Reflections

2006-12-01T03:49:00.000-08:00

by Lawrence Tan

Spring of 2006

In a conversation with an old schoolmate of mine regarding his trip to China, he described certain places that are so remote, that time seems to slow down to a crawl and most of the ancient ways of life still prevail. These communities are mostly self-sufficient; the people are happy without much ambition and rarely need to travel to the world outside, just like their ancestors hundreds of years ago. Furthermore, thanks to their remote locations, these communities have so far succeeded in avoiding the frontal impact of the annual double-digit economic growth of the country. On one evening along the riverbank that runs through the city, my schoolmate witnessed a group of men bellowing out a few verses of a folk song, to which a few girls on a balcony across the small street started to sing in reply. This went on for a while. I can only imagine how beautiful that would sound! I cannot remember if I have ever seen such happy people myself.

Despite this happy story, I am having a little trouble trying to picture how someone could live an entire life in one place or even be born and die of old age in the same house. In my mind, when these people look back in time, they would not recall much because there was not much to remember. Admittedly, these rather uneventful lives could have occurred more often in the pockets of peaceful periods in human history.

At my age, just the mere thought of looking back at my life and failing to see anything but a blur of a number of forgotten years should have disturbed and frightened me deeply. However, that did not happen to me, and I believe that it did not happen to my generation; most of us have been affected and scarred by tragedies and sufferings caused directly or indirectly by the war—the Vietnam War that is. Most of us who survived have plenty of stories to tell. Even though my stories seem to be unique and indeed the mosaic of my life, from a further perspective they are merely a few small pieces of a gigantic jigsaw puzzle of my generation. Within that context, my stories are just those of an ordinary life.

I have always treasured my past—the good and the bad times. I always have in me nostalgic feelings for things that I once possessed. I have the sustaining feelings of longing for a certain time, a certain place and the characters that had been intertwined in my life in the distant past. As time goes by, my memory starts to fail me of the smaller details of things, like a disintegrating photograph weathered through time. I am sure someday there will be nothing left but just a blur in my mind. A certain smell or a familiar tune or melody can bring my heart instantly back to that lost time and place. All I have to do then is to close my eyes… I like to communicate and to share beautiful things. After all, when I leave this world, these very same thoughts that I am trying communicate are the only things that are really worth anything. For these very reasons, I try to carefully package these images and feelings and keep them as close to me as I can and bring them along with me for the rest of my journey. I have recorded some of the more significant events of my life, will record more as time permits, and will put them together like a scrapbook in the following pages.

Although some of these fragments of memoirs seem to have a chronological sequence, they are intentionally scattered and mixed with other independent dissertations and poems. As with this collection itself, not all the pieces that appear in it necessarily have a beginning or an end. In fact, I hope that after one finishes reading these pages, the images will seem to blur together as if one was waking up from a long dream with the feelings still lingering. As for me, I would not want the melodies interrupted, nor would I want to be awakened from my dreams.

2006-12-01T02:55:00.000-08:00

A Short Reflection Of Fall

September 2003
Lawrence Tan

Ever since I settled in Virginia in 1975, I had chances to travel to a number of places around the country and overseas. Except the one and a half year I worked in Southern California and another equally long period I worked in Saudi Arabia, I have spent much shorter times in a number of other States and visited other places such as Canada, Europe and Southeast Asia. However, Virginia has always been my home. Anywhere else, I would feel like a stranger. Of course, I once had another place called home, but now it seems like it only exists in my dreams.

In the earlier years when I used to travel, each time coming home to Virginia, as the plane approached Dulles Airport, from the air, it was such a wonderful feeling to see the ominous color of green covering the ground all over. The warm feeling of homecoming sets in while I was driving through the hilly and winding roads both sides of which are mostly populated by all kinds of trees including pines and evergreen. The State and the Fairfax County in particular we live in have done an excellent job in preserving the natural environment. I just love Virginia. After all, I spend more than half of my life here where I raised all my kids and watched them blossomed.

Virginia is located in a very special spot. After living here for so many years, I have noticed that harsh snowstorms normally devastated further north; further south is always under the menace of the hurricanes every year. Every now and then, we get the tail ends of things but never have to confront the brunt of both kinds of extreme weathers.

I had friends that used to live in New York and eventually some of them migrated over to the West Coast due to the harsh winter up there. I guess we are the lucky ones who settled in Virginia. Virginia is for Lovers. In Virginia, you would experience the taste of the four seasons. However, spring and fall are rather short, from just a few weeks to sometimes a few days! But I always have something to look forward to. The humidity in the summer is sometimes unbearable. But we have Ocean City and Virginia Beach there, just a few hours away. When the kids were younger, we used to drive up to Valleyfield, Canada every winter and spent our X’mas up there. The Hua live in that tiny francophone town where people speak Quebecquois. It takes about 45 minutes from there to Montreal. Our friend Huy worked for GoodYear Valleyfield since he graduated from college up there in the early 1970s. They used to drive down here in the summertime and we took all the kids to Ocean City for a few days, every year, like a ritual, because that's what the kids wanted to do. Besides the crab feasts, the ocean, the kids loved to go to those mini-golf parks across the street from the boardwalk. Every now and then we could arrange to take an additional trip to the West Coast or overseas.

One year, we took them to Whistler to ski. The scenery of the mountain there was nothing short of spectacular. We don't ski, but we tried to take the kids to ski every year until the last two years. The ride up to the Blackcomb on the lift to its chalet (about 6000 feet?) is about twenty minutes; total silence. I have never experienced silence the way it was there. I felt its thick presence actually wrapped around me. My kids are fortunate compared to myself, they have been to places I did not even know nor dreamt of at their ages.

But the fall is for me, every year I wait for it to come patiently. I don't remember since when I started to fall in love with it. I embrace the pace of things in the fall. Fall is like a Sonata, it goes deep and slow enough for me to have time to sink in, to fall in love again, versus a Concerto where every note is strong, clear and forward like the crashes of the oncoming waves and laced with some staccato notes just to accent the space and time. Fall is my color. The beautiful colors of the leaves in the Shenandoah, which run from gold to red to brown with a multitude of hues in between, have inspired a lot of gazers and photographers every year. I have to admit I had been up there only once, a long time ago. We have plenty of magnificent colors around here too in our local areas. During fall, the morning is chilly enough for a light sweater, or at times, it is comfortable enough for me to brave the wind with open windows while driving to work in the morning.

Fall reminds me so much of Dalat. I believe I was there with my mom perhaps just for a few months during a sad and turbulent time of my family. I was seven years old; I still recall clearly my heart was with my grandmother in Saigon. I was never happy, no matter how hard my mom tried. I think I broke her heart.

Before we know it, Halloween is around the corner, then Thanksgivings and Christmas, the whole works, the Holiday Seasons. The weather is cold but everybody is warm at heart preparing for the Holiday Seasons. Perhaps, the pace of fall is the pace of my heart.

2006-12-01T02:48:00.000-08:00

The Year of the Monkey

2003
Lawrence Tan

It was hard enough to go through our adolescent years when we had to cope with so many issues that seemed to come at us all at once in just a few short years. Our physical change, our self realization, the search and formation of an attitude, an identity, the yearning to understand more of everything that happened around us and the careful attempt to fit in with our peers as they were going through our same experience. All of that exerted an enormous amount of pressure on us. We started to have feelings that we had never experienced before, we were expected a little bit more by everyone around us. Growing up was tough enough, for our generation, war had no doubt accentuated and accelerated it.

1968 seemed to be an unremarkable year like all the previous years. My plans were the same. I had about a week off from school so I planned to be with my grandparents in Vinh Binh. I had the permission from my relatives to go and stay with Nguyen Tam Thien overnight and we hired a taxi early next morning to take us to the inter-city bus stop in Cholon. Thien's Mom lived in my neighborhood, off Cao Thang street. He stayed in his father's complex on Tran Hung Dao, close to the Dai Nam Movies Theater. Every now and then, he visited his Mom. This complex was two or three stories high and it was so big that it occupied an entire small city block. Every time I passed by and looked for him, I had to get somebody to go upstairs and get him; I got lost one time venturing up there by myself. Apparently, there were a number of families of all the aunts and uncles who shared that building.

That was the first time we traveled together. The bus was scheduled to leave at around 6 o’clock in the morning for a good five to six hours trip. It depends on whether we encountered the blockade set up by the guerillas the night before. Every now and then they came out at night and piled up dirt, rocks and buried a mine or two in the middle of the road to inconvenience the traffic flow. When that happened, we had to wait for the government’s military to come and dismantle it before the traffic flow resumed.

Thien’s grandpa, Mr. Nguyen Van Hao, built a pagoda on the outskirts of the city of Vinh Binh and planned some burial grounds for the family. So, it went without saying that Thien was always welcome there at the temple. From what I remember the temple was a good size structure and it seemed to have plenty of light (looking from the outside in.) It was the only building there on the side of the road. I guess the people normally came by on bicycle, motorcycle or ox-carts. It was a perfect place for the monks. It was a serene place surrounded mostly by rice paddies and near enough to the main road traveled by the inter-city buses; supplies could be dropped off easily. Tam Thien got off there, about half an hour to town. I gave him the instructions to find me if he decided to go to town. We would have dine and wine together if he ever showed up. But he never did.

I think I was there a few days already. One evening, I heard the rumor that the guerillas are amassing their forces close to town; but I had heard those kinds of things every now and then over the years. The people there were so used to the distant canons and bombs, but being from Saigon I was always a little bit more sensitive and worried. It was just past 9PM in the evening. I was shooting some pool with my friends in a billiard hall on the riverside. Suddenly I saw a military truck stop, dropping off a few soldiers and they got into positions with the 'mitreilleuses'(heavy machine guns). They were not bearing the M60’s. At the time the military still used the WW II equipment. I got worried and scared, stopped the game, hopped on my bicycle and started riding home. As soon as I got to the Movie House, I heard a government car coming by and declared immediate curfew via its bullhorn. It ordered everybody to go home and stay in the house until further notification. We cut short the movie show and passed along the same message to the audience. The people started leaving in a fairly orderly fashion...

It must be about 1 or 2 o’clock; I was awakened by a shot to the wall above my bed. Some of the plaster came down on me from the wall. The target was the neon light right above my bed and I heard somebody was yelling from the street ordering to turn the light off. I also saw my uncle quietly beckoning me from the doorway to leave. I jumped off the bed and ran crouching towards the switch, turned the light off and followed my uncle. We ran through the entire length of the auditorium to the dugout below the stage. The auditorium was larger than most of the movie houses I have seen in the States where we live. Below the stage was a large dugout area that had two set of stairs of a few steps each up towards a large backyard. Up on the backyard, on the left side of the left set of steps, there were a shower stall and a makeshift kitchen shared by the families who lived in the dugout. On the right of the second set of steps, way into the yard, there was an open well; a bucket attached to a rope was almost always there sitting on the ground besides the well. The men in their boxers and the kids living in the dugout sometimes got their showers there; the backyard was as wide as the movie theater ground. That was where we let all the chicken, duckling and a couple of pigs run wild. One of the pigs was mine, my grandmother raised it for me, and another one was my brother's. When mine was big enough, she would sell it as supplement to my school tuition in Saigon and other expenditures.

From the auditorium, the dugout was accessible from both sides of the screen via access doors. Behind each access door, the floor was split and there was a few steps leading up to the stage behind the huge movie screen and another set leading down to the dugout area. The movie screen could be slid off all the way to the back wall to make room for a stage area every time an opera troop came by and performed for a few days. There were three families living in the dugout area beneath the stage. The men were all employees of the movie theater. The painter artist, was an ethnic Chinese, but he spoke Vietnamese better than his ancestral language. He was married and had a small boy. He also had a young assistant and painted all our advertisement canvas panels, each one was around 10' X 10'. The colors used on the canvas panels were the washable kind. The right corner of the dug out, close to the staircase to the auditorium was used as his studio where he kept all his bowls of colors and paint brushes with his partially finished work for the next movies. These panels when completed were mounted and displayed on each side of the movie house for the currently shown feature film for a few days until the next feature film. In a larger city such as Saigon, a movie could last about anywhere from a week to two before you ran out of audience. At Phu Vinh, a feature film could last three days at the most. The second family was Muoi, one of the ushers, his wife and their young kids, a boy and a girl, Dzung and Hoa. Then there was the family of Trong, one of the projectionists, with a small child also. Besides the common area of the dug out, their private areas consisted of their beds and maybe a small table and a small piece of furniture. Each family fashioned a curtain or two to cover their areas for privacy. Seeing people raised their family like that really made me think hard at times. How many bedrooms do we want now?

The atrium in the back was surrounded by a wall and beyond the wall, the back of the row houses of the surrounding streets. There were five of us altogether, my grandparents, my uncle, my younger brother and I. We stayed there with the other three families hoping that the situation would eventually ease off, but we ended up staying there all night until around 4PM the next day. Then suddenly an explosion shook the whole building and dust was all over the air. As soon as it settled, Muoi and Kinh decided to crawl up to the auditorium to assess the situation. After a few short minutes, they came back and told us that the gate of the movie house was hit; the grille was mostly destroyed and all twisted, and the lobby collapsed. We decided that it was too dangerous there, the combatants (either side) might come in any time and we would be stuck in between. So we decided to take a chance....

We decided to leave the dug-out. We did not know the source of the explosion. It could be a 155mm canon shell or a rocket from a helicopter. In either case, that meant only one thing, that the guerilla force was in the neighborhood. Since we were right underneath the stage, and behind the projection screen, there is really nothing solid above us except a wooden floor. If god forbid, if one of those shells landed in there, we would not have a chance.

After the explosion, there were a lot of confusions. We had to make some fast decisions. We had a couple of challenges, we did not want to be exposed in the backyard fearing that the helicopter above would mistake us for the combatants of the other side because I understand that the guerillas did not wear uniform. The second difficulty that we faced was to figure out how to get my grandparents over the wall. My grandfather always had a limp because one of his legs suffered atrophy when he was young.

We started yelling across the backyard that we needed help and a ladder. After a few minutes, low and behold, we saw a ladder lowered from across the wall. We wait until the sound of the helicopter seemed to fly by then Kinh, my brother dashed out across the yard and on to the ladder. He got over it before the helicopter started approaching again. Then we let a few other folks go next asking them to wait on the other side to help my grandparents on their way down. My uncle dashed off with my grandmother, he was behind her on the ladder, and they went over. Then my grandfather and I took our turn. I was behind him.

He was kind of slow, but I was there just in case he slipped. During that commotion, I saw the painter used a long bamboo stick stirring the open well, kept calling for his son with a desperate and tiring voice, "Vinh, where are you?". He lost his son during the confusions; he was trying to see if his son fell into the well. Somewhere along the line, I knew the helicopter had seen us, because the time it took to climb the ladder and over the wall.

We all ended up in a narrow back alley of the back of other people's houses. We scattered and went to different houses. Our family stayed together and ended up in a house that sold motorcycles and parts. There was really not much space in there. I think we had less than twenty people all sitting on the floor, wherever we could make room for ourselves. We did not know what to think, all of us were still under shock. The owner of the house turned out to be somebody that my uncle knew. The house we were in shared a common open well with the house next door.

Above the well was a door that divided the houses. When the well was covered with a solid wooden lid, they can open the door above it and climb back and forth between the two houses. I was told that the residents of the houses were relatives. We were there for hours; not knowing what would to do next. What would you do? The movie house was destroyed and going back there was not an option. What would happen next? The people that owned that house we were in asked my uncle to join them in the house next door to play some cards to pass the time. My uncle politely refused. I would think he had his mind at the time on many things other than a card game. Just about half an hour later, there was a big explosion that shook the house we were in. The plaster and the dust were all over the air. By the time we recovered, we realized that a rocket hit the house next door. There was a lot of screaming and crying and of course the confusion reigned over. There were a lot of dead and injured people next door. Some who survived climbed over the well and came to our side, dazed and confused. My uncle was real lucky! My brother and I dashed to the door immediately. It was a solid folding steel door and it was locked from the inside and we needed the key to unlock it. We all pushed towards the door to try to leave the house. I was afraid that the house we were in would be the next target. I started yelling for the key while the owner said she forgot where she placed it!

Then her husband said he had it and shouldered his way to the door and unlock it. I told him not to open right away. We needed to peek outside first to see if it was safe to do so. Then again my brother went out first, because he was a young kid, hopefully the combatants would recognize that and the civilians would follow. We ran across the street by a group of two or three persons at a time. My uncle had my grand mother on his back; I had my grandfather on mine. Kinh was in front of us. I
remembered seeing an old man lying across the street, propped himself up with one of his arm, his head was all bloody. He was moaning about something. I guessed he was too weak to scream.

After I got to the other side of the street I looked back to the houses we just left. There was indeed a hole on the roof of the house next door, still smoking. I don't recall how many more neighborhoods we ran by or how many streets we crossed. We tried to run as far away as we could from that trouble zone.

Eventually, we ended up in the back alley of another neighborhood. By this time as a group, we were really scattered but our family still managed to stay together. A lady in her fifties that owned one of the houses stood in her back door and waved us into her house, God bless her heart! They were also some kind of merchant that I don't recall anymore. After she closed the door, we had about two to three families in her house. We all stayed downstairs and slept on the floor wherever we can find a space. The owner and her family lived upstairs.

Our family occupied the part of the floor that was closest to the steel door. The next morning, they came down and open the door and it turned out that their house was right at the market place. It was customary for a lot of families to live upstairs of their stores. Beyond the sidewalk in front of their house, was the gathering place of the market place. There were a lot of little stalls (sa.p) that sold anything you need, from clothes to foodstuff. All that time, we did not know how to thank the owner of the house. Of course, we all understood that we would use their resources only when absolutely necessary. That means no showers. The food I believed my family had some cash but we would just spend as little as we could, even on food, therefore all the meals were really meager. So it seemed like we were in the area of town controlled by the government troupes. But you never knew! At least we did not have to run no more at the time and that would give us a chance to think about the next step.

So we settled there. Due to the location where there were people bustling most of the time in the daytime. We learnt to deal with the situation over time. I did not dare to venture too far away from the house in the daytime because there were a few times when the government announced curfew in broad daylight due to some emergency situations. We got inside the house, closed and locked the door. When the steel retractable door is closed, I could not see the outside. At night when there were soldiers or the paramilitary walked by, I could see a little bit of their shadow through the crack underneath the door. And every time I heard them yelling or screaming at night, my heart seemed to jump out of my mouth. I laid there worried about any firefight in the area would be the end of us. This is the end of the road; there were no more places that we can go to.

Eventually, the fighting died down, we were allowed to go back momentarily to the movie house to get the things that we need but we were not allowed to stay there, so at least we could have some clothes to change. But we still got no showers. Have any of you tried not to shower for a month? The first thing I experienced was there was some pattern developed on my skin. I think it was the dust and your perspiration that settled on your skin so you started to look like a grey patterned gecko. Eventually, the situation got better, I ventured out in the daytime to look for some friends of mine. Luu Thai was one of my closest friends. His house is facing the municipal bus stop where all the buses would arrive and depart from there to and from other towns such as Vinh Long and Saigon. His Mom died when he was young, he lived with his father and his stepmother both of whom were really nice to me every time I hang out at his place. He also had a younger sister, perhaps ten years old. His family was in the grain business. They carried all kinds of grain, red, green and black beans, rice and etc.. So at least, one would not have to worry about being hungry there. And besides, those sacks of grains could make good shelters just in case. After we first re-connected, knowing our situation, he said his family wanted to
help. And of course, I told them the first thing we needed, a shower for everyone. I went back to the place we stayed and told my family.

And of course I was treated like a hero! Mind you that this is a cold shower! Normally, we would boil some water and mixed it with some cold water for the shower, but at a time like that, that was out of the question. A simple and typical bathroom, a big steel vat filled with water and an empty plastic can that floats on water was all that you need. And of course a piece of Savon Vietnam with the profile of a woman's face embossed on it. American soap like Dial or Camay would wash and smell better but that would be too luxurious. The first splash of water after a month of deprivation is something worth taking time to enjoy. Gosh! The water was so cold, but my body got used to it real quick after a few more splashes. Then came the wonderful soap that lathered all over my body, watching all the flowery patterns disappearing from my skin were such a delight. A sense of freshness and a new me came over me. I put on my pajamas and walked out the bathroom hungry. I don't actually recall how it was in Saigon any more but down there in that small town. A lot of people walked around town in the daytime comfortably in their pajamas. It was such a customary things that you would not even think twice about doing it because everybody else were doing it. The next thing Luu Thai gave me was a pack of Salem since I smoked at the time. He told me not to tell anybody else since we had other friends that came by too. Wow! The first puff was so wonderful, the nicotine rush from a Salem sent me to where a cupful of Nyquil would do for you. My arms and body felt so relaxed, I just let it go, let it go...

Nah! I am not going back to that habit, don't worry...

Eventually, his parent invited us to come and stay in their house as they made a makeshift area for our family in their vast warehouse, which is in the back of the first floor. We moved there because it would be a much better place and we felt like we were
in the way of the other family for so long. After we moved to Luu Thai's house not very long, about a few days, we got re-connected with my father in Saigon. He chartered a Cessna to come down there and picked us up. I left Vinh Binh with mixed emotions. We fed up of living in other people's house and we saw no way of reconstructing the movie house, we just had to move on. When we settled down back in Saigon, I had time to think about it and realized that my whole childhood world is gone. For the first few years, I often reflected about the people, the movie house, my friends, the various places that we used to have such a good times. There was no longer any excuse to go back there any more!

Farewell Tra Vinh, farewell my childhood and farewell my field of dreams!

