Where the Wind Leads

by Dr. Vinh Chung

  Whatever my family didn’t eat was sold to earn a little bit of money. Yam and potato leaves, for example, were sold for food. My father would bundle them and take them into town on a bicycle to sell. Sometimes his entire load earned just enough to buy two loaves of bread or a can of condensed milk. The most profitable item was coconut branches, which were commonly used for fuel. A wooden pull cart was used to haul them into town; the cart was nothing more than a flat wooden platform with a wheel on each side and two long poles protruding from the front. My mother took hold of one pole; Bruce would take the other; and together they would drag the cart through town until they found a buyer; and after the sale they were expected to haul the cart to the buyer’s house to off-load and stack his purchase.

  The family made and sold anything they could think of: small arrangements of fruit, a slaw made from our vegetables, rice wrapped in banana leaves folded into the shape of little boxes—Jenny even sold lotus flowers that grew in the garden. There was too much competition in the town market to sell merchandise there, so my father or Bruce or Jenny would just sit on a street corner with a tray displaying our wares until someone stopped to ask, “How much?” Ironically, most of the buyers were communist officials; in the new regime they were the only ones who had money.

  My family raised pigs, too, because it was the only way to get pork. In the market only communists could buy pork—only those with rank could afford to buy meat at all. Though the family had hundreds of thousands in currency hidden away, my mother was afraid to buy pork in the market; revealing the fact that she had any money at all would have raised eyebrows and started inquiries.

  When North and South Vietnam were reunited, one of the first things the new government did was establish a new currency. The old Vietnamese dong was replaced by a currency of the same name, but the value changed radically. One new “liberation dong” was worth five hundred of the old dong, which meant the money my family had managed to hide away was worth only a fraction of its original value. By revaluing the currency, the new government made sure the formerly rich remained formerly rich. Citizens were allowed to exchange their old currency for the new, but they were allowed to exchange only a limited amount. My family had mounds of the old currency, but only a fraction of it could be converted, and the rest was worthless.

  For a while the family held on to the cash in hopes the Americans might return and the money would regain its original value. But after a couple of years, it became apparent the Americans were not coming back, so the Chung family resigned themselves to the fact that they no longer had stacks of money—they had reams of paper.

  But paper at least burns, and pigs need to be fed, so my parents began to burn the money to cook pig food. They didn’t dare burn the money in the daytime because the community had become a network of spies and informers, and there were always prying eyes. The family wasn’t supposed to have any money, so it wasn’t a good idea to let anyone know they had money to burn. Burning money at night was risky, too, because the ink on the old currency burned a distinct color of green, and even from a distance it would be obvious what they were doing. So they were forced to burn the money a little at a time—a stack here to cook the pigs’ food, a stack there to cook their own.

  Another challenge on the farm was keeping everyone alive and well. Because doctors were highly educated, many of them had been shipped off to reeducation camps or New Economic Zones, and there were very few left, so medical care was left up to the family. Maladies that would send any sensible American rushing to an emergency room were things they either had to cure on their own or simply learn to live with. As an infant I suffered from what my sisters called a “rotten ear.” It was a persistent infection that caused one of my ears to swell shut and constantly seep. Traditional Chinese cures did nothing to help, and the condition persisted for months. I cried for hours at a time, and Jenny still remembers having to hold me with one arm while she played jump rope with the other.

  But for the most part my family was healthy during our stay on the farm. There was never enough to eat, but what we did eat was always simple and farm-fresh: fruits, vegetables, rice, and the occasional chicken or fish. We could have eaten more, but in terms of nutrition and health benefits, we couldn’t have eaten better.

  You would think the transition from a spacious two-story French colonial to a run-down shack without electricity or running water would have been overwhelming for my mother, but she had no problem making the adjustment. That’s one of the many things I admire about my mother: she is a remarkably flexible and adaptable person, which, I suppose, is the result of growing up in an environment that was constantly unpredictable. My mother believed it was a waste of time and energy to long for the past or grumble about new circumstances; the only thing to do was just keep moving forward. That perspective might sound a bit callous, but as I would learn later on, it has tremendous practical value.

  My mother had no illusions about the reality of life on a small farm. She knew it would require backbreaking physical labor, and it didn’t help that she was pregnant with me at the time. But pregnancy was not a new experience for her; out of the ten years she had been married, she had been pregnant five of them. For my mother, being pregnant was like having a cold; sometimes she felt miserable, but she still had to go to work. She thought there were even benefits to being pregnant on the farm. One time the pig got out of its enclosure, and when she tried to stop it, the pig bowled her over, and she had to chase it down. She said chasing the pig was her exercise program, and staying in shape was the reason her deliveries went so well.

  She knew it would be an enormous challenge to raise her family on the farm, but then again, for the first time in her married life, she had only one family to raise. Leaving the house in Soc Trang cut the size of the Chung family in half, and that reduced her household duties considerably. Best of all, leaving the house meant leaving Grandmother Chung; that meant no more broken dishes, no more nightly back rubs, and no more temper tantrums with dangerous objects flying through the air. My mother was finally free—or so she thought.

