|
THE WRITERS POST (ISSN: 1527-5467) VOLUME 7 NUMBER 2 JUL 2005
|
NGO THE VINH ___________________________ A
small dream [Characters and settings, being mere
pretext, are fictional]. The man, a farmer, was formerly an ARVN
soldier. Twenty years had passed since
his days in the military, and he was now a middle-aged person. Though not yet fifty, he had been made
pallid, old and decrepit by a life of unrewarding hard labor. He had lost his left foot, ironically after
his military service had terminated, when stepping on a mine right in his own
rice field. One did not have to be a
doctor to know that his body hosted various illnesses and diseases:
malnutrition, chronic malaria, and anemia.
Whatever energy and dignity he retained was revealed in his bright
though rather sad eyes, eyes that always looked directly at those of the
person he talked to. Today, he came to
this field dispensary for another kind of complaint. It concerned a bluish-black lesion on his
back which was not painful, but had been oozing an ichorous
discharge for a long while. He had
sought various treatments, but found no hope of a cure. First, he had been made to wait in a
district's health service station where a communist doctor had eventually
given him a few Western medicinal tablets; then a doctor of traditional
medicine had treated him in turn with an herbal concoction and acupuncture. Despite all that, the disease refused to go
away, even as he was steadily emaciating.
Hearing that a group of healthcare workers from overseas had come to
offer volunteer services, he decided to come to them at this dispensary and
try his luck. With good fortune, he
hoped, he might even be able to again meet the doctor he used to know – the
chief surgeon of his Airborne Ranger Battalion in the past, who presently
lived and worked in America. But it
turned out that all the faces he saw were young and unfamiliar. Nonetheless, he showed them his back for
examination. From the team of young
doctors came an audible gasp of surprise.
The heart of Toan, the team leader, seemed
to miss a beat. Without the necessity
of engaging in complicated diagnostic procedures, he immediately recognized a
form of malignant melanoma, which certainly would have had metastases spread
to other parts of the body. The
disease, of course, could have been cured if discovered earlier. Unfortunately, this present case, being at
an advanced stage, could not be treated even with the most elaborate and
sophisticated medical technologies available in the US. It was not the patient, but the young doctor who
expressed sadness: "You've come too late; this disease otherwise could
have been treated successfully." Betraying no embarrassment, the
soldier-turned-farmer patient looked directly at the young doctor, his eyes
darkened with anger and sternness: "I've come too late, you say? It’s
you doctors who have come late, whereas myself, like all my compatriots, have
been here forever." Flatly
refusing to wait for anything else from the group of unknown doctors, the man
turned his back on them and walked out, limping along on his bamboo crutches,
his eyes looking straight ahead, accepting his miserable lot with the same
courage he had shown as a soldier in a time past. * During the preliminary meeting held
in Palo Alto to set up the agenda of the Convention, it was decided that the
upcoming Fifth International Convention of Vietnamese Physicians would be changed
to one of Physicians, Dentists and Pharmacists. After all, intermarriage among Vietnamese
practitioners of the three branches of medicine had been a very popular
practice. To Chinh,
that was good news reflecting the strength of unity amongst overseas
Vietnamese medical professionals. The last discussion in Palo Alto
did not conclude until past midnight.
Even so, the next morning, as was the habit of a person advanced in
years, Chinh woke up very early and got ready for
his one-day trip to Las Vegas for a visit with his son. Toan, his eldest
son, in a few months would complete his four-year residency in general
surgery. The younger man's plan was to
subsequently go to New York where he would spend four more years studying
plastic surgery. This was a medical
specialization which Toan once had remarked that a
number of his father's friends and colleagues had abused and degenerated into
"prostitution of plastic surgery", transforming it into something
like a pure cosmetic industry which helped its clientele acquire more
beautiful features like a high-bridged nose and fuller buttocks. Toan was strong
and healthy, taller and bigger than his father. He lived very much like a young man born in
the United States, quite active and aggressive in both work
and play, his thoughts and actions uncomplicated. Not only Toan and
his peers' way of thinking, but also their manner of identifying legitimate
issues of concern, differed greatly from the perspective of Chinh's generation.