Additional notes:

1968 was the beginning of a string of terrible years culminating in the defeat of the government of South Vietnam in 1975. The Tet offensive in 1968 was a coordinated attack from the local guerillas of the communist forces on all the major cities throughout Central and South Vietnam. It was an attempt to take over the South by surprise and by force. They were eventually routed, but not before causing a lot of damages in the inner cities. After this battle, the local guerillas forces suffered a lot of loss in personnel. That was when the time was ripe for the North Vietnamese to come down and help, moving closer down to the South to fill in the void.

The conflict in Vietnam cost the American side around fifty eight thousands lives, the Vietnamese, both the North and the South altogether between one to two millions lives.

In recent years, Vietnam and America re-established diplomatic relationship, business as usual...

2006-12-01T02:43:00.000-08:00

For Better Or For Worse

December 2003
Lawrence Tan

I believe everything in life is relative. Everything including what we term as the good and the bad, the joys and the sufferings, the pretty and the ugly things and obviously even our own existence are relative to time and space. Sometimes, the good can be found in the bad, beauty can be found in the ugly and vice versa. We would fail miserably in the long run if we judge and handle everything in life by the principle of just black and white. Even in the digital world, there is something called fuzzy logic.

I learn that time will heal all, if it does not, then the subject will eventually expire, therefore the sufferings will dissipate, hence time will definitely heal. The scopes of things around us depend very much on our perspective. Again, this perspective can shift as we move to another environment or as time goes by. Thus the magnitude and the significance of everything that happens around us vary depending on where we are at in relation to time and space. The more focused the perspective, the more intensified the feelings will be. On the contrary, in a wider perspective, all things seem to be less serious. A life is so insignificant in the universe where distance is measured in terms of light years and time in millions of years.

Once again, when my family left Trà Vinh(Vinh Binh), we left behind all we had. In some way, this time was not as drastic as when we left our ancestral home in Haiphong, but it was no less pain. We left a lot of friends, acquaintances, and a way of life behind. I left my friends and my dear town where I grew up each summer in the most significant years of my life. It was there that I experienced the change in me, from a boy to an adolescent and into a young man. It was there that I felt joy and happiness. It was there that I hung my dreams on every summer. It was there that I felt true love and attentions from my grandmother who always worried for my well-being. After all, I am her first grandson of her eldest boy; this ranking bears some important significance in traditional Chinese family. Sometimes I told her that she worried too much, but deep down inside, I felt pampered, I felt loved and warmth. And I realized that the attention I got would only last through the summer until I had to return to Saigon.

As each summer concluded, part of me was excited thinking about going back to my high school(JJR) and starting a whole new school year, but of course my heart was heavy on the morning when I had to board the 6:00AM bus and leaving my grandparents, my uncle and my kid brother behind for another year. While I was always excited during the first nights in Vinh Binh at the beginning of the summer, I spent my first nights back in Saigon reminiscing my summer and the good time I had, often with tears on the pillow. However, I always looked forward to the day when I could go and pick up the books at school for the new school year. Like every year, the line was never too bad; we had to show a slip of paper (perhaps showing that the tuition is paid?) to a school official behind a window of an office, he then handed out a pile of books. We rarely got any new books, most of them were used. The first thing when I got home was to find a cozy corner to settle myself in and then enjoyed flipping through the books to see what would I be learning in the next coming school year.

After the New Year (1968, Tet Mau Than), we were once again uprooted and displaced. The life adjustment up in Saigon was hard. We had nothing left. People no longer greeted and treated us warmly as when we migrated from the North bringing along some wealth with us. When we got back to Saigon, I went back to my relatives’ home where I stayed at the time, off the Cao Thang street in Saigon. My grandparents, my uncle and my brother temporary settled on the top floor of my granduncle (my grandmother’s brother) house on Nguyen Trai Street in Cholon. The top floor was really a terrace with a tin roof; there wasn’t really any rooms per say. So basically they camped there until we figured out the next move. While they stayed there, my granduncle got sick and passed away. After he was no longer there, we started to hear unpleasant comments from the relatives. Sometimes those words even came from my grandma’s friends, those who used to be part of her entourage in the old days. Now they hung around our relatives instead. Since they stayed on top of the second floor, it was most difficult for my grandfather to walk those flights of stairs everyday because of his limp. On the rainy days, they used those large plastic sheets to deflect the rain from all the open sides of the terrace. Every time I thought about the general situation of our family, I felt deeply saddened. From a long and well-established family in the North, now we were reduced to almost homeless and subjected to all kinds of humiliations! My father lived in a flat closed to the Hoa Binh marketplace but it could not accommodate our whole family. I came and visited them mostly on the weekends. I believe I went and visited my Mom in NhaTrang that summer.

Eventually, my uncle found a job working as a foreman for a company called Amtraco, across the river in Khanh Hoi. It was a favor from a long time friend, Gia’. He was then some kind of a big wig there. He had his own office and a chauffeur. He used to hang around with my uncle during the first years in Saigon when we were still relatively well-off. My uncle foolishly burnt a lot of money in parties and with friends. I remembered him well; back then, like a number of others, he used to call my uncle ‘Anh Cuong’, a form of respect, all the time. My uncle got me a summer job at Amtraco. At times, I heard Gia yelling “Cuong! Where the heck are you?”, and my uncle would say “Yes Sir, I am right here!” I was so enraged, but that was life, wasn’t it? Seeing that I was upset, my uncle consoled me “Don’t you worry about it. After all, that’s life! All you have to do is work and study hard”. My uncle used to be a proud and carefree person; he now accepted the realities of life and took its beatings with stride. For that, I loved him more. As a young man with plenty of pride, my heart bled for him… Before this job, I was tutoring for pocket money. It was not so bad, but the job in Amtraco got me twice the money for working on the weekends only. I still remember the lunches in a humble food stand in the neighborhood across from our workplace. I loved the pickled mustard and the sliced pork in jelly and being with my uncle. I felt he was even closer to me than my father. At this time of his life, his kids, a daughter and a son, lived with their Mom. They were brainwashed and forbidden to come and visit him. As I grew older and became a father myself, I then realized how deeply that had hurt him. One good thing in Amtraco was that there was an old American manager, Mr. Tallyho. I got to practice my English with him and eventually I tutored him and a friend of his, a black man, elementary French! Of course I charged each one of them twice as much as the kids I used to tutor before. That was pretty good money on top of my salary in Amtraco as part time jobs. It was there that I read my very first English book ever, The World of Suzy Wong, at lunch and break times.

During this time we had moved out of our relatives’ house and to the Chi La(ng district. We rented a flat in a back alley. The owner is a retired Major in the Vietnamese Army. His house faced the Chi La(ng street. The back of his house was facing us across a narrow alley. My father and I then moved back there with them. It was the first time in many years we were reunited and lived together again as a family. The flat was tiny; we all lived in one room. My grandma and my brother on one bed, my grandfather in his favorite plastic chair, my uncle took the sofa, my father and I took the rest of the room on the floor. There were two more floors above us; each occupied by a bargirl. There was no other access except going through our floor. Each night each one of them brought in with them a different GI. Next to the door, there was a tiny desk against a window. I hung a light bulb there and spent a lot of nights studying for my TuTai II(equivalent to SAT). The older I got the more I felt the untold pains and the humiliations of my grandparents. Sometimes I saw my grandfather going through his check stubs of the transactions from his better days when we had our business, servants, chauffeur and almost a permanent entourage of friends who hang around our family for fun. I started to develop a pretty bitter attitude towards life. I refused to participate in any large gatherings that involve the relatives. I felt their hypocrisy and did not feel that I belong to those crowds no more.

At the time, I studied in Thuong Hien and my brother was in some school close to the movie theater Khai Hoan. I had a Honda. I dropped him there in the morning and picked him up after school. My grandmother managed to have some friends about her age to help her to cook meals in a makeshift kitchen in the open for us every day. I had a hard time adjusting to that level of poverty. That was the time when I saw some of my friends started having girl friends, but I realized that as far as for me, under the circumstances, that was really out of the question. I did not want to know anybody, I was afraid that she would know where I live. At the time, the only JJR friend I still visited sometimes but also fairly infrequently was Be Duc Viet who lived with his mom and his sister on a small street close to the Truong Minh Giang bridge.

Eventually my father got a job offer from the family of Mr. Lam Cat to work in Cam Ranh, a town in the Southern tip of VietNam. Mrs. Cat was a good friend of my grand-mother, they know each other since the early days in Saigon. Mr. Cat and his sons were very successful entrepreneurs getting lucrative construction contracts from the Americans. I believe Lam Quang, his youngest son, now is the owner of the well-known restaurant Vien Dong in Southern California.

One morning in the summer of 1969, my grandfather suffered an aneurysm and fell in the bathroom. He called out for my brother who was close by; he panicked and in turn called me. I ran back from the front of the house and both of us carried him onto a chair. While my uncle ran out and tried to call an ambulance, I talked to him. His speech started to slur, I quietly tried to pinch his right arm and realized that he no longer could feel any pain. He told my grandmother that he wanted some congee and asked me to change him in his best suit. I was scared but my brother and I helped him to put on his jacket and his pair of pants. He asked me to help him to comb his hair and I respectfully did. By the time the ambulance arrived he drifted into unconsciousness. When I got to the hospital on my Honda, a young doctor came out of the emergency room and said “He had left”. I took it rather calmly at first, but within a few minutes I burst in tears realizing that I had lost him. He was just there this morning! I slumped down from where I stood, holding my head against my knees, his images of the different times in my life started to parade through my mind. His last image was sitting in front of our place in Chi Lang, holding a bunch of check stubs, he’d got that distant look of a beaten and defeated man reminiscing the old times. At that image, a thought came to my mind that was may be it was time for him to stop suffering. May be he had paid off his debts; I should let him go. My brother helped me to clean his body for the very last time with a piece of cloth and some warm water. The next morning when I woke up, seeing his old beaten yellow plastic chair, I started to cry like a baby. I missed him so much! I remembered grandma put her hand on my head comforting me. My father flew back in time from Cam Ranh for his funeral.

During grandpa’s funeral, I took away the incense sticks from some of the old family friends while they were paying respect to my grandfather for the last time, and I asked them to leave! The turncoats that now preoccupied themselves to badmouth our family because we were no longer what we used to be. My uncle stopped me but he did not apologize to those people. Since our place was so tiny, his images were everywhere in our minds. We decided to move.

From Chi Lang we rent and moved into a larger and more decent flat on the Tran Hoang Quan Street in Cholon, pretty close to the Tiger Beer and the soccer stadium Cong Hoa. I believe that was in an ‘Officers’ Quarter’, owned by a major in the VN Air Force, a family friend. As time went by, we started to adjust to the new place. My uncle’s job was getting better and one day, he brought home a small refrigerator. Then a few months later he brought home a black and white TV. Even though the place was much better than Chi Lang, it was still very small for our family. However, it started to feel like a home.

The year was 1970. Luu Thai, my closest friend from Vinh Binh caught up with me. We corresponded every now and then after my family moved to Saigon. He invited us to go back to Vinh Binh to attend his wedding. His family had chartered a plane with all his and his bride’s relatives from Saigon/Cholon. At the thought of going back there, I was so happy. I just could not wait. My uncle and I accepted the invitation. By this time, I started my first year of study in Van Hanh University. My uncle flew with me down to Vinh Binh. My mind was totally preoccupied with the excitements and the expectations to see the old friends and the old place.

2006-12-01T02:40:00.000-08:00

Heartbeats of the Fall

November 2003
Lawrence Tan

The night was young and the moon was bright
The music filled the air and the hold was tight
I danced through the evening and into the morning
But my heart still soaked in loneliness and wandering

Was it the music, the crowd, the smoke or the night?
I wanted to give myself up and my chest was so tight
I needed more beer and wine until the evening was ripe
Hopefully to free myself from the illusions of life

I know I got the songs and the sways
It is just I have to deliver them someday
As I close my eyes, the romantic melodies
Lull me into my own world of realities

Through your window, under the moon and the stars
Like my soul, your beloved tree bears a few scars
Like all willows on a pond, my soul weeps
At the thought of a face my heart forever keeps

I knew it was wrong, it had never been right
But it all seemed so fine under that moonlight
Was it her eyes, her mouth or her hair?
That made the ‘me’ say I don’t really care

Is that still love or is that hate
I can’t tell because I am truly dazed
Please help me to get out of this quagmire
Please help me to extinguish this fire

2006-12-01T02:37:00.000-08:00

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”.

2006-12-01T02:34:00.000-08:00

Starting Over

July 2002
Lawrence Tan

Do I believe in destiny? Of course I do, but in a loose sense. I believe every one has a destiny. I believe that when we are born, we are already pre-programmed, equipped with certain genes, level of intelligence and a variety of intuitions with different potential degrees of intensity. I believe that is how destiny is defined. In other words, due to how we are equipped, we are pretty much limited in the extent of what we can do in a general sense. In addition to this fundamental premise, we should not ignore the environmental elements that influence our formation as a person. As weak as we are as human beings, the external influences are the catalysts that promote certain traits that we had been born with and had been so far dormant. The level of environmental influences and the degree of intensities of certain potentials that we are born with play a determinant role of our behavioral promotions. At times, these behaviors, once taken shapes, are very hard to reverse. As intelligent as we are, sometimes we can even manipulate and position others or ourselves under certain selected external influences. In that, we have some flexibility. This flexibility is in my humble opinion, often misunderstood as we are the masters of our own destiny. I believe that these thoughts of mine are very simplistic and fundamental; there must be other rules and exceptions.

We are Cantonese; my ancestors are from China and apparently came and settled in North Vietnam many years ago. It would not surprise me if some of them married Vietnamese wives along the ancestry line, besides their Chinese wives. The name in Cantonese is Tsaun (I make this spelling up myself, as close as I pronounce it in Cantonese), or Chin in Mandarin. I was told that this name actually derived from North of China and it bears the same official name of the era of the First Emperor. That was the guy who mistrusted the literates, buried the scholars alive, burnt a lot of books and united a big part of China and erected one of the Seven Wonders of the World, the Great Wall of China. Tsaun is a pretty rare name and who knows? We might be related to The Emporor!

Chin Tzu Nien named all his grandchildren. All of us have the middle name of Yat (‘One’, the simplest Chinese character with just one horizontal stroke). Within the context of the names, it means the only and the best. In the order of age, I am Yat Sine (One Goodness), followed by Yat Oi (One Love), Yat Siu (One Smile), Yat Ming (One Brightness), Yat King (One Sacred Scripture) and Yat Yuen (One (good) Word). In the Chinese tradition, the ranking among all cousins are by age, in the Vietnamese tradition, the kids of the elder sibling are always ranked higher than those of the junior one.

Touched down in Saigon, we settled in a walled villa on Charles DeGaulle Boulevard. At the time, a number of major streets in Saigon still bear French names. Over time, they all changed to Vietnamese names. Charles DeGaulle Blvd. extends from the Saigon Centerville to the TanSonNhut Airport. The majority of its length, towards the Centerville, was lined with large and tall tamarind trees. The design of a lot of the major streets in Saigon had heavy French influence. The French had been in Vietnam for about one hundred years and exerted their influence in various aspects in the Vietnamese culture. From architecture, to food and the flair of savoir-vivre, the French culture was for a long while, regarded as prestigious and of a higher stature. I guess that was why my family sent me to a French school.

The trees on both sides of the streets formed a canopy of shades to the pedestrians as well as the traffic. It was soothing to see the perspective formed by the symmetrically planted trees on the sidewalks. In my adolescent years, when I had to walk to and from school, I felt so protected by the shade of the canopy during those warm days. I felt so peaceful and soothing as the occasional gusts of wind rustled the canopy. To my pleasant surprise, I discovered many similar streets in Shanghai, however the sidewalks are smaller and the trees are just not as tall. The Charles DeGaulle Boulevard was later renamed to Cong Ly, meaning Justice. Not long after the American got involved in Vietnam, their civil engineers enlarged Cong Ly by cutting back the sidewalks. This decision might be due for practical reasons because the traffic had increased, but it really diminished its aesthetic value since a large number of trees were also taken down in the project. I am sure that the American advisor had also suggested to turn Cong Ly(Justice) into a one-way street. We called it jokingly the One-way Justice Street.

For the stretch of the street where we stayed, it was closer to the heart of the city rather than the airport. The Institute of Pasteur was not very far from there. Most of the residences were of middle to upper class. Each villa was walled and gated; most of them are concealed behind some tall hedges for privacy. The house we stayed was also covered from the street by tall hedges, which are adorned by a decorative cement wall fashioned in the shapes of the fans just like what we would see in some of the deck rails in the States, therefore it is very easy to spot. From the street, an iron gate on the right opens up to a gravel driveway. The house, concealed from the street, was actually situated in the far left corner of the lot. As I recalled, the lot size might have been a third of an acre, which I guess was the sizes of most of the lots on Charles DeGaulle, a pretty good size right in the city. Immediately to the left of the gate inside the lot, there was a real large tree. I had seen a variety of salamanders climbing that tree. Apparently we shared that place with some other family friends of my grandparents. They also migrated from HaiPhong, North of Vietnam. I don’t recall how long we lived there but it seemed liked a relatively short time, may be a few months. I played with some kids around my aged that belong to the other family. In the monsoon season, there were a lot of heavy showers, we all liked to run out to the yard and played in the heavy downpour wearing only our shorts. After the rain, I liked to drag my toy car by a string around the yard, going through the potholes filled with rainwater, muddy sometimes. As the car disappeared under the water and emerged on the other side of the puddle, it made me feel it really came alive! There was a kid, a few years older than me, he likes walking around with his slingshot and he was good at it, hunting for chameleons and salamanders. I saw him shooting down some of these creatures from the big tree. It was so disgusting seeing those creatures destroyed and dying in agony. I don’t know what it is but I recall there was one red creature with golden eyes. I don’t think I ever saw something like that since then.

When we moved out of the house, I never saw those kids again for a long time. I had all forgotten about them, not knowing who they are. Over the years, their grandmother often visited my grandparents and I did not even know that she was related to those kids. Around fifteen years later, when I was in a military camp for college students (we were required to attend a military camp for about a month each year), I ran into one of those kids again. He was in my squad; he spoke Vietnamese with the northern accent. One evening, when we chat, we discovered that our families actually knew each other. He was a nice guy and we became instantly attached. His name is Phan. A few years later, his older brother, the chameleons hunter, died of a heart complication at 24 years old. I was at my job when I heard the news. I did not understand why, but I dashed to the hospital morgue at lunchtime and look for his brother. The morgue is air conditioned and built with a number of cement beds. Most of the beds are occupied. Each cadaver is fully covered with a blanket. The guy who took me in there, walked around with me and uncover each one for me to find Phan’s brother. I could not believe it; he was so young, lying there just like sleeping. I felt so sorry for him and his family, no one would feel comfortable lying on those cement beds, and it was so cold there. I felt sorry for his parents too. I went to his funeral. When the procession was heading down to the cemetery, his parents, according to our tradition, had to stay behind; all they could do was wailing and crying, because parents are not supposed to bury their children. Phan dated his second cousin and later married her. I saw her only once when they dated. She was kind of short, even for an Asian woman standard, but she was very pretty. I believe that Phan came to the States in the early nineties and settled somewhere in the Washington State. Some of my relatives told me about him and I tracked him down somehow. I talked to him a few times and now we have lost contact.

From there, we moved to 91 Testard St (Tran Quy Cap). That was when I believe I started attending Kindergarten.

2006-12-01T02:27:00.000-08:00

Faded Photographs

January 2004
Lawrence Tan

Do I believe in religion? Of course, I do BELIEVE in religion, only the part where it brings peace to people on earth. I only accept things that I can understand. Admittedly, I am very limited as a person. I am very judgmental in that if I cannot comprehend or accept certain explanations, I attribute this as a failure of my teachers. No, I do not have a lot of blind faith; that cost a lot of money and besides, I hate that people try to manipulate me. I do not believe in miracles, everything must have an explanation. Maybe the explanations for certain phenomenon are sometimes beyond our capability of understanding, but that does not make them miracles. Are we still foolish enough to think that our God’ is the only true God, and all others are just idolatry? Who are we to declare such an arrogant statement? Who give us the right to go out and ‘rescue’ other people by attempting to yank them off their own believes and get them to ‘join’ our cause, disregarding the consequence of tearing the fabric and the order of their society and culture down? We do all that to accumulate more ‘credits’ for ourselves, closer to a ticket to heaven? Should we call all that egoism or selfishness? I believe that it is that very condescending attitude that directly or indirectly contributes to the sufferings of humanity, all in the name of God! In the history of humanity, more people died in religious wars or because of religions. Have we not seen enough?

Please do not get me wrong, religion is very important to a lot of persons. Religion is like nourishment to our souls. It teaches us to manifest and maintain our good side. The problem is there is a shortage of genuine and good teachers.

I believe everybody out there has an agenda, no matter how miniscule or grandiose. All rituals are just traditions evolved in human communities and societies over time; there is
nothing godly about them. To me they are just forms of submissions. In my mind, religious persons are those that live by their codes, truly believe in and practice what they are taught. As oppose to those that only seek some short moments of inner peace or just dutifully satisfy a habitual urge and revert to their alternative behaviors that sometimes contradict to the teachings that they receive.

True religion and God is in one’s heart. The best way of preaching and sharing is to live our own lives according to the principles and values that we believe in. There is no need to show off, argue, debate or coerce.

The year must be some time in 1960; we woke up with the curfew imposed all over town. Everybody supposed to stay inside; we all gathered around the radio in the house and listening to the Military Radio Station. I did not know what to make of it. The adults said that there was a coup-d’e’tat going on against the regime of the President Ngo Dinh Diem. I was a little scared and excited; the only thing I know was that that day, we did not have to go to school. So I had to figure out what do to the whole day inside with my cousins, Nhat Ai and Nhat Minh.