  As it turned out, my grandmother visited the farm almost every single morning, which my mother found extremely irritating. Grandmother Chung lived in town with my uncle and his family—why couldn’t she stay there and mind her own business? But to my grandmother the farm was her business. The way she looked at it, our family had not left the rice-milling business; we had just switched to the farming business, and that still made her CEO. The farm belonged to her, along with any profit it produced, and so did any money she had hidden away there—that made her CFO too. Each day she dropped by the farm to bring us a little money from her secret stash—just enough to buy a few groceries for the day, but not enough to make tomorrow’s visit unnecessary. My grandmother liked to be needed, and she knew that of all the ties that bind, purse strings do it best.

  She also took a daily accounting of exactly what the farm had produced, and she kept a record down to the individual piece of fruit. That made it difficult for us children because when we got hungry, we were always tempted to climb a tree and pluck a papaya or mango. But we knew that if we did, the next day my grandmother would give us one of her smoldering glares and say, “We’re missing a papaya,” and that tended to keep our feet on the ground. My grandmother could be a very kind and gentle woman, but my brothers and sisters knew not to mess with her; during her visits she used to trim the coconut and banana trees, and I’m told it left quite an impression when you saw her walking down a row, swinging a machete like a Kabuki chef while branches rained down around her.

  Since my grandmother had intended the farm to be a private retreat, she made sure the property included all the accoutrements of home—including a family shrine. The shrine was constructed entirely of palm and coconut fronds and rested on a square concrete base. Inside the shrine was the usual assembly of deities and honored ancestors, and in the back there were a hammock and a coffin. The hammock was for my grandmother to rest in when she visit
ed the shrine, and the coffin was for her to rest in when she died. Grandmother Chung liked to plan ahead, and it gave her a sense of security to know that she had a final resting place waiting for her. She was also used to approving all decisions, and the only way she could approve the choice of her coffin was by making the choice herself.

  The coffin may have given my grandmother a sense of security, but it had a different effect on my brother Bruce. It was supposed to be my father’s job to visit the family shrine each evening to light incense and place the traditional bowls of fruit, but when my father was too tired to carry out his duties, he sent Bruce to do the job instead. At night the shrine was dark and damp, and Bruce remembers seeing geckos clinging to the walls and abandoned snake skins draping from the roof like strips of gauze. Near the back of the shrine, there was a statue of a lesser deity. To place incense in front of it, Bruce had to stand beside the coffin, and the instant his duties were completed, he took off like a rifle shot and didn’t stop running until he reached the house.

  For my brothers and sisters, the hardest adjustments were outside the farm. When the communists first came to power, school simply stopped, and when classes finally resumed, everything had changed. There was no more Mercedes to deliver Jenny, Bruce, and Yen to the front door; they had to walk to school now, and the school was two or three miles away. When it rained, the half-mile dirt path that led from the farm to the main road could get knee-deep in mud, and my father had to carry one of them on his shoulders and one under each arm as he trudged his way through. Even on dry days it was hard to stay clean, so Jenny, Bruce, and Yen used to stop at a friend’s house halfway to school, where they could wash the dust off their shoes before they went on.

  Jenny had been a star pupil before the communist takeover. She especially loved math and writing but excelled at everything she tried; she even dreamed of becoming an engineer, a lofty goal for a young girl in Vietnam in those days. When the end-of-year exam was given, Jenny always finished first in her class, which granted her the right to sit in the honored position of front row, first seat on the right. When the teacher entered the room at the start of each day, it was Jenny’s privilege to be the first to snap to her feet and call out, “Good morning, teacher,” and when she did, the rest of the class was required to follow her lead.

  But when the communists came to power, there were no more crisp school uniforms and far fewer of the math and writing lessons that Jenny loved; much of the school day was now spent learning songs of praise to Ho Chi Minh—“Uncle Ho,” they were told to call him. Translated into English, one of the popular songs went something like this:

  Last night I dreamed of Uncle Ho.

  His beard is long, his hair is so white.

  I’m so glad, I kissed his cheek.

  Uncle Ho smiled and told me I’m a good kid.

  But some clever student composed a parody that became even more popular:

  Last night I dreamed of a money bag.

  In the money bag, there were four thousand dollars.

  I was so glad, I told Uncle Ho.

  Uncle Ho smiled at me, “Give all the money to me.”

  Only two hours per day were devoted to learning, and the rest was spent planting trees, picking up trash, and collecting dung on the streets of Soc Trang. Jenny became frustrated; she just couldn’t understand how singing communist songs and collecting dung would help her become an engineer.

