The House of Eternal Peace

August 2003
Lawrence Tan

It was once said that it is important for us to know where we are from in order to understand where we are going to in our lives. It really took some time for me to get the meaning of that. However, I think it is not an easy concept to convey and explain, but let me give it a try anyway… Our identity is partly defined by who we are in terms of our education background, the family and the community in which we grew up, the values that we are taught or adopted, how much we know our parents and their parents and their values in life. These are the pride and values that constitute the anchor of our identity. By upholding some of these values and absorbing the new ones along the way, we are in fact sketching the direction where we are heading in life as a person.

The family jewelry store that was managed by my grandparents in Haiphong had been established just about 99 years by the time we evacuated to the South sometime in 1955. According to the 1954 Geneva agreement, after the Vietnamese Communist forces defeated the French in Dien Bien Phu, the Northern part of the country, above parallel 17, was soon to be turned over to an effectively Communist government. The rest of the country in the South would supposedly be under a democratic government. For the time being, this is as much as I want to digress into the complex politics at the time. At that time in Haiphong, there were two major jewelry stores with well-established names, Vinh Hoa and Ddai Tin. Vinh Hoa was our store and it was the oldest and the most reputable. The name derived from Chinese meaning Eternal Peace. An established name of the jewelry store at the time was very important because it strongly implied the trustworthiness of the store. When I was growing up in Saigon (South Vietnam), sometimes I ran into older people that came from the same town, they all knew the store. The other established jewelry store was Dai Tin, (Greater Trust). My father was the eldest, followed by my Aunt Mei and Uncle Kiang. Actually, it was almost never mentioned but my father had an elder brother that died at a very young age. We all grew up without being aware of his existence; in fact probably I am the only one in my family generation that even know about it. I don’t know how he died but it was very likely out of illness.

The store was a double row house on a relative narrow street called Rue De Formose (Pho Hang Chao in Vietnamese, The Street of the Congee). As I recalled, there was a lot of streets that were named in similar fashion in Haiphong in particular and may be also in other old Vietnamese towns. I guessed that in the old times, people with similar trade had the tendency to flock to the same area, and the streets were officially named after the trades later on. Rue De Formose was obviously given by the French during their almost 100 year occupation. Directly across the street was the Sinh Ky Chinese Restaurant, which also re-established later in Cholon after 1955. The balconies of the two row houses that we lived in were connected. The houses as I recalled, were pretty deep and three-story high. I rarely went up to the top floor as it housed among other things, the altars of our ancestors. There were nights when I could not sleep, I looked out the windows of the balcony, across the street, I saw people dancing on the second floor of the restaurant. The street must be so narrow that sometimes I could even hear people’s voices from the restaurant.

I have two cousins from Uncle Kiang’s side. Nhat Ai(Yat-Oi), she was a year younger than I am and Nhat Minh(Yat-Ming), he is four years my junior. I don’t recall that I get to see a lot of my own sister, Nhat Tieu(Yat Siu), at the time. She was three years my junior. She probably stayed most of the time with my mom’s family. My brother Nhat Kinh(Yat King) and my youngest sister, Nhat Ngon(Yat Yun) were born after we migrated to the South. Each one of us had a separate nanny. I was much closer to my nanny than to anybody else in the family, including my parents. We called her Ma-Po. I clung to her all the times. I don’t recall that she had ever changed her appearance, the slick black hair all brushed back and held together in a bun cover in the back of her head. Her outfit was a typical Chinese lady outfit at the time, three quarter length sleeves and buttoned all the way down from the collar, crossing her chest to below her right arm and then all the way down to the side. The buttons were made from the same cloth, each button was really a fancy knot and the buttonhole was a sewn-in loop. Yat-Oi’s nanny, Ng-Sam (Aunt number 5), dressed very similar, but almost always in white tops as opposed to Ma Po who always wore black. When we migrated to the South, we took along with us some of the nannies and servants, including Ma-Po and Ng-Sam.