The house is at 142 Vo Tanh (Saigon). Actually that was my aunt’s house; her mom bought it for her. My aunt’s family owned the jewelry store Dai Tin in Saigon. The store had the same stature as ours, Vinh Hoa, but they decided to continue their trade when settled in Saigon. Maybe my grandparents should have done the same. We were running Nam Quang in Saigon and Tay Do in Can Tho at the time. I rarely went out to the movie theater in those years, except when we had some good movies for kids or some special shows on stage. I was too young at the time to comprehend what was going on between my parents but my uncle and my aunt took me in. That was ok with me since I had my cousins there to play with me. All my belongings fit in a small carton box.

The houses on that street were all row house with a decent size for the middle class. The houses there were slightly elevated from the street level which required a two step threshold that spans the width of each house. The entrance to the house was not framed like most of the houses in the States but instead, was protected by a folding steel door that opened to both sides of the house, a pretty typical style for the row house in town. Inside the house, there was an electrical fan installed on the ceiling right above an open area, then a modest size dining room set, behind which was a queen size divan.

The dining room set and the divan were made of black cherry imbedded with the mother-of-pearls patterns of legendary beasts such as dragons andphhoenix and of some gold fishes. I don’t remember any sofa in the house. Perhaps my uncle and aunt never formally entertain any guest there. My uncle had a folding Table-Tennis table and had it opened up in the open area from time to time to play with his friends who dropped by the house. The divan was actually against a wall that housed the staircase that went upstairs. Beyond the staircase was a small atrium with a concrete water tank. It was customary for each house to have such a tank to save the water, just in case when the supply was cut off from time to time. During later years into the war, we lived with a daily rolling black-out for electricity too. One side of the atrium also housed the bathroom and a toilet separately. Beyond the atrium, the kitchen is in the back, where chi. Son, our cook prepared our daily meals.

On the second floor, to the left of the staircase was a catwalk which overlooked the atrium. It led to a small room in the back of the house right above the kitchen. It was used as a storeroom. It could be converted to a room for my cousin later on. The right side opened up to a sitting area where my uncle had his stereo, a bar and a mahjong table. The stereo was basically a box the size of a small table which housed some speakers and a turn table. That was where I first listened to Johnny Mathis (A Certain Smile), Nat King Cole (Around the World, Autumn Leaves), Pat Boone, Paul Anka, Neil Sedaka and etc… The bar was set against a wall that separated that entertaining area and the master bedroom. My uncle had that bar done twice; he just did not like the first design. The master bedroom had a large bed and a smaller twin size bed built against the wall. Minh slept with his parents, Ai was in the small twin bed and I slept on a straw floor mat on the floor, kind of next to the Air Conditioner of the floor. Ong Chu, an old time friend of my grandmother, tutored us a couple of nights a week. All three of us spent an hour or two with Ong Chu going through our homework upstairs on that mahjong table. The highlight of every evening during the school days was after Ong Chu left, we were always waiting for the people who sold the sweet soups coming by. The nice thing was that the soups varied mostly every evening, sometimes even from the same merchants; they varied their soups once or twice a week. Some of them come by in push-cart, others were basically on the baskets attached to a pole balanced over their shoulders. Ong Chu commuted on his old Mobilette; he had very distinct styles of his own I failed to understand. He always hung his right foot aloof the pavement instead of putting it on the pedal like his left foot while the bike was moving. He had eleven kids, nine girls and two boys. A few years later I moved out of my uncle’s house and went to live with Ong Chu’s family.

Vo Tanh Street in Saigon went from one end connecting with the Six Corners of Saigon (Nga Sau Saigon) (vs Nga Sau ChoLon where you could have those clams by the bushel (thau), I liked it with limejuice over the salt and pepper). The other end extended to the circle where Cinema Khai Hoan is and beyond and eventually ended up close to the Tran Hung Dao street. To the left of the house was an electronic store Vopco, managed by two persons, a tall and young man, probably in his late twenties who always sported a white short sleeve shirt hanging outside of his trousers and an older and shorter man in his forties. I used to hang out there from time to time. To the right of the house was a driving school where I saw a lot of miniature street signs laying around on a table that had the drawings of a variety of street patterns. That school was even smaller than the house we lived in. When the school is open, I could see the only class just by walking by outside. Towards Vopco, across the street, the famous Pho 79 was just a couple of blocks down. Next to the restaurant, the local newspapers were sold there. My uncle got his newspaper from there from time to time, the popular newspaper available at the time were Chinh Luan, Tieng Chuong and Tia Sang. A few years later Tien Phong became my favorite magazine. Much later, after I left the area, I understood that Lam Hoan Toan, my classmate, lived in the close by neighborhood.

At the time, I was in Charles DeGaulle. We paid for the school bus transportation. It actually was a customized van that opened up in the back of the vehicle. Inside we had benches along side the vehicle can seat ten to fifteen kids. The crew consisted of a driver and a helper in the back managing and helping the kids in and out of the bus. The bus was all over town Saigon/Cholon. Depending on my stop, some years I got to travel, chat and play with my favorite buddies on the bus longer than others. There were years where a bus stop would have some of our favorite snacks, we would ask the driver to give us a few minutes so that we could purchase the snack and eat it on the bus. He normally complied.

Charles DeGaulle was a private French school run by a Vietnamese. It locates on the…Charles DeGaulle Boulevard which later renamed to Cong Ly. It was not too far from the Institute of Pasteur and the Hien Vuong Street famous for its Beef and Chicken Pho. Compared to any school in the States, Charles DeGaulle was pretty small. It occupied a complex that consisted of a small main building in the middle of the lot and of a number of surrounding classrooms in the back. The gate is actually to the left of the complex. During the hours where the kids were in recess or before class in the morning, there were always a few street merchants showing up outside of the gate. The food and the money were exchanged via the open slots of the gate in between the iron bars. I remember mostly the ice scream guy who had his ice scream in a portable thermos and a person who sold the delicious flavored syrups on shaved ice, a choice of grenadine (red), menthol (green) or lemonade (yellow). To this date, I still don’t understand how those people made a living. It just could not be by just selling that stuff? They must have lived meal to meal. I am not sure if the main building might have housed a classroom or two but I know for sure it was where the office of the principal was. If you got summoned there, it meant big trouble for you. The complex in the back was a two-storied building. My first year there was in a classroom in the lower floor (12e`me). That was where I did not understand whatever my teacher told me. Coming from a Chinese school, I was at a loss most of the time. My 11e`me was in a single floor stand-alone structure right across from the Principal’s office. I used to be bullied by a kid smaller than me in 12e`me, but I must have grown faster that he did, that year he stopped bullying me. My 10e`me was in the back building, a classroom kind of next to the staircase to the second floor. That was where my teacher, a young and bored woman, used to hit me viciously on my open palms for my chicken scratches writing. The rest of my years there, 9e`me, 8e`me and 7e`me were all upstairs in the back of the complex. On the second floor, the classroom of the classes that I mentioned located respectively from the head of the staircase and into the end of the structure. There was also an open area connecting those classrooms in the back building to the second floor of the main building in the center of the lot. There was a door there, but it was always locked. We spent some time there during recess without having to go downstairs.

At the end of the day, all the buses were waiting for us inside the playground. The helpers of each bus made sure that he had all the kids before the bus left the compound. This was where I met Lang Du. At the end of the year of 7e`me, two boys (me and Lang Du) and two girls made it into Jean-Jacques-Rousseau and Marie-Curie.

2006-12-01T02:25:00.000-08:00

The Last Love Letter

Summer 2006
Lawrence Tan

Dear Zbo,

Indeed, it has really been a while, how are you? Time flies does it not? The last time we were together, it was so long ago that even the world was so different. We all have grown up and now we are growing old. All the things around us have changed, we have changed; but I know part of me has not changed, and I know that it will be the last part of me that will ever die.

I am talking about the certain kind of heartbeats that I felt every time I was with you back in the old days. I am talking about those times when we were so happy; from the first day I met you until the day we had to part. I do not know about you, but those images have never ceased to rerun in my mind. I cannot forget the time I gave you my first gift, the book of poems that I composed myself, all inspired by you. That was the first time I had ever revealed my feelings towards you, my first overture, a small gesture of love. I took a chance, not knowing how you would react. I was so afraid that you would not accept it and then I would lose you as a friend too. In retrospect, it was a risk worth taking. I cannot forget the spring rains in which we were all drenched, and our first kisses. The spring rain was cold but I felt so warm at heart. At times, we laughed ourselves silly, happy for just being together; we held each other tight to console our pain, and the time I kissed your warm tears away. Those school outings were so much fun, the picnic, the movies or just hanging out. I thought at the time, I would be so lost without you. If I lost you, nothing around me would ever make any sense any more. I never thought that it would have turned out this way; I am sorry that I was the one who broke our vow, and that was to grow old together, and left you early. Perhaps you do not know but everyday, I regret so much for making you cry. For me, after all these years, I am still a lost soul; I have never regained my balance. My life is missing something and it has not been complete. I still cannot abandon the world you are in yet. Reluctantly, I accepted my destiny, with a lot of bitterness. All these years, every time I closed my eyes, you appeared, you were always close by and offering small gestures of love such as making sure my pillow was right, my blanket in place and sometimes a goodnight kiss. You always asked me what I would like for the next meal and made sure that the burdens of my day melt away. Your presence is my life’s comfort. Oh! How I miss the scent of your body!

I apologize for being so silly. How is your family? How many grand children do you have now? Your husband must have loved you so much all these years. He would have died for you back then. He won and I lost. I saw you lately but I did not think you saw me. You looked happy. Your children seemed to take care of you well. You looked just as beautiful, even with your gray hair. My heartbeat sped up when I had a glimpse of you the other day. The same old feelings, the same old beats. I think how I feel for you is such a wonderful thing, so priceless. After all, It had sustained all these years. It was and still is so strong.

Do you remember the songs in the chorus group? I feel like all these years, those songs had kept us connected. Oh! Yes, and the popular love songs. You did not know how hard it was for me learning those songs, just to impress you. Every note and every word I sang, I sang for you. The meaning of those words now cut even deeper than you ever know. Please tell me the truth; did you fall for me because I sang those songs for you? Do you remember you told me that my love for you made you feel like the gentle tides caressed your heart? You know it; I remember every small words and gestures of love over all these years. Sometimes I thought it was all my imaginations. If I have to guess, where
you live still have four seasons. Please tell me if you still go to the pier for the evening breeze, to the beaches just to listen to the crashing waves. Do you still have the first spring rains? Tell me if they still mean something special to you or the merciless time has watered down everything. Where I am has only the darkness and the cold.

I thought time would have healed me too, but I was wrong. That is the reason why I am still hanging around here. They told me that this is my last chance to visit your world and then I have to leave my ghostly world and continue my journey into eternity. So goodbye my love, goodbye, if there is anything at all that is comforting to me is that at least I have kept my promise to you, and that is till death do us part.

2006-12-01T02:22:00.000-08:00

Mes Copines

Summer 2006
Lawrence Tan

Il semble que depuis toujours
Vraiment, j’ai des tres cheres copines
Je danse avec une, La Tristesse, pendant le jour
Et dors pres de l’autre, La Solitude, au dela de ces collines

Parfois, nous sommes tous ensemble
Meme si pour un court sejour
On raconte des histoires, pour nos coeurs tendres
Regarde des etoiles en oubliant le temps, la nuit et le jour

Pour moi, ce sont les prairies et les rivieres
Ce ne sont jamais pas trop ce qu’on demande
Chaque nuit la lune et le silence, nos ames legeres
Et comme les melodies d’amour qu’on chante

Mais cet ete la, viennent des nouvelles amies
La Joie et La Chaleur
Qui me rechauffent après les nuits avec La Melancolie
De black and white, maintenant en couleurs

Les lieux qui semblent si pres, mais aussi si loins
De Cote Vertu, Vieux Montreal, et le marche de Jean Talon
Sont des maintenant mes points faibles, neanmoins
Jusqu’a Coteau Du Lac,Valleyfield et Dorion

Mais j’en suis sur que pendant le Festival du Jazz
J’ai tombe et laisse non seulement mon ame au Nord
Quelle Ville de Fetes qu’on fait hommage!
Mais aussi mon etre et peut etre une partie de mon corps

Il semble que depuis toujours
Vraiment, j’ai des tres cheres copines
Je danse avec une, La Tristesse, pendant le jour
Et dors pres de l’autre, La Solitude, au dela de ces collines

2006-12-01T02:19:00.000-08:00

A Wrinkle in Life

December 2004
Lawrence Tan

Some years ago a friend of mine confided to me that the first time he had to lay some of the people that worked for him off had caused him not being able to eat nor sleep an entire week. He realized that each one of them had responsibilities of some kind and the reason was not performance at all, it was just a reduction in force. During difficult economic times, I guess all companies had to go through that unpleasant process. For those that had to do the dirty work, the corporate normally grease them with some kind of monetary compensation to encourage them to perform the job of the henchmen. To be fair, not all of them had any choice, but some volunteered just as a means to climb the corporate ladder; for the upper management love to have those who are willing and capable to do the dirty work for them, so that they can maintain their benign smiles. For those who were around long enough and showed having the guts to do it, the first time would still be hard. I am sure for some, it got easier every time and eventually it becomes ‘part of the job’, their second nature.

For a corporation, it all starts when the economy slows down or due to the competitions that opt for outsourcing jobs. One might not have a choice but to follow suit in order to stay competitive. It is a matter of survival. The worst kinds are those corporations that took advantage of the trend, hiding behind it and used it as a pretext to lay-off people. In reality, the periodical lay-offs are in fact part of their unstated policy. While they are carrying out the lay-off, they also at the same time quietly hiring new people. Like a sick person who needs the periodical dialysis. Then the next thing they do is to throw parties right after or throw a bone or two to those who are not affected hopefully to make them ignore about the ugly scenes or the prospect of their own future lots. Those not affected must think they were untouchable and those who were affected must have deserved it. I just think they are dead wrong. What they did not realize is all employees were humiliated every time, those who had to leave as well as those who got to stay…this time. Dignity is upheld and respected there, that is until the next round. This does not have to be the reality of capitalism.

I woke up this morning at the 6:00AM alarm from my cell phone to get Yenni ready and to take her to school. I jumped in the shower, got myself ready and changed. Then I woke her up around 6:30AM. She also had her alarm set but I just wanted to make sure she would not be late to school. Girls, you know, they took a little more time. Boys, they might even skip brushing their teeth or combing their hair. While waiting for my daughter, I usually got on the net to check my mail and the morning news. News was depressing like it had always been; always about the Iraq war and people dying. I latched my cell phone on to my belt, making sure that I had my reading glasses. Oh! Yeah, an absolute necessity for quite some years now, But this morning, I did not get to do one thing, and that is to hang the badge around my neck. I no longer needed it. I was just laid off last Tuesday, December 7th, 2004, the commemoration day for the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941.

Since then, I feel something missing in my daily routine that I have been doing for the last 30 years or so. This morning, I felt a bit dizzy and a lump in the back of my throat. I was not sure if that was anger, tears, pride or disappointment; it might just be a combination of all of those, I swallowed it. It had all been a sandcastle after all. Some friends offer consolations, others encouragements. Suddenly I felt so small, I felt losing confidence, my dignity and my ego were being slowly chipped away. If I could not get a job soon, worse things were going to happen.

Last weekend, I told Yenni that we might have to take a break on all those dance and piano lessons. I just wanted to give her a heads-up; she is a big girl now that she is in middle school. To my surprise, she was all upset. She loves to dance and I love to see her doing the things she loves. Later that evening, she hugged me and apologized for being insensitive. I told her that everything was going to be ok, that I liked to see her continue dancing and I believed that nothing was going to happen to me.

Normally, I do not make breakfast for Yenni. I drive her to the Seven Eleven on the way to school to get her a quick breakfast. She loves those Taquitos, Jalapenos and Cream Cheese. We usually buy three of them, cheaper that way, two for her and one for me. They are warm and good for the cool morning. I like a sip of the warm coffee after that too. After I drop her off at school, I head back out to Gallows Rd. I used to turn left heading towards the Toll road in Tysons and towards my office. On Wednesday, I turned right, not knowing exactly where I wanted to go. It was not even 8:00AM, nothing was open for business yet, I did not want to head back to the house so early in the morning. I guessed that from that day on, I had to learn to get accustomed to the new routine.

Of course, I had to dig out that old resume and dust it off. Well, first off, I did not know where I kept it. The last time I saw a copy of it was when we were moving, just about a year ago. I also had it on some computers in the house, but over time, either their components were swapped out, the hard disks reformatted due to crashes or replaced. I could no longer find it anywhere. A day later, I found some old floppies in my dresser, two were marked, among other things, ‘resume’. I was ecstatic. I fed them into one PC, its floppy drive did not work. I went to another PC to find out that there is no floppy drive in it. I finally took them to Felix’s PC and fed the first floppy in. A message popped up on the screen asking me to reformat the floppy. Apparently, the floppy was bad. I fed in the second floppy, a window then popped up displaying a number of files among which I recognized the file named ‘DADRES’. I double-clicked on it, the Word windows opened and voila, I found it.

During the last few days, a scene kept rerunning in my head. The rumor confirmed that Tuesday, December 7th was going to be the day of the lay-off. I woke up particularly a bit early that day. That day, Yenni went to school with her Mom. I warmed up a sandwich and made myself a cup of the Lipton tea, with some milk and sugar. I rarely ate breakfast in the house. I took my time over the breakfast, at each bite, I reflected about the morning. I told myself that today a lot of people would go home without a job. I did not know my own fate. I got into the office before 9:00 o’clock. To my surprise, I did not see the carton boxes lined up in the hallway like the last few times. I did not know what to make of it. Perhaps, the rumor was wrong. After settled in and checked my logon and mail messages. Nothing was unusual. So far, apparently everybody was ok. But when I got back to my area, I heard that Christos got affected. Ok, now it really started. I felt a sudden surge of goose bumps all over. I started to dive into my work trying not to think about it. Suddenly, there was someone swung around the corner of my aisle and I felt he was approaching my cubicle. I turned around and there he was, my director. He wanted to talk to me. I knew my time had come. I followed him to his office. He motioned me to close the door behind me. I knew this was no promotion. He unfolded a piece of paper and started reading it, as if he had been trained to do so. I listened to every word of the verdict but I did not hear anything. I just knew that I was on the list of the ‘Club 1000’, this time. As I listened to my Director reading the customary instructions, I unconsciously experienced a flashback of the period of time I was with the company, all the way from the first day of Orientation in the HQ. I had never been so happy and filled of hope. I felt like finally I had the opportunity to work with a world-class company. I was one of the luckiest persons! Whatever he said, I obediently acknowledged then wanted to say something but it did not amount to anything meaningful to my Director. I looked at him in the eyes. He seemed to be calm and I could read that he was ready to deal with my reactions. He looked like he was well prepared for this kind of assignments. That was part of his job. I did not know what was going through his head, but I knew it was not pleasant for him. No, no one would take any pleasure in doing this.

After I got back to my cubicle with the instruction sheet as what to do next, I went and said goodbye to my team and the people that I worked with. I let some of my friends in the office know via AIM. I told Rich and Mike the locations of the piece of code I was working on so that they could take over. While I was not even sure what to do, Charles showed up. His eyes all red and could not really say anything. We shook hand and I thanked him for his concern and told him that I would be ok. Then Pat and Kathy Tucker came, Sabrina just happened to be there in the vicinity. They all tried to console me. TanLe showed up and asked if I needed any help. He was Felix’s classmate in UVA and one my Table Tennis and lunch partners. Then Joe Chen and Jenny passed by. Joe also was on the list. We just shook hand and said goodbye. Jenny started to sob; I sat her down in my guest chair and asked her not to cry. I was trying to look for some tissue for her, but I forgot where I had placed it. Later on Mike, sitting across from me, offered some help. When I came back from the separation meeting, I realized that my manager, Franz, was also laid-off. I did not get a chance to say goodbye to him.

TanLe brought over two boxes and I started to pack. Mike helped me to carry those boxes out to my car. I went upstairs and said goodbye to some friends and then ready to head down to the Check-Out office. I went out to the garage and suddenly I realized that I had not said goodbye to Brigitte, but as I turned around, I realized I no longer had the badge to get in the building.

At times, when I left work late, I looked down the deserted hallway on the third floor, from my old office, I felt so happy. Well, I believe that everything that has a beginning also has an end, including our lives, good and bad times. I just wish that my kids understand and accept it.

2006-12-01T02:15:00.000-08:00

The Circle

Fall of 2004
Lawrence Tan

Whisper to the clouds, crying in the rain
Blowing in the wind, try to ease my pain
I like to watch the autumn leaves dancing
Before the distant lazy river now appearing

Have we ever paused and wondered
How far in the journey we have covered
Why always consumed and seething with anger?
Let it go…and let the good old memories take over

Yes, the end of the tunnel is near
There should be no more fear
Nor suffering nor sickness,
Just one big emptiness

I’ll call upon the sun, the moon and the stars
To witness the resurrection of my heart
The new rhythms and the glorious coronation
Leaving behind the sad old load of lucubration

Tu tha^n, te^` gia,
I don’t even know where I am at
Tri. quo^’c, bi`nh thie^n ha.
Now it is too late at sunset

Tu ta^m du+o+~ng ti’nh
I am still practicing
Tu tha^n ti’ch ddu+’c
That is always worth living

How many more Falls do we get?
Before the sun is reaching west
To sing, praise and celebrate
With love I wish I am inundated

We used to be a wholesome bunch
Shy, warm, proud but inexperienced
The war and time had scarred our souls
Now stubborn, quarrelsome and cold

I was told that all good time will come to an end
My time with you, so soon, already run into a bend
I am forever proud to have you all
To be part of my life, my childhood, standing tall

As I travel the rest of my way
No need to cry over the good old days
For I know at the end of this journey
I’ll be right at the beginning of my story

2006-12-01T02:10:00.000-08:00

Moon and Stars

January 2004
Lawrence Tan

Do I believe in love? Definitely. Love could be found in just passing moments. Love could be long lasting. Love is such a beautiful thing, like a ‘perle de rosee’, like the morning dew that condenses on the leaves of the trees. Love could be deep and intense like an undercurrent. Love liberates a person from just focusing on oneself and shifts one’s mind and focus to others. Love renders a person willing to give and sacrifice. Love is a priceless jewel. Love is like the sap of a tree; the moment we lose the feeling of love or become incapable of love, we effectively become nothing more than a dying tree.