  The entire atmosphere of the school had changed. There were no more friends, and there was no more talking. Even children understood that the wrong accusation—even a false one—could land a family in prison. In the old school everyone had known that the Chung children came from a wealthy family, and we were proud of it, but in the new school we prayed that no one would remember. My parents even gave Jenny, Bruce, and Yen false names to disguise their true identities. Instead of Chung, they were told to use the name Diep and later Nguyen. My sister Yen didn’t even know her real last name until we came to America.

  When I listen to the stories my older brothers and sisters tell about life on the farm, it sounds as if it was a grand adventure, and in a way, for the children, it was. The farm was our little oasis in a world that had changed overnight, a world that none of us understood anymore. But life on the farm was simple: work hard, find enough to eat, go to bed, then get up and do it again. There was hard work, but there was play too. There were trees to climb, frogs to catch, ducks to chase, and geese to run from.

  For my parents the experience was different. My father, once the COO of a multimillion-dollar business empire, had been reduced to a common street peddler. My mother, who used to carry home baskets of food from the market each morning, now struggled to scrape together enough for her children to eat.

  And they knew their new life wasn’t temporary. The communists may have spared our lives, but they would also see to it that my family would never again have money, position, or power. My parents knew the farm wasn’t just their new home; it would be their entire world for the rest of their lives.

  Hardest of all was the realization that the farm would also be their children’s world. We would spend the rest of our lives scraping to get by each day, and we would never be allowed the opportunity to change our fate. If times were good and the rains came at the right time, we would live; if not, we would starve—my mother and father were not willing to take that chance.

  That was when they knew we had to leave Vietnam.

  “Anything would be better than this,” they said.

  But they had no idea.

  Eleven

  GATHERING STORM

  IT ISN’T CLEAR WHO FIRST DECIDED THAT MY FAMILY should leave Vietnam. It may have been Grandmother Chung, when she realized that her “farming empire” was never going to amount to more than ten acres or when she recognized that her hidden gold and diamonds would have no value in the new Vietnam. As long as the communists prevented her from spending them, they were worthless.

  It may have been my uncle who first decided we should leave because he didn’t even have ten acres where he could stretch his legs. He was confined to a small house with his wife and six kids and no business enterprise to give him an excuse to leave each morning. Even worse, he was trapped in a small house with my grandmother, and at close range flying objects seldom miss.

  Or it might have been my mother. By the end of 1977, she had borne eight children, including newborn twin boys. She breast-fed each of us as long as she possibly could—a necessity on a small farm with barely enough food to go around—but her own restricted diet made it difficult for her to produce enough milk to feed two hungry boys. The possibility of starvation was beginning to loom large, not just for her babies but for all of us. Almost as terrible to her was the stark realization that her children had no future in Vietnam. Our education would be severely limited, and she knew from her own hard experience that limited education meant limited opportunity. Her greatest fear was that her children would be forced to accept what she considered the lowest of all jobs: herders of water buffalo. To my mother that was the worst possible fate, and she was determined that her children would do better.

  It definitely was not my father who decided to leave, and it wasn’t because he disagreed with his wife or didn’t care about us. My father grew up in an unpredictable environment where circumstances and even life itself could change overnight. That kind of unstable environment can affect different people in different ways; the effect it had on my father was to cause him to fear change—any change, even if it brought the possibility of improving his lot in life. There is an old Chinese proverb that says, “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t,” and that captures perfectly my father’s fearful mind-set. It wasn’t that he wanted to stay in Vietnam; he just didn’t want to leave.

  In a sense, the decision to leave Vietnam was made for us. My ancestors were part of more than a million Chinese who migrated to Vietnam from the southern provinces of China in the late nineteenth century. The Chinese are a ver
y cohesive people, which is why in cities all over the world there are large communities of Chinese living and working together. In New York and San Francisco, they are called Chinatown; in Saigon it’s known as Cholon. The Chinese place a high value on discipline and hard work and as a result tend to be very successful in business. The Chinese who chose to settle in North Vietnam became farmers, fishermen, coal miners, and small merchants; but in South Vietnam they were more ambitious and quickly came to control the rice trade, transportation, banking, and insurance. My family was extremely successful in business, but among the Chinese we were not the exception.

  When the communists took over South Vietnam, their anger was directed at everyone who had been rich or powerful in the former regime, regardless of ethnic group. Vietnamese, Chinese, Cambodian, Thai—it didn’t matter. If you were rich, you were part of the property-owning bourgeoisie, who had been oppressing the poor working class, and you were about to feel the wrath of the proletariat.

  In the late 1970s, my parents began to sense that the government’s attitude toward the Chinese was changing. Vietnam shares a northern border with China, and there was a growing conflict between the two nations that became so hostile they briefly went to war. As hostility increased with China, Vietnam grew more and more suspicious of its own Chinese citizens because they feared the Chinese might be more loyal to their ancestral homeland than they were to Vietnam. Fear began to erupt into violence, and in Cholon, Saigon’s Chinatown, houses were searched, money and property seized, and businesses shut down. The Chinese living in northern Vietnam sensed the growing hostility, and so many of them began to flee into China that the government was forced to close its borders to its own people.