from Bac Liêu. Ca Mau was at the southernmost tip of Vietnam, and was known to be a very dangerous place. The fighting with the Communists had been intense in that area and, many people had died or fled their homes, with no other option available other than to live in the jungle.

I was outside gathering wood for Mother when Kiên, my sister, and Ðuőng, my brother, arrived. I did not really know these distant siblings. Both of them seemed too old to be my brother and a sister. They had to be close to thirty years old or so. I had no memory of them even though I had known of their existence. I was only one or two years old when they had left Bac Liêu to work in Ca Mau, where they cut wood to help support the family. I was told they lived on a boat on a river near the jungle. Their life sounded exotic, but now, seeing them for the first time, I was a little intimidated. Kiên was nice and Ðuőng talked a lot. You have to understand the nature of Vietnamese people. We are not openly loving and demonstrative with one another. We are more reserved, which many people take as being cold and disconnected. But we are not like that. We love each other as much as any other culture loves their family.

The night they came home, Mother prepared a special meal for all of us. Food was plentiful and included soup, a variety of vegetables, steamed rice, pork and shrimp served with nuoc mam, a special sauce made out of fermented fish. We all