The summer of 1970 in Saigon was as hot and humid as ever. It would have been like any other summer and blurred together in my memory. But it turned out that was not the case. My uncle and I were heading back to Vinh Binh at Luu Thai’s invitations to his wedding.

Luu Thai family was from the Trieu Chau clan. His Mom passed away when he was very young. His father remarried to a gentle and nice woman. He called her Ah Kiem(aunt) and his father Ah Cu(uncle). I had also seen this tradition in some Vietnamese families, especially those that were from the North. Actually, similar traditions do exist in the Chinese and Vietnamese families where some members of a family would choose to address to other members in the family using the titles that their own kids would use. For example, a married woman living in her husband’s family would call his younger brother, her brother-in-law ‘uncle’.

Luu Thai had a step-sister about 10 years younger than he was, Ah Muay. She was born with a limp, a cute and shy little girl. Luu Thai loved her very much. His step-mom loved and took care of him since she took over his mother’s place. His father needed an assistant, so he brought in a trusted member of the family, his own nephew. At times, this cousin of Luu Thai would do the travel to other towns to collect the money from the customers. One summer, I heard that he took the money collected from a whole trip, the sum of fifty thousands piasters, and disappeared altogether. He decided to go and have some fun as he thought he worked hard and deserved it. A month later, he turned up in some other relative’s house and sent in his apologies to Luu Thai’s father. He forgave his nephew’s foolishness; the young man eventually came back and continued to work for his uncle.

Luu Thaí’s house is about a five minute walk from Cinema Phu Vinh. From there I would turn right, passed by the local dive Hong La.c and Manh’s house, and crossed the street to my left. That row of houses faced directly the inter-cities bus terminal, separated by a street. The terminal was basically an open square of approximately two hundred yards on each side, like a parking lot, surrounded by three busy streets lined with tall tamarind trees and ended with a row of stores facing directly opposite to Luu Thaí’s house. When the buses arrived, they always parked in the curb heads in facing those stores.

On Luu Thai’s block, the first house there at the corner was Minh Loi, a wholesale store of different kinds of cookies, biscuits and confections. The rumor had it at the time was that the store made lots of money by selling biscuits to the guerilla forces, but obviously nobody had any proof. Luu Tha’i lived two doors down. Two girls, his schoolmates were living in the houses next to each side of his house. Our group of friends, boys and girls alike, were from both Vietnamese and Chinese ethnics. The Chinese kids themselves spoke different dialects at home, therefore all of us always communicated in the common language that we all knew…Vietnamese since nobody would understand anybody else if we were to speak our own dialects. In fact there were a lot of Chinese kids there who spoke Vietnamese much better than their own dialects. The accent down there was predominantly heavily southern, accentuated by some distinctly regional twists. As a matter of fact, to these days we still can find a lot of Chinese migrated to the States who speak only Vietnamese within their families. I found this particularly true for the younger generation kids from the countryside or smaller towns.

Most of the grandparents of my friends did not speak any Vietnamese. Their parents varied from some who could speak good Vietnamese to those that spoke some pidgin Vietnamese laden with the Chinese accent. However, I was the only one there who spoke Vietnamese with a Northern accent, which were somewhat unusual down there, in the Western Region. Some of the Chinese kids down there went to the only local Chinese school which adhered to a Vietnamese curriculum. The school also taught them Chinese (literature) and Mandarin (the national language). Even though I did not speak any Mandarin at all, but I could tell that they might speak Mandarin fluently but with a very heavy Vietnamese accent!

Luu Thai’s family was in the grains business. His house was stacked with all kinds in big burlap bags. Rice, and all kinds of dried beans, black bean, red been, green bean, soy bean and etc…His house was actually extended to a connected warehouse in the back, always filled with bags of grains. Luu Thai’s bride to be was from Cho Moi (close to Cholon/Saigon), her family was also Trieu Chau. At first, I had no idea where and how he met her. It turned out that it was via a matchmaker. Poor guy! He just turned twenty years old and his father already decided that he needed to settle down and learn to help him to run his business. Who could he trust more than his own son? At the time, we had no idea; now looking back, that was awfully early to start a family and shoulder serious responsibilities. But the folks in the countryside seemed to always marry young. Life was simple with really not much else to do.

From the very beginning of the trip, I was no doubt very excited. Even though that time was quite different, but nevertheless I would be able to see the old friends. I did not know what to expect since we were at the age where we changed, physically and emotionally, almost every year. We had the instructions to meet Luu Thai’s relatives in TanSonNhut and board the plane with many people that I did not think I knew before. Luu Thaí’s family chartered the plane. Most of the guests on the plane spoke Trieu Chau, so my uncle and I stayed quiet throughout the flight. The plane landed safely in the local runway of a very spartan ‘airport’, about ten kilometers from town. Already, there was a fleet of Pedi cabs (xe loi) waiting for us. We traveled light, so my uncle and I could snuggly fit in just one Pedi cab with our bags at our feet. The Pedi cabs down there were of a different design than the ones up in Saigon. The customer carriage was on two wheels anchored to the back of a bicycle or a motorcycle. In Saigon, the Pedi cabs were of an integrated design and the customer carriages were in front of the vehicles. Our hosts also arranged our lodging and the Pedi cabs were told where we would be staying.

As we meandered our way into town, I felt this enormous elation, feeling like coming home, even though it was home no more. We passed by the Square Pond (Ao Vuong), where I had some memories there. My two friends including Luu Thaí and I carried three girls on the back of the bicycles all the way to the edge of town and picnicked at Ao Vuong. Even though we were all good friends, I always felt like an outsider with the girls since I did not go to school with them down there. Before we departed, it seemed like there was a moment of awkwardness as we tried to pair up on the bicycles. However, something was telling me that there was a quiet conspiracy among the girls of whom they were going to saddle with. They were all nice girls; I did not have any preference. During the whole trip there, the girls sitting with both of their legs on one side of the bikes, would try to hold on to the edge of the boys’ saddles as much as possible and avoid putting their arms around the boys’ waists. That would be too obvious; it would be an open admission and declaration. We were all good friends for as long as I remembered, but that particular year, I felt that something changed and sometimes I did not know how to comport myself in front of the girls. The girls had always seemed to be transparent to me; but for some reasons, that year things started to change.

At the edge of the pond, there was a tall tree with a stump up high grew out of its main trunk that looked like the head of the Buddha Sakya Muni. The local people believed it was a religious phenomenon, and we could see what was left of the various
offerings of fruits and incense sticks around that particular tree.

The birds and the small animals must have a feast there. We found a clean spot and spread a sheet to sit down. I enjoyed the open space, the quietness, the light breeze that caused the slight and occasional rustles of the leaves, the reflecting pond and of course the company. We all enjoyed the summer rolls, the cured pork (nem) and the fruits that the girls brought with them. The good snack was washed down with the soda drinks. Everyone started out to be shy but the conversation did warm up as time went by. I felt that the subjects of the conversations were not really that important, I paid more attention to who was actually after whom. A stealing glance or a small gesture of care would be enough to betray their hearts. We spent about an hour there then we decided to head back before the sun went down. A few days later, we never saw those girls again for a while. We learnt that somehow their parents knew about our little excursion and got furious because that they went out with boys and dared to go to the edge of the town which was deemed very unsafe. We boys did not know that, as we did not know a lot of things at that age. So they were all grounded for a while.

On our trip into town from the airport, I looked at all the houses in the edge of the town as they passed me by. I stared at each boy and girl at around my age just to see if I could recognize anyone, just to see if anyone would recognize me. As we were going through the center of the town, I recognized the familiar stores; I felt I had never left this town. I took a deep breath and quietly closed my eyes for a moment. I was happy beyond words. Here was the store Du Long, they sent their son to Taberd Saigon and the kid turned into a jerk. I did not think he actually learnt any French, all he learnt was swearing and cursing. That boy used to be so shy, until he picked up all the bad sides of things in just one lousy school year in Saigon. Over there was the jewelry store of a friend of mine who was riding around town with his own Vespa. Oh! Yes, there, that’s the bookstore of another friend; she was such a pretty girl, a mixture of Vietnamese and Khmer. Ah! There it was! Our favorite Chinese restaurant, Tuy Huong, where I used to go and get the carryout of the best roast pork in town. And my favorite billiard place was still there! The two kids who lived and grew up in that billiard place (their family business) were very good at it. They used to give me handicaps, but I would still loose to them most of the time. Yep, they would grow up to be good hustlers in billiard halls! Even the occasional gusts of wind that kicked off bouts of dust into visibly noticeable swirls across the streets seemed to tell me that I was home indeed. Ah! The temple with its snack merchants…sometimes we went there in the evening. We were taken to a local hotel in town. It was a twenty minutes walk from the Hotel to Luu Thai’s house. However, because of the fare was so cheap, most of the time we use the Pedi cabs.

After we settled in the hotel, I took a shower and changed. I was ready to go out. I was so energized in spite of the flight. By the time my uncle was ready, the sun started setting. We left the hotel together on a Pedi cab and headed out to Luu Thai’s house. The town was so small that it actually did not have any building at all. Most of the houses were two stories high; occasionally a well-to-do family added an extra floor. The skyline of the town, the silhouettes of the roofs of the row houses started to make a good impression against the deep blue color of the sky. On top of that deep blue, only a slight trace of the orange sky left in the horizon. That was indeed my favorite time of the day, it made me feel like all activities of the town started to slow down, all the business started to wrap up for the day and the people prepared to enjoy another slow evening of a small town. It was the time for people to come home with the families, to wander comfortably in their pajamas to the local dives with friends. Suddenly, the street lamps lighted up and the whole street scenes came alive under their halos. As we approached the bus terminal, the quietness was gradually replaced by the familiar voices of Ba Van, Ut Bach Lan, Bach Tuyet or Hung Cuong in their renditions of the popular Cai Luong(opera) verses. They were broadcast from the government PAs mounted on some of the streetlight poles around the terminal. The sight, the sound, the color and the smell, yes indeed I felt warmth in my heart but yet laden with an unmistakable trace of worry and sadness. I wished I did not have to listen to the distant rumbles of the canons. I was wondering how much more time I had…

Luu Thai’s house was bustling with people of all ages. Some were local relatives; others were from Saigon/Cholon or Vinh Long. The relatives of the bride to be had never been outside of Saigon and in such a small town. The elders were enjoying their tea, obviously planning for the finishing touches for the next day’s event. Others were sitting in the rattan chairs in front of the house on the sidewalk enjoying their drinks and following their own thoughts through the cigarettes’ smoke. Luu Thai was busy making small talks with his relatives to b. He, tried to entertain the boys from the big town. My uncle was busy in many conversations catching up the time with his old friends. Only few of my friends were there. They should all show up the next day for the wedding. The girls just did not come and hang around in the evening, just a little bit too late to leave their houses. At that age, two years were quite a span of time. Some of the kids I knew seemed to be more mature, some had their appearances changed noticeably and yet some seemed never change. We were so glad to see one another as we thought that I would never be coming back to this town again.

I was trying to be helpful and asking Luu Thai for small tasks. However, my mind was occupied by only one thing; I wanted to pay a visit to cinema Phu Vinh. Finally, I excused myself. I slowly started to stroll towards the end of the block; Phu Vinh was just around the corner and down a block. I got mixed emotions. I was about to have a glimpse of our past, feeling like I was about to go and meet an old girl friend to whom I wanted so much to make
up, for whom I still had a lot of feelings but yet, I knew the feelings was not mutual. Why would going back in time never be an option? I did not know when would be the next time I would be back in this town again.

As I walked past Hong Lac, there it was! I was stunned. I found an old chair of an abandoned food stall across the street and sat myself down. The front of the cinema stayed collapsed, the rubbles were still there like a fresh wound from yesterday, after two whole years! The cinema including the row houses where we lived and Pho Map were condemned like a haunted house. The street lamps around the area were still there, but seemed to be for a new purpose, to spotlight the memorial of a lost time. I gazed intensively at the dead quiet area in front of the movie house, and with the rupture of the fourth dimension, I saw a superimposed picture of a bustling place of festivities, colored lights and sounds. Suddenly, I noticed that tears had blurred my vision. I just could not help it. Actually, I did not know whether those are the tears of pain or happiness reminiscing the past. But the feeling was short lived, it was just an illusion. Why couldn’t they even clean up and rebuild the place? How would my grandparents feel if they saw it like this? I quickly wiped off my tears, cleared my stuffy nose and walked back, not to Luu Thai’s house, but towards the marketplace, trying to stay in the shadow and to give myself time to recover before I head back there so that nobody would know that I cried. I had seen Phu Vinh once more, maybe for the last time. Goodbye Phu Vinh.

We woke up early the next day, looking forward for a busy and exciting day. I would meet the rest of my friends; I could not wait to see the girls. Despite that hot summer day, I sported a two piece suit, dark blue and a contemporary cut that fit me so well, my tailor told me so. I put on a patterned red neck tie that I bought for $10 US dollars from a relative who worked for James Lee, a clothing store serving the US personnel in Long Bi`nh, over an immaculate and new white shirt coupled with fashionable cuff links. I knew I looked good.

The bride and some of her relatives stayed in the same Hotel we were staying. Luu Thai would come with his entourage to pick her up. Actually, it was not that easy. He would have to bargain his way past a group of brothers, sisters and cousins of the bride then into her room. Luu Thai had to wear a hat. Our mission was to protect that hat and not letting the rascals of the bride to snatch it off. It was fun and part of the traditions. He would have to pay a ransom for the hat. Without it, he could not proceed towards the bride. So all of us surrounded him and one of us played his spokesman to bargain with that horde of morons. He would have to promise to treat everybody to a movie, a dim sum brunch or a fun trip to somewhere or he would simply have to write a check. I knew that custom well; I had to write a check of two hundred dollars (in 1976) to my wife’s younger sisters. But later on, she took it from them and tore it up. We saved two hundred bucks!

I joined Luu Thai’s group as soon as he, his relatives and friends approached the Hotel. The girls looked really different this time. They all seemed to be more attractive with some light make-up on, in addition to the fact that the physics of some of them had clearly developed. I had never seen them like that before. I was excited and could not wait to say hello to them. I had the feeling that some of them were staring at me, maybe due to the fact that I was away for two consecutive years and I did look different too. Or maybe they just wanted to take a glimpse of a university student from Saigon. The game of the groom and bride was soon over and everybody was happy. I did not remember what the rascals got from Luu Thai. We then all headed back to the groom’s house for more of the traditional ceremonies. While we were following the crowd of guests and watched the groom and bride performing the ceremonies, I discovered that the girls were not as shy as they appeared to be
in the beginning. Once we broke the ice, we did not have to stand on any more ceremonies. We just cracked jokes like the yesteryears. After all the main events of the morning, the guests scattered and formed into smaller groups of conversations or find a place to rest around the house. Some would go back to where they stayed and came back later for the early banquet.

A few friends and I went and changed into more comfortable clothes. I put on my jeans, sneakers and a sport shirt to help to set up the tables for the banquet. We had about four round tables on the first floor and three in the second floors. Each table sat about ten people. It was a busy little place. The food was actually prepared in the Temple across the street because the house was not equipped nor having the room to cook for that many people. I helped carrying the food trays from the Temple to the house. Each tray was covered with a large piece of paper to protect the food from the dust as we had to cross the streets. I could carry only so much food in a tray, so I was constantly shuttling from the house and the Temple to replenish the tables.

After so many of such a trip, I started to feel a little bit tired. I started to feel warm and a little bit of sweat started to form on my face and forehead. The girls were upstairs and as I walked past them there, I noticed some of them stared at me every time. I kind of felt uncomfortable. This one trip would be my last before a break, I saw two girls waiting on top of the staircase as I approached the flight of stairs from below. As I started to walk up, one of them walked down and met me in the middle of the flight and she started to use her handkerchief and gently wiped my face. I was stunned. I did not know how the react, still carrying the tray of food. Finally, I just thanked her. “My name is Hoa, Why don’t you sit down and take a break?”. Wow! Suddenly I did not feel tired anymore. I took care of the tray of food then I went and sat at their table and then the two girls piled up food on my plate. They all talked to me, but Hoa
was more aggressive. I do not remember the name of the other girl. Over the years, I had seen all of them. It was just that I did not really have anything to talk about. Now suddenly they were so forward, I did not know what to do. I just could not wipe off the smile on my face for the rest of that day.

The festivities last until the next day. Before we returned to Saigon, I managed to get the address of the other girl. She told me to write to her. The next couple of weeks back in Saigon, I still did not recover. My head was spinning with the encounter. I kicked myself being so shy and not asking Hoa’s address. So I thought about something that turned to be real stupid. I wrote to the other girl. In that letter, I asked her for Hoa’s address. I did receive a response after about a week. A short note saying that she did not have Hoa’s address, and if I am so interested in Hoa then I had to find her address myself! Oops! Eventually, I wrote to Luu Thai and asked him for it. He asked Hoa and gladly sent it to me. I started to write my first letter. We wrote to each other for a whole year. I just could not figure out why I had that many things to say then. It was such a joy every time I came home and my brother told me that I had a letter from Vinh Binh. The time went by quickly in Saigon. And then she said she wanted to come up and see me. That was very forward of hers. I was supposed to be the one who should make that move. What did she have to tell her family to travel to Saigon by herself?

I was working with my uncle and going to school at the same time. In fact I was in the process of applying for a job in USAID. My friend Tu’ told me that it was good money. He was a programmer working with computers. I did not really know what all that meant; all I cared about was how much he made. Apparently, the job offered a lot more than working part time for Amtraco.

The expectations and the excitements built up in me. I was thinking where to take her, all the good dives that I knew in town
A trip to the Botanic Garden and the Zoo would be great. We would have a lot more to talk about, this time face to face. She came up for about a week. We really did have a chance to know each other more.

Unfortunately, it was only to my disappointment. She stayed with one of her aunts in Phu Nhuan. Her family was really conservative. I had to meet her in a corner of some street close by. That kind of bothered me. Just being around her for a week, I discovered that we really did have a culture gap. Coming from the countryside and a rather conservative family, she seemed to have a little problem with my way of life, my long hair and my clothing.

We had exchanged thoughts for an entire year, so we felt we could be straightforward to each other. I felt like all those comments were not from her, she probably just wanted me to be presentable to her side of the family. Being a young man at the time, that idea alone upset me. How many more restrictions do they have? What else was wrong with me when I get closer to them? I tried to explain to her my feelings, but I did not think she knew how to handle it. It was so disappointing that after an entire year of nurturing my feelings towards a person and it turned out to be all wrong. I was really upset.

A lesson learnt. I did not want to drag on any longer; it just seemed there was not any point. I was about to go to an interview with the new job which looked financially promising to me as jobs were rare. I told her about it, she did not like the fact I would be working for the Americans and tried to distract and stop me from going. I insisted and dropped her off at her aunt’s house, and went on for my interview. That was it; I did not want to waste any more of her and my time. Two days before she went back to Vinh Binh, I told her that it would best that we forget about each other. She asked me why and cried incessantly. I did not really have a lot to say that night. I wanted to drop her off
after that conversation but it seemed like she wanted to hang on and not letting it go. She did not understand and did not hear what I had to say. She said if I had another girl, she would want to meet her before she left town. Even if I had another girlfriend at the time, I would be really foolish of me to let Hoa meet her. I ended up lying to her saying to give ourselves more time to think about it and I’d see her the next time she came up this way. I had already made up my mind and did not respond to her letters.

As time went on, I have met other people, all from Saigon of course. But I did not forget about Hoa. Even though the time we spent together was so brief, but we spent a lot of time meeting in our minds. That coup de foudre was so strong it still left a scar in me. I broke her heart. I wondered if she had survived the war, how many kids and grand kids she would have today. She may have forgiven me or she probably still hates me. A soothing and lingering feeling came over me every time I think about those days…Like a caressing evening breeze, just like something so beautiful as a precious gem, as the celestial elements that complement one another in the sky, the moon and the stars.

2006-12-01T02:02:00.000-08:00

Autumn Leaves

2003
Lawrence Tan

My heart died a long time ago
Or I thought so
Until you came along
And brought me this love song
A faint and familiar feeling
That sent my heart reeling
That’s right, a feeling that I vaguely remember
Through time I thought it has gone forever

Knowing too soon, it will be over
Without regret and I’d do it all over
Just like a yesterday’s dream
Laying besides a beautiful stream
“What do you want?” you asked
The answer is such an easy task
My trembling lips are unstoppable
But my mind is clear, this face unforgettable

I want to take you to the falls
To listen to the birds’ morning calls
Down to the market place
To your favorite maze
To get some fruits and some tea
And wherever, to a movies
I just want to be with you
One day or one eternity

“Do you miss me?” you asked
The answer is, such an easy task
Wouldn’t it be so obvious and overwhelming?
My love for you is overflowing
I wanted so much to ask you the same, clever
But unsure and afraid of the answer
“You owe me”, I uttered,
“I’ll pay you back” you countered
“No, you stole my heart and my mind”
“And no, you can’t in this lifetime!”