The two houses were connected inside via a door. Facing the street, the house on the left was the storefront, the house on the right side were mostly closed. The house on the right was a rather spartan office in the front and a big wooden and lacquer divan in the back, separated by a lacquer divider screen embedded with small mother of pearls patterns of the birds, butterflies and flowers. The house on the left was the storefront, there was a L-shape glass display case that extended from the left side of the store and ran along may be fifteen to twenty feet. I used to see my grandparents busy behind the display case. Along the right wall was a row of goldsmiths and apprentices, each with their individual stations and all the tools including an incandescent light and a blowing torch activated by a foot-pump. Uncle Lum was one of the apprentices at the time; he is now settled in Hawaii. I met him there during my last trip in Hawaii in 1989. My father passed away in Falls Church, Virginia a couple of months after that. The center of the store was large enough to set up about two to three large round tables at lunch and dinner times. Each sits about ten to twelve people. At every meal, we always had a lot of people. Those were the employees and family friends, some of whom hanging around our store pretty frequently. They were either friends of my grandparents or my father and his siblings. Small town, small schools and closed friends.

My father’s marriage was arranged via a matchmaker. My mom was from a well-established Vietnamese rice-merchant family in Hanoi. My mom told me that she did not get to meet my father until pretty much close to the wedding day. I was not as close to the relatives of my mother side. I was told that my maternal grandfather (Ong Nham) was also a driver license test examiner. He was notorious to be pretty strict at the exams and had failed a lot of candidates in Hanoi. He was also a martial-artist, practicing Viet-Vo-Dao, a traditional Vietnamese martial art style. Perhaps some of his blood is flowing in Felix and Vivian’s veins. He was a catholic, a quiet catholic. I don’t recall that he ever went to church. On the other hand, my maternal grandmother was a devout Buddhist; she was strictly vegetarian, in the religious sense, as long as I had known her. In the house that she lived, there was always a small room set aside for the altar of Buddha, where she spent hours every day praying and reciting the religious scriptures. She had a whole set of utensils including pots, pants, bowls and chopsticks that none of us can touch. She always cleaned them herself. She did not like the idea of her wares being soiled by mixing up with ours, all the earthlings’. She had four fingers on one of her left hand so she was always holding a silk handkerchief to conceal it. I never asked but it was probably an accident when she was young. She was always soft spoken and mild-mannered. Felix, Vivian and Yenni had the chance to meet her a number of years ago in California in my mom’s house. I had the impression that she did really shrink in size when she got older. She lived to close to 100 years old. I saw her pictures when she was young; she was very attractive. No wonder my grandfather fell for her. I would love to hear their stories. I was told that until just about a month before she passed away, her mind was still functioning very clearly helping my mother managing the affairs of the temple.

We migrated down to the South in 1955, so I must be less than 5 years old. It is truly amazing of how a person’s mind work. I can still remember these fragments of images after all these years! Every now and then, my nanny called from our balcony to a street merchant that passed by selling food, either Pho, bun rieu and a variety of sweet soups. I watched her lowering a basket with money and a bowl inside and later carefully pulled up the basket with the meal inside. I don’t remember why, but I was pretty much a vegetarian when I was young. For some reason, meat really disgusted me at the time. Yat Oi used to chase me around with a piece of sausage and I was running scared and in tears. I believed that I had seen a picture of myself riding on a big stone frog in the Park of the Frog. I still remember the scary feeling that it might come alive while I was riding on it for the picture! On one occasion, it must have been my birthday of four-year old; it is still so very clear in my mind. I was summoned by my grandfather to the house on the right, in the office area. When I got there, I saw a whole bunch of people standing in a circle and waiting for me. I saw an orange tricycle in the center of the circle of people, I was so happy, I went and climbed on it right away and started pedaling in a circle. The adults were all cheering and applauding watching me on the bike.