She is small and she is quick,
Be careful, she can get you lovesick
This life or next life, I don’t mind
As long as I will return you the favor, in kind

After you leave
The sun will still be rising
But I see no light

After you leave
The evening breeze still caressing
But I am numb, feeling nothing

After you leave
The sun will still be setting
But for me, it has never risen in the morning

After you leave
My sad love songs
Become my only sing-along

After you leave
My tears just flow better
To the tip of my tongue, they taste bitter

After you leave
My heart gets an additional load
It now carries a shadow
The image of you
In whatever I do

Please don’t look back
Just towards your future
I say I’ll be all right
I say I am a big guy
‘Cause I can handle it
Even with my broken spirit

Like an autumn leave, fallen
My heart is truly golden
To the left and to the right
It has surrendered and gave up the fight

Then helplessly carried away
By the stream in its gentle but determined way
But oh! Please, handle me with care
This precarious heart of mine, you could tear

Every night as I lay down to rest
Please just lay still on my chest
To my distant lover, I whisper
For this is almost an affair to remember…

2006-12-01T01:52:00.000-08:00

Homeward Bound

Summer 2006
Lawrence Tan

When I was still living with my grandma, every morning before I left for school, after breakfast, we always spent a few minutes praying in front of the altars of our ancestors and the protective Gods. It was a routine, she did all the praying, I stood next to her, eyes closed, head bowed, and hands clasped in the praying position with a burning incense stick, trying to focus on the familiar words and rhythm of the prayers. I remember vaguely that we prayed for good health, mind clarity, a good karma, and that I will meet many Quy Nhan in my life. The concept of ‘Quy Nhan’ can be roughly translated to ‘honorable people’; those who help us in challenging times. Etymologically, ‘Quy’ means valuable, precious, honorable and ‘Nhan’, person or character.

Sometimes in our lifetime, we unknowingly crossed path with people who through their deeds or advices, however seemingly insignificant or otherwise, helped us to shape our future or to circumvent potential serious problems. Especially while we were young, we can parallel the importance of this concept by considering the angles projections in geometry. A small misstep could propel our lives onto a totally unintended path; on the other hand, timely advices could help us to avoid awaiting troubles. In the adolescent years, most of us were in search of an identity, and eventually assumed and shaped our attitudes towards life in general. During these critical formation years, we were all heavily subjected to external influences, among which were our families, the friends that we chose, the contemporary social issues that challenged our young minds and the communities that we grew up in. Even beyond those critical years, we had to make so many decisions, big and small, in our lifetime collectively lead us to where we are today. We all know how to appreciate a helping hand at the critical or difficult moments. But we should also appreciate the smaller helps at every junction of our lives that had taken us to the threshold of the good things in life.

We have the expression of being in the right place at the right time, coincidence or luck. However, I have to believe that there must exist something in nature that is just much more than luck and coincidence; something called karma. In a general sense, karma dictates how we begin and end our lives and all the twists and turns in between. So in dire situations, if something unusual happens and steers us away from disasters, would that be the manifestations of karma? Is everyone’s karma fixed and intransigent? Is there anything that we can do to influence it?

If you are a devout Buddhist, then you would believe that there is some flexibility. You would believe that sometimes karma could be influenced by your performance of good deeds, those random deeds of kindness accrued in your lifetime. The positive effect could be bestowed on ourselves or on someone that we love. The accrued credit could manifest in our lifetime or the next. So karma is prescribed to each and every one of us, based on the principle of cause and effect. Since Buddhism believes in reincarnation, this principle takes considerations of our deeds spanning over multiple lives. Where we are at today is the direct result of our deeds in our previous life or lives, and perhaps our parents’ too. On the outset, it sounds like it is such a simple concept, isn’t it?

However, how do we explain the fact that hundreds of thousands of people’s lives got swept away within such a short time in the natural disasters that we witnessed recently? Did all those people do terrible things in the past and happened to congregate at the same spots and scheduled to meet their makers all at the same moments? There must be other rules and
principles that I don’t know. I would speculate that the natural disasters in which a large number of people lost their lives were in fact the law of ‘corrections’ of nature. The people that happened to be at those ‘hot spots’ at the wrong time were strictly random. Obviously these ‘hot spots’ override the individuals’ karma.

Confucius was once asked by one of his students: Was there such a thing as fate? His reply was: Of course, everyone has a fate or destiny but one would not want to stand next to a wall that is about to collapse. Brilliant! But I still don’t think everything could be explained. Ultimately, it does not really matter to me to prove one way or the other. We would be too pretentious to even think that we understand and try to explain the mysterious ways the world works and have all the answers. My primary naïve instinct would have led me to believe that any belief that could instill in people the sense of accountability of their deeds, beyond their current lives, so no escape even by death, would potentially exert a positive influence in the world that we live in. Unfortunately, it appears that this concept of perpetual life could also be twisted into the cause of so much misery to mankind.

Actually, the traces of the human species in the universe are so microscopic, regardless of how important we think we are, our ascent and demise, as a species would be such an insignificant event, as millions of other species come and go before and after us in the scheme of time in the universe. We just have to appreciate and enjoy the good time we have and deal with the bad time while we are still here. Perhaps we would not know how much time each one of us has, but the end would eventually come for everyone and that is a sure thing.

March 1975, the weather seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary for the end of the month in Danang. The sky is blue, the clouds are high and since we stayed on the side of a hill, the breeze was usually noticeable and pleasant. A few nights before, I had a strange dream. I dreamt of being floating off and away from some of my family members. We were separated by waters and as they waved their hands to me, we got further and further apart. I noticed that they all stood on a continent that had the shape of Vietnam. Where would I be going? Why the separation? Did that mean that I was going to die soon? I really had no idea what was coming in the days ahead…

The situation had been very tense during the last few weeks as rumors had been quietly running that the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) was advancing through the hills. There were even rumors that some of our scouts had spotted them on the distant hills, closing in the direction of the Headquarters. During the week before, the families of the commanders had evacuated and flown back to Saigon. The entire family of the lieutenant who ran the clubhouse was no longer even there, they had all left town, and that had never happened before. The loudspeakers, normally quiet, kept blaring all day long with military and patriotic songs, only interrupted every now and then by the directives of the supreme command: We will hold, we will hold till the last drop of blood. As I was on my way to the mess hall for lunch that day, I felt the atmosphere was so heavy; something big was going to happen. That evening at nightfall, some choppers flew in and out of the top of the hill where the command post was. That was not unusual at all as the commanders flew in and out every now and then. The only thing that was strange was that the choppers had all the lights off.

Besides the brief noises caused by the choppers earlier, it was rather a quiet evening. I was anxious and I could not sleep. It must have been just past midnight. Since last week, an armored and amphibious vehicle had been assigned to the junction right
off our quarter. I often stayed late and enjoyed the starry nights dreaming about when would be my next leave. What would I do when I got back to Saigon with such a short time and when would all this end. That evening I went out there enjoyed a cigarette or two and chat with the driver of the vehicle. Suddenly, the CB in the vehicle was cracking and he went for it and soon after, he jumped in the vehicle and started to drive off in a hurry towards the South gate. Something urgent was happening. While I was walking back, worried and wondering, I heard some gunshots coming from the top of the hill and then a few guys were running down the hill screaming to each other that they would run home and get their families. Later, I guessed that the gunshots were to destroy the sensitive equipments?

I had a bad feeling and hurried back to my quarter and gathered my stuffs, thinking about what personal effects to take with me. Besides the money that I had saved up, I ended up taking a bag of small canned food and some clothes, all tied around my waist, as much as I could carry not knowing where I was going to end up.

I left my quarter and joined the few people running towards the North gate. It was dangerous as it was effectively still curfew and we could be shot at. As I was passing by another quarter, I saw a few guys, still in their boxers and t-shirts brushing their teeth right outside of their housing, maybe getting ready for their round of guards. They all stopped and looked at us in astonishments. There were a few clearly confused MPs trying to stop us asking on top of their voices why were we running during curfew. As we were running past them, we told them that the NVA was coming. They were in total disbelief. I did not know where I was going, I just ran as everybody else towards the gate. I only had one or two acquaintances in that town. Besides, I was way out in the outskirt and did not know how to get to their places anyway. As I was running, the feeling of confusion and desperation set in. Home never seemed to be so far away.

As I approached the gate, all of a sudden, I noticed there was a jeep parked in the middle of the access road, already filled with people. I then realized that the driver was trying to crank the engine, in vain. I learnt that they were heading towards the Navy Yard. And at that moment, the engine started to roar; I instinctively dashed to the back of the Jeep and stepped on its spare tire and climbed up and lied on top of the vehicle, secured my grips and tried to hang on as it started to move. The driver maneuvered the jeep out on to the road and off we left the army HQs. As we passed through the deserted streets, it was still dark and so quiet except the humming of our Jeep. There were only the yellow halos of the sparse street lights that faintly exposed the houses on both sides of the streets, like a sad painting. I was thinking about the folks still in their beds sleeping so peacefully. They were about to wake up to a turbulent morning and witness a fateful day, a historical turning point of the country.

When we got close to the Navy Yard, it was already totally in chaos as hundreds of people milling about frantically. We jumped out of the jeep and ran inside to look for ways to leave the city. There was no hope as I heard that most of the boats and ships were already at sea. There, I ran into Khoi, a friend of mine who spoke with a Northern accent, and also grew up in Saigon, just like me. We instinctively stuck together. Within ten minutes, we decided to get back to the Jeep and go further down to the Navy HQs. The road there was actually carved from the side of a hill, closed to the sea level. It was a two-lane road to the HQs. There were tons of people on the road; most of them were heading towards the HQs. Some stashed most of their belongings on a pushcart on top of which sat their children; the husbands pulled and the wives pushed. Some carried the entire family of four or five on 50cc motorbikes with bags of stuffs. I could not belief what I saw, a city in disarray, in total pandemonium. When we got to the gate of the HQs, we were so hopeful that we left the key in the Jeep thinking that somebody else would find use for it and that we would be able to leave. Immediately inside the gate, I saw the body of a kid of late teens, lying in the middle of the road, in the fetus position and ignored by hundreds of people milling around. He was wearing a blue short, no shirt, blindfolded and his hands were tied behind his back. He must be a scout for the NVA. He must have been executed on the spot some time that morning. Normally, the presence of the scouts indicated that the NVA has chosen targets for their artillery; the scouts were there to help them to adjust their attacks via small radio transmitters. This thought gave me a bad premonition. As we ran past the gate, I saw so many rifles laying on the ground, thrown everywhere, most of them were M16. It must have been hundreds of them, everywhere.

It did not take long for us to realize that most of the motorboats were gone. Those that were left behind had no fuel. By this time, there were around six of us who spontaneously got together and found a small boat. We broke some of the boards that we found lying around to use them as oars. Tiny lights could be seen in the distance out there in the waters; that was where we wanted to reach. They must be ships waiting for people like us. After about half an hour trying, we gave up and got back to shore because the tide was so strong. While not knowing where to go next, one fellow suggested we should head down to some fishing villages just to see if we had better luck. I really did not know my way, so I followed them. So all of us headed towards the gate and left the HQs while more and more people were gathering on the dock hoping for the ships or boats to come back in and pick them up.

The Jeep by this time was long gone. We exited the gate and walked onto the road looking for transportation. The road ran along the coast with beautiful beaches on one side and hugged to the side of a big hill on the other. It would have been such a scenic run any other days, but not that day. I must have left the gate for more or less a few minutes when I heard strings of explosions in the HQs. People just instinctively scattered and
ran for cover. Some of us jumped into the drainage along the side of the hill. It was waist deep and dried. We crouched there for about ten to fifteen minutes until the attack stopped. Then we took our time to climb back out onto the road, making sure that it was really over. During the commotion, we got separated from some of the few guys that I was with. Then I saw the first signs of casualties. People carried the dead and the wounded on whatever means they had from the HQs, perhaps back to their families. While I was stunned, the fresh blood could be seen dripping as they walked past us. The NVA artillery discouraged people from leaving town, just like on the Highway of Horror (Highway 1) between Quang Tri and Hue in 1973.

As the two-lane road got more crowded, we decided to walk on the beach. All of a sudden, we heard a motorboat. We looked towards the waters and saw a small boat with two persons coasting the beach. It seemed like they were trying to spot their loved ones. We all sensed that that was our opportunity and told one another that we would jump on the boat. Two of the guys who still had their weapons shot across and over their heads to stop the boat. We all charged into the knee-deep water and got on the boat. We asked the boat owner to head out to the sea. It turned out that he was doing it all morning for money. All of us gave him money. I gave him all I had.

We could not tell what it was in the distance, but the boat owner knew where to take us. As we approached the floating structure, I realize that it was not a ship; it was a super large raft, much larger than the size of a tennis court, and it was already overflowing with people. As we approached the structure, a few guys with rifles pointed and yelled at us to leave or they would shoot because it was already overcrowded. At first we tried to ignore them and got closer. They then started shooting into the water, next to our boat as warnings. I had never been so desperate and felt so close to death, looking at the guns barrels. I immediately dropped on my knees and begged them to
stop shooting. The owner steered the boat away, went around and approached another side where we all jumped on the raft then the boat quickly left. While I got on the raft, I dropped my bag of canned food into the waters. Rats!

Three feet from the edge of the raft was a first set of closed chain link fence of about eight feet high all around, except a small opening for a person on each of the four sides of the raft. About two feet inside the first fence, there was a second fence with the same openings. Through a conversation with a person there, I learnt that raft was used for carrying ammunitions. Sandbags were normally stacked in between the fences all around the cargo for protection. The raft was actually in tow on cable of a ship so far away that I could barely see. It had been stationed there since the day before waiting for as long as it could. That day I did not see any sandbag but every corner was filled with people in all positions, the corridor that ran in between the fences all around the raft was also filled with people, man, women and children of all ages. Folks like us that came aboard later had to climb and sit on the top of the fences. We sat on the iron bars that ran across the top of the fences. I sat on the outer fence facing towards the inside of the raft, holding on to the bar. For a while, we could keep our balance by propping our feet against the fence in front of us. Afterwards, I had to take my shoestrings off and tied them across two fences and then put my feet on them to ease up the blood circulation of my thighs.

I believe we reached the raft right around noontime. It was warm and it was kind of stuffy down in the raft itself because of the number of people in there. I was lucky that I got up to the top of the fences; at least we got the breeze. As the day went by, more and more boats reached the raft, where we sat clearly became the premium spots. In the meantime, I became annoyed, as we did not know when we would be leaving. I was wondering if we were to wait for a few rounds of artillery shells to get the tow ship to start moving. Against the clear blue sky, there appeared a C130 Hercules cargo plane taking off towards the sea. It was far enough but I could recognize its profile. While it was still climbing, all of a sudden it released a burst of a bunch of little specks, dozens of them, which scattered behind the aircraft and eventually all fell to the sea. The plane was probably overloaded; the cargo must have been too heavy, so the pilot decided to get rid of some of the load. The fellow that sat next to me had a handheld radio. In the afternoon of that day, we learnt that those specks falling out of the airplane were not luggage as I thought; those were the people that crowded the airplane trying to escape from the city. The pilot had to release the trap door momentarily to alleviate the load during its dangerous climb. I immediately thought about those poor souls, how frightening their fall would be. Men, women and children, while falling to their eventual death, they must have regretted getting on that plane; they all had those long minutes to flash back their lives. They were still alive this morning! I wished they all died instantly when they hit the waters. While I was in shock thinking about the fate of those people, I felt a slight jerk and the raft started to move forward, southbound. According to the radio, the NVA had finally reached Danang.

There must be around four thousand people on that fateful trip. We were hungry and thirsty. We caught one guy sitting with us trying to conceal a small can of peanut butter, the kind that was part of the military issued ration C, about one or two ounces for one serving. We forced him to share with everybody around him. Everyone got to take turn to dig a finger in to get a taste of it. When I was down and inside the raft, even though it was open on the top like an atrium, due to the sheer number, the people were practically piled up on one another, same scene as we saw in the Superdome during Kathrina; it was unbearably suffocating. Those poor people had been sitting there exposed to the sun all day and could not benefit from the breeze like we did on top of the fences. Eventually, we were far enough out at sea that we lost sight of all land, just waters all around us.

Tired and hungry, I started to fall asleep by nightfall. But how could we sleep sitting up that high and tried to maintain our balance at the same time? Finally we figured out a way. While easing my posture by placing my feet on the shoestrings, my left hand held on to the iron bar I was sitting on, I leant forward and put my right hand around the neck of the guy sitting on the inner fence across and facing me while he was doing the same, placing our heads on each other’s shoulder. Talking about instant bonding! Because the distance of the two fences was pretty close, we could maintain that position for a few hours and somehow each one of us took turn and got some sleep.

All along I was thinking about my family and my loved one. I wondered if they knew what I was going through. My family must have heard over the radio about the city falling. My grandma must be worrying a lot. Just that thought made my heart sink and feel guilty. While I wondered where we would end up later, heading South was a good start. It was still dark when we woke up, and I heard some faint cry for water and then I heard more and more people started to raise their voices in desperation. It was so eerie. At first, I thought that they meant that the raft was sinking; I thought to myself, this was it; we all were going to drown. Out of an act of desperation, I climbed down and tried to motivate the people to use whatever means they had to throw the water out. And as soon as got down to the floor of the raft and asked around, I realized that that was not the problem; it was just the thirst that set in after people got beaten down by the sun the whole day. There was not anything that I could do. I had a hard time walking around down there just because people were lying everywhere in all kinds of positions.

When the sun came up the next morning, things started to get worse. I believe the babies and the older folks were the first victims due to the combination of hunger, thirst and exhaustion. There were crying everywhere. Some people lost their minds. Here, there was a bunch of young kids, stripped down to their waists, looking at us crying, asking for water. They all looked like getting sunstroke. I went out to the edge of the raft with a helmet and got some sea water and doused over them who immediately tried to drink whatever they could get their tongues on. I felt so helpless. There, a guy who went out to the edge of the raft, directly beneath where I was sitting, held up his baby and said something in the effect of ‘I never thought I had brought you here to die. Now let’s go and join your Mom’. Apparently his wife died sometime ago; he threw the lifeless baby squarely into the sea and jumped in there right after. Without mercy, the ocean swallowed both of them; they then disappeared from my sight. There was a girl with her baby at my proximity, her blouse all unbuttoned, part of her breasts exposed. She looked at me and begged if I could get some water. As innocent as I was, I looked at the baby and I asked her why she did not breast feed the baby. She replied that she ran dry already. I sprinkled a little bit of water on the face of the baby; I felt the baby reacted faintly in the eyelids, for a second anyway, but then they immediately returned to their lifeless and half closed positions. There was no doubt that the baby was dying. There was a woman who continuously fanned and singing a lullaby to her baby nearby. Another woman blurted out that the baby was dead. The people around her tried to get the baby from her, but she put up a fight and held on to the baby while she struggled to continue to sing. A few kids lied dead on the floor; their faces were covered with newspapers.

I was completely overwhelmed and stunned by the things that were happening around me. I was so weak physically and mentally crippled; my tears as well as my fear all exhausted. In order to get around on the raft, sometimes I had to step on some dead people, barefooted, since I lost my shoes. So naturally, the first order for me was to find a pair of shoes; and it was not too hard at all, there were plenty of them; all I had to do was to pick and choose for my size and strip them off from the people lying all around.

Eventually, people threw only some of the dead bodies overboard. I could not tell if all those lying around were still alive or dead. I then climbed back up to the top of the fence as my friend kept the slot for me. More misery unfolded before my eyes. There was a guy who offered money for a blanket to wrap his mother whom I saw her alive the day before. He kept her for a day or so before he released the body into the waters. Later, I sensed some commotion directly below where I was sitting and realized that there was a guy who tried to go through his bag frantically while his wife was begging him to no avail. She said something like: ‘Please don’t do it’. Before I knew what was going on, he pulled a handgun out of the bag and went back inside the raft. I told my friends sitting around me that there were troubles down there. Within a short moment, I heard gunfight right below where we were. I cringed, not being able to move, just hoping that the bullets would not fly towards us. And it was over within a minute. Apparently stray bullets hit some people.

The party of the man and his wife lost. His comrades, dead and wounded were tossed into the waters. I saw him still holding his gun, sitting on the floor and backing up to the edge of the raft. He did not look like his was wounded, but I could tell that his face was all pale out of fear. A few gunmen came over and took his gun from him. The wife was there begging for his life. I did not hear what they said but one guy stepped up, placed his gun to his chest, directly at his heart and pulled the trigger. The man fell backward on the floor. They casually kicked his body overboard like a piece of garbage while his wife was screaming and tried to hold on to his lifeless body which was already in the waters and out of her reach. All the gunmen started to walk back inside the raft but then the last guy somehow changed his mind, turned around and put his gun on the back of the head of the hysterical woman and shot her. She slumped and fell overboard. I had to witness the whole darn thing. I still remember the poor woman emerged from the waters momentarily with her hands in the begging position and then she disappeared. Dead calm again. This murderous tragedy happened while the raft was being towed.

Not long after that madness, some gang decided to take over our spots and unleashed a burst of bullets at us. One guy got grazed on his face, all of us jumped down and got inside the raft. We did not try to fight, I did not want to fight, I just wanted to go home. We just moved the bodies around, dead and alive, to make room for ourselves. I managed to get a prime spot where I could lean against the fence. I was weak and sleepy, totally exhausted and at times hallucinated. I remember I woke up in the middle of the night a few times, seeing the eerie scene around me under the moonlight, I was thinking that if this was not hell then what was? I hoped the whole thing was just a nightmare. I woke up with a guy in a trench coat and a hat leaning against my left shoulder. He was also sitting against the fence. Instinctively, I tried to get his pulse; he was cold and dead. I immediately pushed him over and he slumped on one side. Then I continue to sleep till the morning.

There was a guy who reached the raft before it left the city on his small sampan the day before. The sampan had a little cover for shelter against the sun and the rain. He had it tied to the raft when he boarded. I guess due to the insanity that reigned on the raft, he decided to climb back to his sampan for the evening. The next morning when I woke up, I noticed that the sampan was missing; someone must have untied the rope. The poor guy would wake up in shock alone in the middle of the ocean.

While more and more people were dying, there was a big guy that went insane. He completely lost it. He weighted probably close to two hundred pounds, a big dude by our standard. He walked around on the edges of the raft, talking to himself and without warning, randomly pushed people to the waters. Nobody attempted to stop him. I was always on the look out for him when I was out to the edge for the breeze. He would come from a corner at any time. One time, he and I had eye contact and I saw a faint and devious smile on his face. Then he started to walk towards me, I quickly reached the opening and went inside the raft as fast and as far as I could while my heart seemed to jump out of my mouth. I had no idea how many people were already his victims. I remember the guy who paid for the blanket to wrap his mother eventually was one of them. As the madman obviously became a thread to the people there, a few gunmen cornered him, gave him a lifesaver then kicked him into the waters.

In hell, people disregard all the civilized behaviors and turn to the most basic and primeval survival instincts. Under the circumstances, people became animals. A couple decided to make out right there on the spot. Perhaps they think this would be their last time. They started to strip off their clothes and went at each other. The people around them started to yell and curse. They suggested throwing them overboard. The couple quickly put their clothes back on as fast as they could and apologized to the folks around them. It was tragic and comical at the same time.

As if it was not enough, I heard some commotion inside the raft. The gunmen claimed to identify some NVA scouts. I had no idea how these people were suspected to begin with. I overheard one gunman interrogating a guy about what he had thrown overboard at the beginning of his body search. The gunmen suspected that they threw away the evidence, the radio transmitters. At that time, the gunmen were the law. There were about five suspects including a young girl who appeared to be in her early twenties. Their hands were tied behind their backs; their shirts were stripped all the way down to their waists. I remember the girl the most because she had traces of a Caucasian, probably French. She seemed to be out of place there but she spoke perfect Vietnamese to the guy who guarded them. She said she was innocent and wanted him to release her. Later
on, they were marched to the edge of the raft. A few minutes later, the guard walked back in by himself. I was curious and asked him where the suspects were, hoping that he had released them. He told me that they were all executed. I asked how, I did not hear any gunshots. He replied calmly that he did not waste any bullets, just kicked them to the waters, their hands still tied to their back. Yes, some of us became animals, just snuffed out random people’s lives with no feeling and emotions. Just put a label on them and they deserved to die such horrible deaths! What was this world coming to? Deep down inside, I hoped he had lied to me.

I did not know how long I would last before I was going to become insane. I wondered when and how this macabre journey was going to end. If my life was going to end, it would be better that my family did not know any of this. I lost track of time, I am not sure anymore, I thought I was there perhaps three days and two nights. I estimated a few hundreds dead. The raft continued to head South passing by a number of cities. Apparently, they were not safe to approach; they either were in complete chaos, abandoned or already under the NVA or the local guerillas’ control. Eventually we reached NhaTrang where we would get water supply. We got there in the afternoon. The raft started to slow down and then to a complete stop when we got closer to shore. Some of the small boats, loaded with water in plastic containers started to head out towards us. Khoi told me he had a few relatives in this town and we should jump. We made our way out to get closer to the small boats while they were delivering the water canisters on board the raft and then we jumped. I wobbled and fell on the boat. I was ok. The first thing I did when I got to shore was to ask my friend to buy me a soft drink right there from the one of those kiosks on the beach. Without giving any thought, I downed more than half of the bottle in one breath when I was overwhelmed by the carbon gas and had difficulty breathing. I reached out for my friend and fell to the ground. He pulled me under the shade of a big tree nearby and loosened my belt. I eventually regained my breathing and came to. He told me he had the address of his relatives and hired two mopeds guys to take us there. It was customary for some people to make extra money this way. There was not any licensing required. Life was not as heavily regulated there.

When we got to the address of his relatives, no one was at home. The street was practically deserted. We knocked on the neighbor’s house and learnt that only his uncle remained there, the rest of the family had left for Saigon already. We told him briefly our situations. He offered some tea and asked us to wait and he would take us to Khoi’s uncle’s office.

While I was there waiting, I saw myself the first time in a mirror after the ordeal at sea. I did not recognize myself; I was horribly thin, unshaven for days, my hair all in disarray, looked baked by the sun and the wind. My eyes looked drowsy, my cheekbones look protruded and my cheeks were hollow. As far as the belt, it was at the last hole and it still felt too loose.

Khoi’s uncle was an officer as most male in the country were in the military at the time. I did not know what he did exactly but his office was in a military compound. The neighbor made an effort to take us both on his motorcycle. When we got there, we talked to the guard at the gate; he made a call and in just a few minutes, his uncle appeared from one of those office buildings and greeted us outside the gate. He looked concerned seeing the shape we were in and took us across the street to a local restaurant. I felt like I could eat a cow! After he listened to our ordeal, he told us that NhaTrang’s days were also numbered; a lot of people had left for the South. But he would stay at his post until the last moment. In the meantime, he told us that we had to move fast and travel South to the next town, Phan Rang. That was where one of Khoi’s cousins stationed, an Air Force officer. But he said that we would need a lot of money. The journey to Saigon might be perilous as most of the towns were more or less under attack by the local guerillas. He paid for the meals and asked us to wait in the restaurant. When he came back, he had two bags of money; one for each one of us. It was quite a sum of money that he gave us. His gave his nephew twice as much. He said that we needed it and just in case that two of us got separated. The man barely knew me; I could not thank him enough. He told us a few alternatives to move South and we decided to try the easiest way first. He took us down to the local inter-cities bus stop. We bought the tickets and boarded the next bus scheduled for Phan Rang.

When we arrived in the city, we hailed a taxi to go to the only Air base right in the outskirt of the city. We arrived at the gate and tried to walk in to the visitors’ area. The guard saw the way we looked and stopped both of us. Khoi told him that the city we was in was overrun and he was also in the Air Force and offered his cousin’s name who was an officer at the base at the time; he then pulled from his wallet some certificate issued by the Air Force. It turned out that he was indeed in the Air Force but got kicked out for some disciplinary reasons. He later joined the Army. So the guard let him in. I started to follow him and the guard stopped me. Khoi turned around and said to him that I was in the same unit with him and I lost my wallet and all my paperwork.

At the visitor area, Khoi made a call from the visitor’s phone and asked for his cousin. His cousin came out and took us inside. He offered us shower with warm water and suggested to take us into the Officers’ club. I was not hungry so I politely declined and wanted a bed instead. Khoi went with him; I fell asleep without any effort on a real bed with a mattress. Apparently during all that time, they had contacted Khoi’s brother in Saigon who was a lieutenant and a C130 pilot who eventually arranged to switch schedule with another officer to fly here the next day. When we woke up the next morning, we went out to the airfield and waited for Khoi’s brother’s arrival.

The cargo plane touched down and while the plane was being unloaded; he sneaked both of us up onto the cockpit. During this time, I ran into another friend of mine from Saigon, Toan, who also wanted to join us. While we were settling in, sitting on the floor of the cockpit, an airport security guy showed up in the cockpit and gave us troubles. He apparently had seen how we were smuggled onto the airplane. He knew Toan since they both worked at the same air base. Khoi’s brother outranked him but he told the security guy the truth and implored him to let him take his brother home. And when the security guy seemed to be persuaded, he turned over to me. Khoi’s brother told him that I was his nephew and in the same situation as Khoi; he would have a lot of explanations to do with his sister abandoning me. So the security guy turned to Toan who seemed to be prepared all this time and continuously begged him. Finally he left the airplane and let all of us go!

When we arrived in TanSonNhut airport, Khoi’s brother quietly asked us two to stay in the cockpit and not to follow the other passengers. He later said that there were a lot of MPs waiting at the arrival area. They would pick up guys like us coming from different cities and shoved us out to a different front line immediately. He maneuvered the airplane so that the exit from the cockpit was hidden from view from the arrival area and instructed us to jump down and into a van he drove by later. About twenty minutes later when the plane was completely unloaded, the van arrived and we quickly jumped into it; we were driven back to the officers’ quarter.

We finally touched down in Saigon. Home was so close but yet so far. I started to worry. More than ever, I did not want anything happen to me at this time, after such a long and arduous journey. We did not stay at the officers’ club for very long. Khoi brother came back in a few minutes on his motorcycle taking us home. They lived just a couple of blocks away from the airport. We rode towards the gate that was manned by a number of MPs.

When we were almost out to the street, one of them blew his whistle on us. I felt like loosing all the strength in my knees. Why now? We stopped the motorcycle on the side of the road, and the MP casually walked towards us. He looked at both of us intensely and then Khoi’s brother and recognized that he was a pilot from the base. He then said to us: “Do you folks know that you are not supposed to have more than two persons on a motorcycle?” We were clearly so relieved and I told him promptly “No problem, Sir, I will walk. It is really not too far”. Khoi and his brother took off. As soon as I turned around the next corner up on the road, they were there waiting for me. I stayed at Khoi’s house for a few hours. They offered me some food and a shower. They asked me to be patient and would not want to let me go home alone, I would be spotted right away by the paramilitary in the streets. I waited for a few hours and another of Khoi’s brother, a captain in the Airborne, and a few of his guys showed up in a Jeep. I thank the family, he told me not to worry; I climbed and sat in the back of the Jeep with the Airborne guys and they dropped me off at our apartment complex the next half an hour.

The streets in Saigon and its vicinity were bustling as usual. There was not any sign of panic or disruption in people’s daily life that I could see yet. They might have read over the newspaper, the radio or the TV, but what happened in the Central part of Vietnam seemed still so far away. I quickly walked into the complex and up the flights of stairs. When I got to the door, it was opened. I just walked in and against the bright light of the door to the balcony; I saw my grandmother’s silhouette walking awkwardly towards me asking who I was. I realized that because of the clothes that I had on and that I had lost so much weight, she did not recognize me right away. As I walked towards her, I said: “It’s me grandma! I am home!”. As soon as she recognized my voice, she seemed to accept instantly my physical presence and replied” “oh! It’s you, oh! My God” and accelerated her steps towards me. I embraced her frail body
and we both sobbed away all the worries and the longings. I felt so at home and so warm seeing all the familiar things around me in the apartment. The altars of my grandfather and my uncle were still there, the makeshift kerosene kitchen still at the same spot and the only room where most of us sleep still in order as always. I closed my eyes and affirmed that this was all real. Later, my father and my younger brother came home and we went through the same emotional reunion. They thought that they had lost me, hearing that the North had overrun Danang.

Little that I knew, that reunion was short lived. In less than a month, Saigon fell; I left my family and the country in such a hurry and similarly chaotic circumstances. I was practically carried away helplessly by the inevitable events that marked the turning point of the Vietnamese history. I left the whole family behind. I sponsored my parents and all my siblings to join me in the US a few years later. But my grandma, that was the last time I saw her alive. She passed away sometimes in 1980/1981.

I never thought in my life I had to witness and experience so much misery and human sufferings. People displaced, families broken up, lives disrupted over the years and culminated in horrible deaths. Were there any reasons for all this to happen? Was it thirst for power, paranoia or greed that started all this? Looking back in the history of mankind, it seemed like we never learnt our lessons; regardless of how much progress we claimed we made in the fields of technology and humanity, we were condemned to repeat these mistakes again and again. And every time that we did, there was always good rational, one kind or the other, to support the actions that devastated thousands or more lives. But I don’t know anyone with any conscience can truly justify the wholesale slaughtering of human lives, innocent or otherwise, regardless of in the name of whom or what the decisions were made and the acts were carried out. I could not stop wondering how we could get ourselves placed in a mindset where one could pull a trigger or push a button to destroy so many lives. The messages to the next generations should be compelling and clear. They must focus on the vision of a world where more and more people and nations come together to understand one another better; the more friends we make, the less enemies we will have. It is our responsibility to emphasize to the next generation the past mistakes that we made, to project a better global vision where all benefit if nothing else, from a world without discriminations, hatred, aggressions, oppressions and exploitations of one another. Those that were given so much should really give back more than a little. Regardless of how skeptical and bitter men like me feel, the younger generations must not stop believing.

I have hesitated for years to write this story down because I was not sure if I wanted to relive the horrible experience. However, on the other hand, I truly felt like sharing this experience hopefully to convince that we all should work towards peace, love, tolerance and not hatred so that such tragedies would not repeat in subsequent generations. Recently, it was somewhat unsettling for me to realize that how I have started to forget some of the details. That moment had inspired me to jot down these few pages. Now that I have written this story down, I no longer fear to lose it, and someday I will be able to share this part of my life with my children and my friends. I am now free.

2006-12-01T01:48:00.000-08:00

France

2003
Lawrence Tan

Just like a dream fulfilled, I visited France the first time in the late 70s’. I spent most of my high school years in a French school. After years of studying their history, geography and literature, all the historical characters, events, and the names of the places seemed to strangely intimate to me even though I have never been there before in my life. Due to the war and financial reason, I had never thought that it would be possible for me to visit Europe. Versailles, le Louvres, l’arc de Triomphe, la Seine, Co^te d’Azur and etc…You can imagine that the emotional impact was deep and the experience was quite educational.

I have been to France twice. The first trip we made was in the early 80's. The most recent trip was just two years ago. We stayed in Paris just for a few days, we spent most of our time in Co^te d'Azur, we took the TGV to Cagnes-Sur-Mer. From there we drove and visited all the neighboring towns from Monte-Carlo on one end to St Tropez on the other. Paris is a beautiful and romantic city. What impresses me the most is its sense of history, just like most of the cities in Europe. You can feel it from the layout of the cities to the buildings, each with very distinctive and solemn architecture, well ornate with intricate sculptures. The smaller streets are also lined with shades of the big trees. It reminds me of streets of Saigon like Tran Quy Cap and Phan Dinh Phung, to name a few. I remember Tran Quy Cap the most. I walked and rode my bicycle on that street to school for years. Actually, in Shanghai, to my surprise, there are a number of streets like that too. There are a few quarters built and occupied by the European until the country was liberated.

The food in Paris (and its vicinity) is of course excellent in general, but like any place that I have visited in the past, you have to have local friends to direct you to good restaurants for the kind of food that you are looking for and at reasonable prices. Looking down on to the city from the Eiffel Tower, it certainly revived in me some sense of the

French history, after so many years of studying it in high school. The French Revolution, La Bastille, Le Louvre, Versailles and etc...Paris is a typical old European city without a lot of sky scrappers unlike in North America. In London, the city view from the top of the London-Eye the scenery gave me a similar feeling to that from the Eiffel Tower, except that it is right next to the Thames. The small boutiques, the cute family run restaurants and the popular coffee shops have their tables on the sidewalks everywhere. They were so inviting especially in the late afternoon, under the shades of the old big trees. I love the fresh baguettes and a whole variety of the cold cuts, with the french beurre, so delicious! I could just have all my breakfast like that for the entire trip until my wife had to suggest that we should try something else!. Le jambon francais, oh! it is so tasty, for a while I could not figure out why I could not find the same taste in the American ham. Then I realized it was the fatty white strip in the french jambon itself that made it so delicious, the thing that the American try to avoid the most... Just like those chunks of green onions soaked I hot oil for Pho+?...I explained and showed it to one of my Caucasian worker associate, he tasted it and from then on, he had to have it every time he ate Pho+?. The foie gras kind of melted in your mouth! But nowadays, we all realized that it is laden so much with cholesterol that you can feel it flowing reluctantly through your veins. The French pastries, les petit fours, they are excellent. They are in byte size but yet they each look like a careful creation with good coordination of colors, choices of ingredients and design. Each with its very own distinct flavor, not like those found in Safeway or Giant, laden with tasteless cream and super high dose of concentrated sugar!

From the cultural interest, of course Paris has Le Louvre, a variety of castles, most notably the Versailles, Tour Eiffel, Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur, Arc de Triomphe and etc...To celebrate Year 2000, the Tour Eiffel was wired for a very flashy fireworks display worth seeing. When I was there, it started at certain hours in the evening and it must last for a minute or two. Very impressive, even though some French are complaining that it is a total waste of public funds and resources.

I like Le Chateau Vaux-Le-Vicomte in Fontainebleau the most. I visited this chateau during the early 80’s. Perhaps that was the very first one that I had visited of its kind, it impressed me the most, especially with the history behind it. Because of its exquisite location in Fontainebleau, pretty much hidden from the public view, its beauty was indeed enhanced by its shy and mystic characters. Fouquet, the minister of Finance under Louis XIV owned Vaux-LeVicomte. In one of his hunting trip, the King was invited to stay there. Being there the first time, he was so impressed and perhaps jealous, he started to question how Fouquet could afford such a place. Fouquet was thrown in jail and he took the entire architectural staff and the artisans who built Vaux-LeVicomte to Paris to build Versailles. For me, Versailles is too overwhelming, too formal and more for official gatherings whereas I feel that Vaux-LeVicomte was built for an individual in search of inner peace.

And of course for tourists like us, we have to get on the Bateau Mouche. In our first trip, my friend was a Taxi driver in Paris. He took a day off and drove us around, got us on the Bateau Mouche while he found a shady spot and took a nap, waiting for us. In the evening, he took us all to La Paille, an excellent Vietnamese family Restaurant (I don't think they are in business any more). In the early 80's, it is very rare to be able to find a decent Vietnamse restaurant in North America. So that was such a treat for us. As a side note, this good friend of ours passed away in Pnom Penh many years ago.

Well, if you have not seen Paris, it is worth being there, at least once. Otherwise it would be just like any other big cities with its annoying traffic and impatient people. I like Southern Coast of France, the Co^te d'Azur much better. The people are friendlier. The scenery is absolutely stunning, so poetic, especially up and down Cannes and Nice. No wonder they were such inspirations for the French painters; I mean the real ones, not those found in MontMartre, they are such rip-offs. Most of them are hustlers; they argue and fight for a spot, advertised with wonderful portraits made by somebody else, and charge you exorbitant prices for portraits that make you look like one of those morphed figures in Conan O'brien's show. And like in any big cities, beware of the pick-pockets, but it seems like those in Paris had been in some kind of formal training who had their art perfected. They work by themselves, as a pair or threesome, very well coordinated. The Quartier 13eme(District 13) has the worst reputation of muggers and purse snatchers where my friend's
Mom was a victim and to this day, she is still scared going down there.

I did not take the Bateau Mouche during the last trip, so I don't know if those signs that we had seen during out first trip are still there. They were the wall graffiti in many places along the Seine, I had the impressions they were written for the foreigners who live there: "La France est pour les Francais" (France is for the French (only)). Paris in a way is like New York City, a big busy and interesting place, and if you drive, it is almost always very hard to find a parking spot. Like any big city, people seem to be always in a hurry and very impatient with you, especially when you do not speak French with a correct accent. A friend of mine, Vietnamese, grew up in Paris, a Math teacher in High School, was looking for an apartment, saw an ad on a local newspaper, “chambre a louer, Francais seulement!” (Room for rent, French only!). Fortunately, in America, these kinds of things are illegal. He went there, rang the door bell, a lady came out, and after my friend told her that he is looking to rent a room and saw her ad. She stopped for a moment then said: didn’t I say in the ad for French only? He replied: ‘But I am French!’ She then said that was not what she had in mind and slammed the door! In a way, the older generation still more or less lives in their colonial days where they brought in a lot of foreigners such as Chinese, Africans and Arabs to for the manual labor intensive jobs. America had their share too. Most if not all low income labor are performed by foreigners.

All the museums and public restrooms are not free, so it is always better to have a bunch of coins with you if you tourists plan to walk all day out in the streets. They even charge you in the Department stores. I guess that is the way to offset the cost to keep the places clean. In StTropez, in one of those open marinas, I had never seen so many multi-million dollars yachts all in the same place like that. Their colors were mostly from Europe, I remembered seeing one flying a U.S. color. A lot of them have
either a helipad or even include a helicopter on it. Across the streets from there were an entire streets of cafes with outdoor tables under large shades. In a number of larger cities along the Co^te D’Azur, the streets are equipped with those capsules equivalent to our portable toilettes. These are the 'silver bullets' where you can drop a few coins there to get the door to open, do your things inside, and as soon as you close the door behind you, it starts a self cleaning cycle! The trick is not to get stuck in there in the wrong cycle! And if you do get caught there for any reason, you just have to go and change and get wiser the next time. In America, somebody is going to get sued! Being a pessimist as I am, I am afraid because the high cost is built in to everything, sooner or later, we will lose the economic war and then comes the real war to resolve the economic issues!

I think you must used to the place that you live, in Paris and probably in Europe, they all have siesta time, where all the shops are closed for a few hours. May be it is not as inconvenient as in some city such as Riyadh, Saudi Arabia where they close the door to all business a few times a day for prayers. I got stuck in a Safeway in Riyadh a few times for not reading the newspaper before going out to the store. They would lock all the entrances, turn down most of the lights, the workers will go to a praying places where everybody unfold their personal mats if they are not provided by the workplace and pray on their knees. For us, we would walk around in the aisles and entertain ourselves by reading the product labels. Each time it would last around 15 minutes. They normally publish those praying times (5 times a day) on the local newspapers.