Even before I was born, not all the times were happy times. There was a rumor, perhaps spread by our competitors that our gold was of a lesser quality, therefore a lot of people, some even came from the country sides camped out in front of our store and demanded their money back. My grandmother quickly put together a one-page poem that explained and dispelled the rumor. I had seen a copy of it when I was young. She had thousands of copies of the poem spread in town and in the country sides by airplanes. Eventually, I was told that the customers were convinced and the situation subsided. During the war against the Japanese, my grandparents had to live in the countryside where the food was very scarce. They had terrible days. But apparently some of their more loyal servants stuck with them throughout the bad times. There was a famine at the time when the Japanese burnt most of the rice warehouses. Apparently, their policy was to punish the revolt during that turbulent time, they just kept enough rice supply for their occupying troops and controlled the people by controlling their stomachs.

My father liked to sing, dance and loved basketball. He was of a good and uncaring nature. He never seemed to care too much about anybody else, including his family. I did not recall he spent any time with me or with my brother and sisters. Perhaps in his time, he was a typical father, but in a way, he was a selfish person. He was with his friends most of the times. I never felt close to him. I guess his personality had cost him his marriage later on in Saigon. My mother separated from him and later filed for a divorce.

Uncle Kiang when he was young person, according to his friends that I chat with later in Saigon, was a good friend, a fun guy to be with and a troublemaker who liked to pull pranks on people. Good looking and being the son of the top jewelry store in town, he was pretty popular, at school as well as in parties. In one occasion, he drove the family car with his friends to the outskirts of Haiphong and peed on the jars of fermented shrimps that people left in the open. On another, he drove a whole bunch of schoolmates around including this girl who had the reputation of being a tomboy, pretty loud and rough. He stopped by the roads to let her go to the bush to pee, then he drove on with the rest of the guys back to town leaving her there! Later that day, that girl went to our Jewelry store and started screaming, yelling and cursing him, embarrassing my grandparents! Years later in the States, I ran into a girl whose mom was another schoolmate of his, told me that one time while they were playing basketball, uncle Kiang happened to pass the ball to her mom, just once, and that made her thinking about him for a while! How romantic people can be! I truly need a woman to explain this to me!

When we lived on Charles DeGaulle, he was the one that get me and the other two kids together and had us taken our shorts all the way down to our ankles and took a picture that he called the Three Mousquetaires. I saw that picture before. I swear I don’t have it anymore. When he was in BanMeThuot, he had taken pictures of himself with a big smile and two topless native girls, having his arms around each one on each side.

Still back in HaiPhong, Uncle Cuong, either out of ignorance or carelessness, impregnated his schoolmate, Dai Tin’s daughter who later became my aunt. Remember the time and place we are talking about. It was such a scandal! It was such a shame for my aunt and her family; she did not have too many choices. Her reputation was ruined, her family’s reputation was ruined and they would be the laughing stock of the town if she could not get my uncle to marry her. Of course, there was some negotiation going on at the time and my grandparents agreed to allow uncle Kiang to marry her. I was told that my aunt’s family discreetly sent her to HongKong where she gave birth to Ah-Oi, left her there temporarily with a relative, not knowing what to do with the baby, awaiting the decisions by the elders.

The wedding was one of the most lavish in town in years. Can you imagine how the union of the two most reputable jewelry stores in town must be celebrated? After the wedding, Ah-Oi was brought back to Haiphong from HongKong. I can imagine my uncle and my aunt went through a lot together at the time. It must be really rough for both of them. Unfortunately, they, like my parents, later divorced in Saigon.

According to the Geneva agreement, there was a window in which the people could decide where they would live, in the North with the incoming communist government or with the government in the South. After this window, the demarcation (parallel 17) is closed. Foreign countries provided cargo ships as the means of relocations for those who wanted to migrate. A million of people went south. A very insignificant number went north. We were one of the few privileged families that could afford to charter an airplane, from Haiphong to Saigon. I was airsick and uncle Kiang held me up over the sink to throw up in the back of the plane. I was then feeling homesick; I asked him when we would be going home. He looked at me and said: “It might be a while, son”.