Traffic in Paris is terrible to say the least; I would not drive in Paris. I swear, some of the drivers seem to be on their suicide missions, playing chicken all the times. I am damn sure that some of them have migrated to New York! The only drivers in the world who are crazier than those in Paris are in China. There, as in Taiwan, they have no concept of lanes. People would drive down all the lanes of a two way streets and only squeeze back in to the right hand lane(s) when there are cars showing up and coming down the opposite directions. They like to drive fast, cutting people off whenever they can and play chicken, scaring the life out of me. I really like to see a translated copy of their DMV Driver’s Guide equivalent! Back in Paris, a friend of mine who has a local business there, told me that when he hires a driver for his company, he would take the candidate out to the Arc de Triomphe and watch him from the curb maneuver his car in and out of that traffic around the Circle a few times. He will hire the guy if he survives!

Shopping is normally very expensive, especially for the woman luxury stuffs such as the more popular brand like Louis Vuiton. They mentioned about Benelux for tax free stuff which save you some money. But I think they are all overpriced. Louis Vuiton sets up a global database to track their customers worldwide and only allows them to buy two items per year maximum. They do this to prevent people from speculating their goods which have happened in a lot of places, especially in Asia. I know this because the girls had to borrow my passport to buy them, because I am a virgin customer and have no records in their database! I would not believe it if I did not see by my own eyes; People would line up in front of a Louis Vuiton boutique in Nice for a long time to get to buy their quota of two hand bags! I hate to go to places like that. The attitudes of those sales clerks there are just bad. And again, you could have bought them from Vinte-Milli(?), across the border into Italy from Monte Carlo, or in HongKong for much less! You would not be able to tell the difference. But you can get into trouble getting back in the US if you get caught with them. But then again, that has not stopped the girls!

Well, anyway, my information might not be as current as yours, but I think the trip to Europe is well worth it, especially when the American dollars are strong!

2006-12-01T01:44:00.000-08:00

Suddenly Midnight Blue

October 2003
Lawrence Tan

As the day comes to an end
Cozy up on the river bend
Flirting the moon, chasing the stars
All immersed in the color of my heart
Midnight Blue…

I am thinking of you
Hands on the wheel
But who knows how I feel
Defeated and heavy
Shoulders droopy
Midnight Blue…

Now where are you?
Got to get her there on time
The lesson costs more than a dime
While waiting in the car
My mind starts to wander afar
Midnight Blue…

I am thinking of you
Where do we go tonight?
Any place is just fine
Are we going to leave soon?
Yes Dear. Look! Such a perfect moon!
Hey, Midnight Blue
Are you thinking of me too?

The night is falling, silence is calling
Affixed to the familiar ceiling
Never afraid to die
But always dread to say goodbye
Midnight Blue…
I am thinking of you

I like suffering and I like pain
How do I get here, my heart is in chain
I know I’ll never see the light
I fulfill my day and live by the night
Midnight Blue
Oh! How I miss you!

2006-12-01T01:38:00.000-08:00

Hello Autumn

Fall 2004
Lawrence Tan

Hello Autumn, hello again
So glad to see you, my friend
Please come in and grab a seat
Get a bite and kick up your feet

Something warm or something cold
Or you might want to try something bold?
Here, with this glass of wine
Let me toast this…friendship of mine

A bag of songs, a box of love
Butterflies and a peace loving dove
I saved them up thinking about you
One for me, all for us two

A ray of sun, a river breeze
My heart races, my heart freezes
A good kid, a hungry child
My heart sinks, my heart goes wild

Hello Autumn, hello my friend
What have you done last year, tell me again
A spoonful of love, a handful of sparkles
A taste of honey, a short time of marvels

You disappeared as suddenly as you came
Left me bewildered, never knew your real name
Where are you from, and what do you do
Not that it matters as long as I can see you
Now that you are here
I forget all the tears

This time, I swear I’ll hold on to you tight
I swear never again let you out of my sight
Promise me that you’ll stay a bit longer
Don’t let Winter Spring or Summer
Come between us like the yesteryears
Just the thought of which would bring me tears

2006-11-30T20:14:00.000-08:00

Amnesia

September 2003
Lawrence Tan

Sweet like your lips
Sad like your songs
Has it really been that long?

Soft as your touch
Tender as your smile
I forgot how they are really like

I miss your silhouette
Your angel face
And your warm embraces

Your soothing kisses
Your fleeting glances
And your tiny hands
Beyond the pain and the time
I have endured the tears
And threading through the years

I have forgotten how to sing
Do Re Mi Fa Sol La
Ai O Shiteru O Wasuremashita

2006-11-30T20:12:00.000-08:00

Reflections

X'mas 2005
Lawrence Tan

I used to love stories and fairy tales
Villains, heroes and magic spells
Knights, horses, dungeons and dragons
My secret world of illusions

Then came music, rhythms and lights
Friendship and the endless nights
Wines and songs, tears and laughter
Cool nights and warm get-togethers

It was just all Spring and Summer fragrances
I only knew love and games of innocence
But in the end, to me it was revealed
You were the only thing that was real

What is the color of the ocean, this morning?
I'll tell you all about my feelings
Eyes closed, hoping not the somber grey
Hands clasped, with all my heart I pray

What is the color of your heart, this evening?
I might surrender my soul and everything
Is it by chance the color of love, pulsating red
To which I would be grateful, in love and glad

Christmas is already right around the corner
My time was helplessly stolen, I now wonder
It was just here! Looking back with longings and regrets
Time seem to fly by, wish it can slow down instead

And soon we are at the threshold of the New Year
Just another one like all others, it is no longer clear
Where had I been and what had I done
All the last thirty years, I am still gone

Like a good wine, I am aged
My mind still clear, but my heart still dazed
Since when it had been addicted
To the melodies of love and the heart-broken lyrics

2006-11-30T20:00:00.000-08:00

Cinema Phu Vinh

2003
Lawrence Tan

Some had lived in their Cinema Paradiso, others had been on their Polar Express… I had Cinema Phu Vinh.

Cinema Phu Vinh is the only movie house in Phu Vinh, a small town and the administrative seat of Vinh Binh aka Tra Vinh, about 200km Southwest of Saigon; like in all small towns, the people are mostly friendly, unsophisticated and very easy going compared to those folks from big cities like Saigon. Most of the major business owners were well known to the town folks by their first names. My Uncle ran the movie house. He lived in a complex attached to movie house with my grandparents and my younger brother. It seemed like my Uncle had this business for some time, just like the movie house Tay Do in Can Tho. After the family business went drastically wrong and took a turn for the worse up in Saigon, they settled in this town since the early 60s. I stayed up in Saigon and over time, lived in different relatives’ houses to continue my education. I spent many summers of my adolescent years in Vinh Binh. Until the last recent years, I did not realize how deep this place had found its place in my heart.

I liked the movie house PHU VINH a lot. Every evening, the cinema PHU VINH opened for business around 5ish. The retractable iron gates of the curved structure were pulled back on their tracks, and the people were welcome into the lobby via three wide entrances. PHU VINH was located on the edge of the Centerville, looking from the movie house into the streets, connected to its right towards the center of the town were the row houses of various businesses.

First, we had the popular neighborhood dive Hong Lac, which offered an unimpressive menu of noodles and other beverages such as coffee, beer and soft drinks. A Chinese family ran Hong Lac. The cook prepared the noodles in a small kitchen that occupied a front corner of the entrance where there was always a huge pot of boiling water next to a similarly huge pot of piping hot broth. They normally offered two kinds of noodles, a white flat one made of rice flour and the egg noodle, an angel hair-like yellowish noodle with a small body, supposedly made of flour and eggs. The fresh noodles were placed in a deep
perforated ladle then dipped into the boiling water until it was cooked. After the water was well-drained, the noodles were placed into a fresh bowl. A few slices of cooked pork were then placed on top of it with some bean sprouts and chives. It was also customary to add a dash of fried lard to enhance the flavor. Add a few ladles of hot soup, and it was ready to serve. The menu and the layout of the place seemed to be pretty typical as I have seen it in many family restaurants. The menu was poor but the food was always good. I especially craved for those little pieces of hot peppers marinated in vinegar. I always had them in my bowl of hot noodle soup. On the weekends, Hong Lac made an effort to offer a small variety of baked pastries that went very well with a cup of hot coffee and condensed milk. It was definitely a casual place for the locals as a number of patrons could be seen folding and resting one of their legs comfortably on the chair while carefully sucking in their hot noodles. They must have practiced since their early childhood to feel comfortable in that kind of contorted position.

Next to that small restaurant was my friend, Manh's house. He lived with his father, an herbalist, or Chinese doctor, his mom and a younger sister. Manh's house was very humble. It was decorated with a few Chinese paintings and a large mirror on the wall along with a large calendar featuring some popular Chinese actresses or singers. The important thing was that it bears both the Gregorian as well as the lunar dates. There were a few chairs for the patients or guests and a small table on which there was always a small cushion in the shape of a pillow. It was used mainly for his dad's patients to comfortably rest their left hands on it, palm up. His dad could read their pulses by gently placing three of his fingers on the patients' wrists. By reading the pulses of a patient, the Chinese doctor could potentially detect the sources that caused the imbalance of the Yin and the Yang energy, the root cause of the sickness. He would then prescribe a concoction of various kinds of dry herbs and roots to help the body to regain the harmony of the inner energy emitted by the
various organs. As each of our organs is categorized as Yin or Yang, they each have a counterpart. Each pair would emit a certain inner energy, maintaining a balance in a healthy body. If one organ acts up, it could upset the balance and the harmony of the inner workings of our body and therefore it causes us to be sick. The principle is to detect which part of your body was running wild, and the normal cure is to calm it down or trigger its counterpart to regulate it and bring it back to the normal level of activity. On the wall opposite the paintings, there was a built in set of shelves and small drawers labeled in Chinese where all the different kinds of dry herbs were stored. The preparation instructions would normally be to add four bowls of water to the herbs into a pot. Bring it to a boil until there was only two bowls worth of liquid left. The resulting cocktail normally tasted and smelled obnoxiously horrible. You would let it cool down, squeeze your nose and then try to swallow that stuff as fast as you could. Every time I am sick and think about that stuff, my system seems to speed up the recovery by itself.

Then there was a pool hall of only two tables. I wonder how they made ends meet after all. Then there were a few more houses of the same size before we reached the intersection that took us to the municipal bus stop. These houses were pretty narrow but long. I think they were about 14 to 16 feet wide at the most. Connected to the left of PHU VINH was a row of three houses, all connected inside and served as our residence. We used to live in all of them before we opened the one on the end, the widest house, which was about twice as wide as the others, for the Pho Map noodle house. That’s right, besides the movie theater business, my uncle ventured into the noodle house business. That was all right for me since Pho is like McDonald here in the States, it could be breakfast, lunch, snack and sometimes dinner too. Every now and then I asked the cook to drop a raw egg into my piping hot bowl of noodles. Beyond the noodle house wall was a small lot of land that ran along the side of the movie house protected by a wall. Next to our residence was
the gate to the side of the movie house. The auditorium had three wide double doors that opened to the side. When a show was over, we normally opened all the double doors to let the people leave the auditorium in addition to the front door to the lobby of the theater. Beyond the wall that bordered the side of the movie house was a neighborhood of wooden houses on beaten earth floors. A bicycle ride of about five minutes in this direction would take us straight to the riverbank.

PHU VINH was built on a corner lot; its facade follows a wide curvature that covers the two streets that intersect. The main structure that houses the theater was at least three stories high, and its opening was supported by two columns which divides the front into three wide openings with a set of cement steps that follow the curvature of the structure. Each was well finished with a full bull nose edge. Walking up the steps into the lobby area, the entrance to the auditorium was on the left of the structure. On the right hand side, one could see a recessed area protected by some decorative grids. Equally distanced within the recessed area were two small openings for the ticket windows. Most of the recessed area was covered by a curtain. The lobby was normally decorated with all the colorful posters and black and white photos of the current movies, as well as some of the upcoming films. Above the recessed area was a set of stairs. At the top of the stairs, there was a steel door labeled in red "Authorized Personnel Only". It was the access door to the projection room.

Of course, I had access to the room, but I was not allowed to take any friends up there because of the materials and equipments. The room had a low window open to the auditorium. There were also three other small openings for an old slide projector and the two film projectors. In the back of the projection room, there was a window to the roof which we could easily climb through with the help of a chair. We would be on top of our residence, overlooking the area called 'Lo Heo' across the
street and a wide dirt path to a poor residential area that would lead to an area unknown to me. I had a few friends living there, but I never ventured far beyond their houses. The movies were shipped to us from Saigon via buses. They all came in sets of reels of 35mm films. Each reel was about two feet wide housed in a steel box. One of the projectionists, Mr. Trong, normally examined them for defects at least one day ahead of the first scheduled show. The only furniture there was a work table in a corner and a few chairs. The slide projector was used to project paid advertising slides. Two projectors were necessary to cut over from one reel to another reel. Each reel was numbered; we always loaded up the subsequent reel while the current reel was running. As the end of the current reel was coming close, the lead portion of the subsequent reel was started on the next projector. We would need two people to synchronize the cut over of the two projectors so that the audience experienced a seamless projection of the movies. We then took the finished reel down for rewinding and loaded up the subsequent reel on the same machine.

The Indian movies were normally the longest. They were just about one hour longer than the others because of their songs and dances. We marked the beginning and the end of each dancing and singing sequences during the first show. We would cut them off temporarily and reconnect them before we shipped the movie back to the distributor. It saves us and the audience time and the cost of showing it. The cutting part is self-explanatory. To reconnect two sequences of film, we used a sharp razor blade to thin up the lips of the connection frames of both section of films, lined them up on top of each other aligning the holes on the side then applied some acetone (nail polish remover) and press it down hard for a few second. The lips of the two sections then melted and effectively glued together.

The projection room had a schedule to follow, but it was really controlled by the office downstairs. Depending on the situation of the ticket sales, we would start the show on time or a few minutes late. The person who made that decision would push an electric bell that signaled the projection room to start the show. On cool evenings, I would bring my snack up to the projection room, open the back window for a breeze, prop my feet up on the window towards the auditorium and watch the movie comfortably, like from a first class balcony seat.

In front of the entrance to the auditorium where the tickets were checked and in front of the tickets windows, there were a set of rails that suggested that lines should be formed. But I don't think a lot of folks knew what they are for. When popular movies were showing, the people were always on top of one another. From inside the ticket windows, we would see about five hands sticking through, clinching on their money. Everybody was shouting for their orders of tickets. As we took the money out of one person's hand, we would have to squeeze it and ask the person for number of tickets and the kind of seating because they were priced differently. That was how we knew what that particular person wanted because sometimes we had a hard time matching a hand with a person in the a pile of people out there. I guessed all the girls out there going to the movies like that didn't mind me holding and squeezing their hands.

The entrance to the auditorium, at times, was just as chaotic. We had from groups of people who did not buy enough tickets on purpose and tried to squeeze through the entrance to the kids who asked the moviegoers to take them in as their children. Therefore we normally had two big guys checking tickets at the entrance, Ta^m and Xua^n, who was a Cambodian Vietnamese. People who came in late didn't want to pay the full price of the tickets and tried to negotiate at the door. I guess we did allow for that. We always had a wooden box, as tall as a stool. It has a locked cover and a small slot for those occasions. Therefore, a family member or a trusted person was always at the entrance until closing time. Sometimes when I was short of cash, I would 'volunteer' at the entrance at the start of a show. My uncle would not mind as long as I didn't abuse it, just enough for pocket money for the evening.

The blaring music seemed to contribute to the atmosphere of festivities outside the movie house. Sometimes my friends and I feasted on all kinds of snacks out there, like the marinated fruits such as the guava, green mango, tamarinds, and etc.... I loved having my fruits with a touch of salt and mashed red peppers, which sharpened their tastes. Then we would have a variety of sweet soups served warm or those cold fruit smoothies. The activities soon ended as we were about half an hour into the last show of the evening. The merchants started wrapping up, closing down and wheeling their food carts home.

It was then bed time for me as another good and fun day had concluded.

2006-11-30T19:58:00.000-08:00

Another Time, Another Life

August 2004
Lawrence Tan

Of course, I would not have asked much of my children. Just their mere appreciations of the lives they have in this land of opportunities would have made me happy. But even that sometimes seem so hard. But how can I blame them? Their point of references in life and mine are so far apart. Indeed they are so far apart…

A few years ago, my son threw a cyber party in our basement. We had about anywhere from fifteen to twenty kids. What followed was a kind of party I had never seen before. The kids must have brought in with them eight to ten computers. We ordered a bunch of pizzas and got some soft drinks. Within a short time, they had all the machines configured and networked together, and connected to the Web using our DSL line. They formed teams of two to three kids per station and started a cyber war. The participants included other teams on the Web too. These were the combatants in all kinds of fatigues. The idea was to score and to survive in a shoot out game within a cyber world, in some cyber town. The kids who came to the party were boys and girls, some boys with earrings, head shaved and with bandannas. That reminded me of the images of the pirates, as I saw them in some comic books when I grew up. Some came with strange hairstyles with colorful highlights, others with no style at all, just like straight from their beds. These were all college kids and Felix’s high-school friends. I did not think I had seen a quieter party before. They just sat there in groups and immersed in their own world, clicking their mice and tapping frantically on the keyboards all through the night. I came down the next morning and saw a few of them spreading out on the floor sleeping among the empty soda cans and pizza boxes, just like a true battlefield! It looked like they had a real good time. I was wondering what I was doing when I was at their age. I was also in a war, but not the cyber kind…

Out there in the fields, everything was so unpredictable. Sometimes we moved from place to place, other times we camped in one place for months on end. At times, like cub scouts, we got to learn all the fun stuffs, like to tell whether a cannon projectile was passing over us and into the distance or it was time to duck just by the way it whistled, or to recognize the unmistakable cracking of an AK47 versus that of an M16. The spots we stayed for months were the barren plains in Quang Tri or in the
mountainous hills overlooking Hue. From hill 362, I could tell where the city was in the distance, the size of the palm of my hand when it lighted up at sunset, making it feel so homey and me so distant and lonely. Have you ever seen those Chinese classical paintings depicting the mountainous hills that seemed to float on a layer of cloud? Well, indeed, every morning we seemed to wake up in a middle of an ancient painting. All we could see was the scattered hilltops popped up here and there among the clouds. It was so deceivingly peaceful and magical. The clouds gradually dissipated later in the morning as the sun came up higher. The irony was that we all realized that concealed in it were all kinds of booby traps and deadly ambushes devised by the beloved humankind.

A savvy soldier must equip himself with a nylon hammock in addition to the government issued stuffs. When we camped in a location, we set our defense perimeter, and then we set up our makeshift shelters. Basically we spread out, tied our hammocks to the tree trunks or to two strong posts planted on the ground; the poncho was used as a tent over a skeleton of wooden sticks made out of the tree branches, tied to the posts and above the hammock. On the rainy season, we collected a few pieces of rocks or branches and made a small-elevated platform on one end of the hammock, for our backpack so that the running rainwater on the ground would not soak it. Sometimes, that was home for an extended period. Due to the humidity from the ground, it was not healthy to sleep on it unless you had a protective layer. The nylon hammock was a more versatile and essential item that one would think. It was our bed and ultimately, it was our personal body bag. We used it to wrap the body of a fallen buddy, tied both of its ends on a stick and carried it to the extraction point where they were picked up and transported back to the base camp. I carried a corporal who slipped and fell into his own booby trap on a rainy day. He died instantly, we could not find one of his arm. I did not go and collect his body parts; but I helped carrying his body out to the
transfer point. He was not particularly heavy; he was a small man. He was from the region. He was kind of a loner; he hardly spoke to anyone. I remember he always carried a nylon bag of tobacco, tied to his belt. He let me try it once, and I almost flipped over! But for some reason, a few months before, during the New Year, to my surprise, he gave me a hundred piasters for lucky money. I carried the back end of the stick, and when walking uphill, his feet kept knocking at my stomach, while I could see the fresh blood still dripping from the bottom of his hammock. Yes, there is always a first time to everything. Some guy who stationed on the same hill as the corporal told me that he reappeared at night asking them to find his missing arm!

The first time we reported to our unit, it took us two days to get there. About twenty of us were driven about over an hour from the city to the foot of this mountain. The road ended there and next to a large creek. From there, it took us about six hours to climb the first hill. We all equipped with about four hundred rounds of ammunitions, four grenades, a week’s worth of food, a bag of water, a rifle and your personal stuffs. Some kids also had to carry an M72 (Light Anti-tank Weapon). The climb was our first true challenge to our stamina. It was really hard uphill with all that stuff on our back. Some kids cried as they realized that it was no picnic at all. The sight of the hill was just terrifying, even though there were a few plants and vegetation; the entire mountainside was practically destroyed by B52 bombings. The remaining trunks of those big trees were all charred, scattered all over and to the distance formed such a macabre landscape. Our destinations were the units along the way into the mountain. I and another kid, Man, we were unfortunately assigned to the unit that was engaging in a firefight at the time, deep inside at the most forward position.

What was going on here? Wasn’t the cease-fire supposed to be in effect? It turned out that the cease-fire was only observed in locations visible to the International Committee, but it was
largely ignored in other places. We were supposed to be the fresh troops filling in for the KIA or MIA. When we got to the top of the hill, we rested for about ten minutes and we were rushed on. The scout tried to get us there before nightfall, but I fainted due to exhaustion. They managed to revive me, but we stayed over night at one lookout spot and continued the next day until we reached the Company. Along the way, we crossed a creek; its water was knee high. It looked so pretty; the water meandered into the distance, just like in a painting; under normal circumstances, it would be a romantic spot for a picnic, deep inside the mountain! As we approached the unit, sporadic gunfire and explosions could be heard. Suddenly, I saw two soldiers heading towards our direction, on their way out. I remember one with a bloody arm on a makeshift sling. The other must be his escort. I asked them where they were going, the injured guy cracked a smile, seemed all excited and said to me: “I am going home, man!” At that moment, I told myself, “Rats! Is that how you can get out of this place?” And then I thought, “Or it could be worse!”. When we arrived at the destination, a barren hill surrounded with tall trees, we were supposed to present ourselves to the commanding officer there, but he dismissed us immediately and ordered us to spread out and find a foxhole or a shelter. As I was settling myself down in one of those holes, a guy came over and asked me about my emergency address. I asked him for what purpose, they already had all my information back in the HQ. He said that this was different; they wanted to know where to ship back my body! Much later, I thought the fellow might just follow procedures, since we were on the battlefield; but the way he said it sounded like that would be an eventual outcome. What an initiation ceremony!

The next morning, I was told that I was dispatched to a forward squad and asked to leave some of my personal stuffs that I did not need behind. The sergeant would take care of them until I came back (sic!). I was briefed that the squad that I was going to join down there was so close to the enemy that we were not
allowed to use a spoon to eat out of the tin can. We used those broad leaves to scoop the food instead. We were supposed to whisper to each other’s ear only. Two of us were taken to that location to join three others already there. We were asked immediately to dig our own foxholes. We had to do it carefully, one scoop at a time, trying to make no noise. We spent all day doing that and the foxholes were still too small. Twice a day, someone carried the food down to our spot since we could not cook there. Besides the path I came from, there were two paths downhill from our locations, towards the enemy’s locations. We took turn to eat. Some of us guarded the paths; the safety pins of the grenades were all straightened out, ready to be pulled. The safety switch of the M16 was set to the off position, and ready to fire. We crouched there until the guys who finished the meal came and tapped on our shoulders. Then we reset the safety switch of the rifle and the pins of the grenades and made the switch. Those paths were guarded twenty-four hours.

At night we heard people snoring. But it was hard to tell which direction it came from. At times, at 7 o’clock in the morning, they fired their machine gun randomly at our directions. The first morning we were there, Man and I jumped into one of the fresh foxhole close by which we thought it was too small for one person. When the firing stopped, we had a hard time extracting ourselves out of it. I had never been so scared, almost peed in my pants! Following the barrage of gunfire, a voice came on a bullhorn: “Good morning everyone! Did you all had a good night sleep?”. Even when we were in the business of killing people, somebody still maintained their senses of humor! Some propaganda and finally some of their revolutionary songs followed the announcement. For a short while anyway, because not before long, we started to hear the cannon projectiles flying over our heads and crashing over the source of the broadcast which quiet them down for a few days! But the 7o’clock ritual in the morning continued every once a while. At one time, we were given the order of preparing to attack. Therefore, everybody
geared up and waited for the green light. At that moment, I looked up in the sky, thought about my family and quietly said goodbye. We waited a whole afternoon and then came another order to stand down. Oof! What a relief! The next day another regiment came and replaced us. It took us one full day to pull out of that mountain. That was pretty damned close!

I think I was down at that spot for just about a week, I felt like months! It was during the rainy season. We had some bouts of torrential rains. We pulled out during nightfall to avoid their spies and scouts. Because moving in numbers like that would be so vulnerable to their artillery. On our way out, that beautiful little stream became a ferocious and roaring torrent. Due to the continuous rainstorms, it had swelled to become a much deeper and wider monster. We had to fall a tall tree on its bank to bridge to the other side. We strapped our rifle over our shoulder, sat on the tree trunk and slid our way across. I could feel the current pulling my legs really hard. There must be no mistakes or you would fall off and pulled away by the current into the dark water. We hardly had any moonlight that night; it was almost pitch dark and that made it even more difficult. At the other side of the bank, we had to climb a steep hill. On the way up there, I dropped my plastic bowl. I froze and listened to its fall knocking on the sides of the hill and realized how high up I was, and that scared the heck out of me!

One guy got lost in the dark. He started to call out, with the echo in the mountain; there was no way for us to know where it came from. One of us started to call out to him too, hoping for him to find his direction back to the column. Unfortunately, the poor guy’s voice seemed to be more and more distant and eventually faded altogether. The poor kid! He would probably last a few days and died out there somewhere in the mountain.

After another hour of walk, we rested at the foot of this hill overnight. We were so tired. I hung my hammock and fell
asleep in it. Suddenly, I was awakened by the rain and realize that I was thoroughly soaked in it! I managed to gather some dry branches and attempted to make a fire under a canopy of some big trees that were not affected by the midnight rain. I was so cold. I trembled so much that I could not even strike a match. Finally, some guy came over and helped me. We had that fire going for a while anyway. It was warm and it was good. I changed into dry clothes in my backpack. My blanket and my hammock were all wet, but I had to fold and tie them to my backpack. Everybody woke up by then. We were ready to move out. On our way out on the trucks, some one pointed out to me when we passed by the Hamburger hill, Bastogne.

In those long and more peaceful locations, if we were to stay in a spot for an extended period of time, we would collect the carton boxes from the supply trips to make the tent floor, dug up just a few inches around it as water drain, just in case. That carton floor would give us a little bit more room to sit around with a few persons. Your tent was all you got during those cold and rainy days. In the daytime, I tied the hammock to the top of the tent to get it out of the way. My tent could accommodate four persons for a card game. We sipped tea or coffee along with a smoke or two, under the valuable candle light in the evening. Every now and then, small teams of soldiers passed by our station. And it was such a delight to see somebody that you knew. Even a hasty cup of tea or a small exchange of greetings and news of other acquaintances were so heartwarming. Out there, that was all you got. That was your family.

I read the Vietnamese version of The Godfather by Mario Puzzo the first time. I borrowed it from a deserter. A few of them were dispatched to our company; we had one in our squad. They were mainly used as slave labor, they were not given any weapon nor combat boots, and I was told when we engaged in a firefight, they would be rushed upfront as bait, either barehanded or sometimes they were given a grenade. Their rations were much
meager compared to ours, so every now and then I gave the guy what I could spare. Officially, we were not to befriend with them, we were supposed to treat them like dogs, until they were re-instated. At times, I felt so sorry for the guy. They did not look any different than anyone of us. One guy completed his sentence and got re-instated. He asked to stay with us because our unit operated closed to his hometown and we had been together for a while. He was handed a helmet, an M16 and a pair of boots, a backpack with some extra stuffs. He was clearly so happy, he was then treated like one of us again, just promoted from the status of an animal to a foot soldier!

In one of those rare occasions where we camp in the outskirt of a village, at least we could see the people, notably the woman and girls, not like in the mountains for months without seeing a female. During that stay, I witnessed some strange stuff. A sergeant and I were invited into a house. While we were sitting there and chatted, the sergeant said that he could tell fortune. He asked the owner of the house to light up three incense sticks and decided to examine a girl, a guest of the house. He started out by closing his eyes and recited something then he sniffed the smoke from the incense sticks. Then he described to the girl, to her astonishment, accurately the location of her house and the different things around there such as a well, a big tree, the location of her bed, and etc…It was really scary. He talked about her problems in general terms to which she all agreed, and finally he gave her some advices. He was a northerner, and we were in the outskirt of Hue. I would not believe it if I were not there myself!

The daytime was so humid and warm. I was all sweaty in my khaki uniform. I tried very hard to take a nap in my hammock under the shade of the poncho. Suddenly my buddy woke me up by sticking a cold glass on my cheek. It was a glass of lemonade on ice! Oh! Heaven, where the heck did you get that? I said. He asked me to follow him. We walked for about a quarter of a mile
to the village. He went in a house behind a stall where they sold a few kinds of soda and some snacks. He talked to the owner who handed him a guitar and then he started singing and playing the guitar at the same time. When he finished, a few folks and some kids applauded, then he turned around and asked the owner to give me a glass of hand squeezed lemonade on ice. What a guy!

Even though we seemed to stay far behind the battlefield but we were not totally immune from the war. I heard over the radio that one of the units in the hills just attacked and took over a hill successfully. Before the cheering was over, the bad news came. Somebody stepped on a booby trap. A few killed and a few injured. I was part of the team to go and pick them up. We set out early in the morning and did not reach the rendezvous point until the afternoon. Two of us carried a wounded guy. He was wrapped in his poncho like all the dead, except that they did not cover his face for him to breath. Every now and then, he asked me for water. I let the paramedic take care of him and not offering any water fearing that it would kill him. We did not get back until almost midnight. He was immediately picked up by another team to head out towards the ambulance. On my way back, I was so exhausted and slipped and fell into a pond. It was pretty deep; I swam right back to the bank and picked up by the team. I changed immediately when I got back to my spot and they let me sleep that whole night because I was on that mission the entire day before, otherwise I would have to guard another three hours at night. Each night we broke the guard up into four shifts. The first and last shifts were always preferable because it did not interrupt your sleep, but they normally last about an hour longer than the middle shifts. We were told to be careful to conceal our silhouettes, as when we moved, we would be targets for the snipers. I usually sat motionless against a big tree with the safety of my gun off for three hours straight. Every now and then, somebody would signal and come by to make sure that we were awake. All those long marches and climbs in the jungle and mountains, the fear and the boredom both physically and
mentally overwhelmed me at times. On more than one occasion, I had thought to end it all. But the thought of my family had prevented me to do the silly things.

During the monsoon seasons, the mountains of Central Vietnam were particular colder because of the constant rain that would last a month at a time. Most of the time, there were no shower, just continuous drizzles for days after days. We wore our clothes as soon as we washed them so that they dried faster on our back. In one spot, there were three of us staying in a small clearing up on a hill covered mostly with trees and bushes. There were Sergeant Ta’nh, a Northerner, in his forties, Ma^ng, a kid from the South, who lost his right thumb, but was dragged into the service anyway and me. From our location, our main water supply was a creek, about half an hour to forty minutes walk. Every few days, we took our plastic water containers down, filled them with water and balanced them on both ends of a stick on our shoulder on our way back. The creek was about twenty to thirty feet wide; it was with running clear water. Due to its clarity, we could tell that its depth varied at different spots. At the crossing we were at, it was just knee deep all the way across. On other occasions, I walked along it and found that there were pretty deep spots. We filled our water containers, washed ourselves and sometimes harvested some fish. We all stood behind big pieces of rock on the bank, watching for a school of fish swimming upstream. As soon as it passed by us, we threw a small piece of rock in front of them and at the same time we slowly released a grenade into the water, behind the fishes. As soon as they were scared by the pebble, they turned around and heading downstream towards the grenade. Right after the grenade went off, we ran down stream, positioned ourselves there and used our helmet to shovel the stunned fishes over the sandy banks. Sometimes we got four sandbags full. We shared them with the other squads and we would have fish for days afterwards.

Wherever we stationed, we set up booby traps at nightfall and dismantled them in the morning when we woke up. We were always radioed before any unit plan to go through our locations, just making sure that the area was cleared. The booby trap was real simple and deadly. We used an empty C-ration can, punctured four holes at the bottom, and tied a stick about four to six inches tall on its back. It was then planted solidly on one side of the path, concealed in the bushes. We pulled the pin off a grenade and stuffed it into the empty can locking its spoon in there. We tied a fishing line to the grenade and string it across the path and tied the other end to some branches or a piece of rock and made sure the line was taught. The idea was when somebody walked on the path and kicked the wire, the fishing line would pull the grenade out of the can, without its pin, the spoon would jump and it should explode next to the person. An instant kill guaranteed. We definitely took turn to do this. When dismantling them in the morning, I normally squatted on the top of the hill, prayed and looked and spotted clearly the line and the environment before I made a move. Very carefully, I approached the grenade, clutched it tightly, pulled it out of the can and stuffed its safety pin back in, bent it into the locking position then collected the fishing line and wrapped it around the grenade. The corporal set this up on a rainy day wearing his pair of flip-flop. When he turned around trying to walk back up the hill, he slipped and kicked the wire.

The plain of Quang Tri was a totally different landscape. I did not believe that I saw any trees at all. There were just barren hills, small bushes and may be some tall grass. Over time, we moved around that area a few times too. When we were first mobilized there, we were replacing another unit. Our truck column took the National Route 1, (The Highway of Horror). I saw all kind of stuffs left behind on both sides of the road by a column of population who were massacred by the Northern Vietnamese Army (NVA) artillery. The population tried to run away from the advancing forces when they jumped the parallel
17 in the beginning of 1973. There would be no legitimacy and satisfaction for the NVA to take over a piece of land without its population, therefore the communist forces discouraged the people from leaving by shelling indiscriminately the main highway where people were heading south.

We were told that our positions would be very close to the NVA (Bo^. Ddo^.i). How close? When I just got there and took over a position from a departing unit, I asked one of the guys where were the NVA? He pointed out to me at a few guys who were squatting in the distance, just about less than fifty yards from where we were. The location was a plain with some small hills. There were no trees at all. The whole place was pockmarked with bomb holes with the sizes of the ponds. Some were of pretty good sizes; as wide as small swimming pools, results of the 500lb bombs. After a few weeks of rainy days, they were all filled with water. We designated which one was for consumption and which one for bathing. These depressions were all normally deeper than the height of a person. There were actually two sets of barbed wire separating us. Between the barbed wires were the landmines. Ceasefire was actually in effect there. I could not see it, but the Tha.ch Ha~n river was behind the NVA. I had never been so close to them. For the first few days, I slept with my boots on. Over time, we engaged in conversations over a cup of coffee or tea in the late afternoon. We also tried to exchange cigarettes. There were some spots where we were close enough to throw cigarette packs to each other. We gave them Capstan or Ruby. What we got in return were some lousy quality product from their sides. If you stopped drawing on their cigarettes for about 30 seconds, they extinguished by themselves. I asked them why? They said that the cigarettes were designed purposely like that so that not to waste any tobacco (sic)! Each one of their cigarettes consumed about a quarter of my matchbook. Not before long, they sent in some low level propagandist. I noticed that when one guy talked to me, there was always another guy hiding in the bush listening in (part
of the ‘threesome unit’ in which if one is at fault not being reported in times, all three would be responsible). I told him to jump out and join in the conversation, he slowly moved away from his position within the bushes and the tall grass into another position harder for me to see. It was so funny! When they talked to me, I discovered that they learnt those lines by heart. If I interrupted them in the middle of their discourse, they had to re-start from the very beginning of the paragraph! They told me that they learnt that last month, the workers of some manufacturer in Bie^n Ho`a demonstrated against the owner because they were mistreated. I told them to open their eyes and watch democracy at work and asked them if the workers in the North were not happy, would the government allow them to do the same? Their responses were their workers were always happy so there was no need for demonstrations. Nevertheless, sometimes we had pretty friendly exchanges about lives in the North and the South in general. At times, they were trying to test us by throwing a pack of cigarettes quite short of the concertina line on our side and into the field of landmines. They just want to see if we knew how to navigate through the minefield. We told them that we were not stupid.

We cooked two meals a day with the same kind of food most of the time. We always have a soup of xu xu (or xu ha`o) with the dried shrimps. I did not really care. When you were hungry enough, then even a simple meal would always taste good, especially with some crushed hot peppers. We started out to receive one C-ration pack each week; then twice a month and later, it became a monthly thing. We were told that the headquarters were running out of them. But every time when I could get back to town, I could buy them from the marketplace; there were plenty of them. Somebody stole them and sell them to the black market. On a few occasions, some of the guys caught snakes; they chopped it up into pieces and sautéed it. I got a piece and did not particularly like it; those guys did not even care to skin it. Everyone knew how to cook rice in an ammo box or
sometime in a helmet (extra helmet for cooking). We brought the water to a boil then we dumped in the washed rice and kept the lid closed. When it was almost cooked, we diminished the fire at the bottom and put some of the burning charcoal on top of the ammo box so that the rice would be cooked evenly. I remembered I dreamt about a can of Coca Cola. If I had a can, I told myself, I would burry it in the mud for a few days just to keep it cool. At the beginning of the month, when we got paid, people always had a few packs of cigarettes. By close to the end of the month, we used to walk around with a can collecting the left-over cigarettes buds that people dumped on the ground and tried to survive until the next pay day.

We must have stayed in that same area for a few months. When we got there, it was totally dry except for the few large bomb holes. We were in need of dry wood to make the fire for cooking, so a few of us scouted around the area. On one occasion, we found a collapsed wooden bunker, shaped like the character V upside down; we started to dig into it to pull the wooden pillars out, suddenly I saw a human foot popped out of the rubble. The type of sandal still on the foot indicated it was an NVA. We left that place as fast as we could. We stayed in that location through the monsoon months. The sky was always grey and it rained incessantly, and finally the whole area was flooded. We got stuck on the hills. Before the flood, at least we could still see those ponds. When the plain was flooded, there was no way we could tell. But we still have to travel to the outside at least once a week for the supplies. There, normally four of us went with empty backpacks. We picked up the rations for other hills nearby too. They would come to us later when we got back. We would strip ourselves all the way down except for the shorts, and barefooted for easier walking and just in case we fell into those ponds we could manage easier. Someone had to play the scout and everybody else followed behind. The depth of the water varied from stomach to neck high. We carried the supplies on our heads. Very often, all of us were victims of the leeches. When we
got to a high spot where we could take a break, we would use a cigarette to burn the leeches off our body. All I needed to do was to touch each one of them with a burning cigarette; they would fall off from my body almost immediately. They were all over, even on my most intimate part. We just had to get used to it. The invisible ponds could also be so dangerous. There was one guy who had a few days of leave, left the company in the morning, disappeared and never reached the units on the outside. A few days later, we discovered his body when it floated to the top. When he left, he wore his entire outfit, had his heavy backpack on. When we found him, his rifle still strapped to his neck! His backpack must have slipped out somehow. He must have fallen into a pond and drowned.

Looking at the world my kids are growing up today and reflecting on my own time at those same ages, no wonder we have such a wide gap. Those supposed to be the prime years of my life. Lost and wasted. But I learnt to appreciate everything a little bit more, value any relationship that I got. However taking everything into considerations, I was damned lucky, I came out unscathed. A lot of other kids at my age were not so lucky. How many had perished in that war altogether from all sides? How many families were devastated? When the memorial wall for the American Vietnam veterans was inaugurated, I cried. Where is the one for us?

2006-11-30T19:54:00.000-08:00

A Walk On The Beach

Summer 2003
Lawrence Tan

In memoriam of Monique Lee,

It had been a while since I felt that death had never seemed to be so possible and so real, especially when it happened to someone so close to you and at such a young age. The feeling of loss is so overwhelming. The sorrow still lingers. I composed this piece while our whole extended family vacationed together in a rented beach house in Nag Heads, North Carolina a few years ago. As you can tell, it was not written for Monique specifically. She was there with us at the time when I jotted down these lines. Every time I read these lines, I can’t help but thinking about her.

I woke up before six this morning and changed quickly into a more appropriate attire for an early morning walk, putting on my pair of long pants and a turtleneck just in case. I was not sure how it would be like out there on the beach. My brother-in-law was already out at the door with Lambmy, his dog. Except very few cars that occasionally passed by, the street was basically still asleep. We crossed the street, walked about a block and turned onto a public access path towards the beach.

The path actually took us to a good size wooden structure that housed the public facilities such as restrooms and a set of outdoor shower stalls. Beyond the public house, the path continued and crossed over a small sand dune proliferated with wild grass and onto a set of wooden stairs down to the beach. As we approached the public house where the ocean was still hidden from view, the august orchestral symphony of the rushing and crashing waves can already be heard.

Hanging above and behind us, the moon still can be seen, fading and retreating by the minutes, making way for the promising sun for another bright and warm day. The sun was still nowhere to be seen, but just like a stroke of a brush, its aurora had already painted a small strip of the horizon with a comfortable bluish color. The beach, normally stretched for miles, was quietly covered by a thick fog. The visibility was just about five feet. As we proceeded onto the beach towards the ocean and its continuous thunders of the crashing waves, I was suddenly taken over by a sense of awe, submission and fear. It reminded me of a tragic journey along the coast of Vietnam which seemed like a lifetime ago...

Except for the crashing waves, there seemed to be hardly any soul around yet. We walked about a quarter of a mile heading towards North. It was such a strange and eerie scene as the silhouettes of a few early risers started to appear and
disappear in front and behind us. As the fog started to dissipate, the outlines of the beach houses on the hill started to appear to the West. Except a few plastic bottles, the beach was relatively clean. The high tide deposited sporadic traces of the fine seaweeds about at least twenty feet away. I also noticed a lot of traces of busy creatures all over the sand. My brother-in-law told me that the crabs came out and were very active at night. By the traces, I could imagine that there was a whole nocturnal gathering of busy crabs there every night.

On the way back, as the fog started to clear up some more, we saw the tiny sandpipers rushed into the receding waves, trying to feed on whatever carried in from the ocean. Then like a constant and repeating game that they had perfected, they amused themselves by quickly evading the next incoming rush of the water. Along the way, I had saved three lives. A crab that got turned over on its back, it looked like it had been in a violent fight and lost one of his two large legs. Two tiny silver fishes washed ashore, one looked like still jumping around trying to get my attention and fight its way desperately back to the waters, the other looked more subdued. Nevertheless, I threw all three of them back to the waters. Some credit towards my children...I hope.

2006-11-30T19:49:00.000-08:00

Tormented

Summer of 2003
Lawrence Tan

Like a wildfire across the forest
Like a hurricane across the land
I was swept under…

Like a tornado across the plain
Like a torrential monsoon rain
I was taken over…

Helplessly stricken
Long hair
Dark eyes
Intercepting all my thoughts
I am loosing control…

What do I have to say?
When is the right time?
Where do we go from here?
Why, we are running out of time?

The fleeting glances
The teasing words
The warm embraces
Oh! They are all fake!

Like a ravaging fever
Like a sustaining chest pain
My soul is tormented

Like a cold winter night
Like in a darkest sky
My heart freezes over…

Grey sky
Blue heart
My pain
Your pleasure…