To be born in Vietnam but live abroad, and to be a first- or
second-class citizen, had never constituted a problem or issue to Toan. Even though father and son had only one day together to
talk, Toan insisted on driving Chinh
to a ski resort very far from the entertainment district of Las Vegas. Along the way, Toan
confided in his father that it was not accidental that he had chosen to study
plastic surgery with a central focus on hand reconstruction. It was not the artistic inclination
expressed in his being a notable classical guitar player that made him
treasure this part of the anatomy.
Rather, to him, the function of the hands was a highly valuable symbol
of a life of labor and arts. Unlike
his father and his peer friends, Toan was endowed
with golden hands, as was the observation of his mentor professor. Indeed, from routine to challenging cases
of surgery, through each and every economical slit and cut he made, Toan always came out with results that were judged state
of the art. For a long time, Toan had been inspired by the example of the English
orthopedist Paul Brand who worked in India.
Not only with talent, but also with faith and enduring dedication,
Brand had contributed enormously to the field of orthopedic surgery
specializing in hand reconstruction, essentially to help people with Hansen's
disease, or leprosy. His work brought
hope to millions of people afflicted by that malady, and what he had
accomplished for the past four decades intrigued Toan
a great deal. Recently, Toan was also deeply moved when reading for the first
time a book
written in Vietnamese and published abroad by a Catholic priest, a book which
describes the wretched situation of leprosy camps in Vietnam, especially
those found in the north. Thereupon, Toan vigorously reached the decision that it would not be
Brand or any other foreign doctors, but Toan
himself and his friends, who would be members of Mission Restore Hope bound
for Vietnam. He mused upon the dream
that the year 2000 would be when Hansen's disease no longer posed a public
health issue in his native land. Toan
related to his father that, lately, he had received in succession of letters
and telephone calls from Colorado, Boston, and Houston inviting him to work
in Asia, Vietnam being top priority, under very favorable conditions: a starting
salary of six-digits or over a hundred-thousand dollars a year, coupled with
guaranteed fringe benefits including tax-free privileges when working
overseas. Toan
had a resolute response to the offer: if the sole purpose was to make money,
he did not need to go and work in Vietnam.
He was told by those contacts that groups of Vietnamese-American
doctors, not merely the vocally loud group led by Le Hoang Bao Long, but also others comprising "more
brainy" physicians, had quietly gone back to Vietnam to prepare a
network of market-oriented medical services.
It was said that, in their vision, the first base of operations would
be Thống Nhất
Hospital in Saigon, which would be renovated and upgraded to American
standards, and doctors serving there would all have been trained in the
United States. However, what would
remain unchanged was the hospital's adherence to its priority of treating
high-ranking Communist Party officials.
The only difference and "renovation" it would succumb to, so
as to be in line with the market economy, was to admit foreign clientele from
around the world, who were rich and in possession of expensive medical
insurance coverage. They would be from
South Korea, Taiwan, Hongkong, America, France,
Australia, Canada, and other counties.
The main point was to guarantee and safeguard their health to the
highest extent possible, so they would have the peace of mind to work and
invest, as well as to enjoy their lives, in all corners of Vietnam, from Nam Quan Pass in the north to Cà
Mau Point in the deep south. And,
undoubtedly, all this would also promise fat profits, which were greedily
eyed not only by American insurance companies, but also by a certain group of
Vietnamese-American physicians who were eager to "go back and help Vietnam". At
the age of thirty, Toan had his own way of
thinking, clear and free, and showed self-confidence in the path of
commitment he had chosen. Chinh did not exactly agree with his son's view, but at
the same time he knew only too well Toan's firm and
independent nature. Certainly Chinh did not entertain the thought of clashing with Toan for the second time over the same issue of whether
or not they should go back to Vietnam and engage in humanitarian
services. On the brighter side, Chinh felt relatively calmed when considering that
whatever choice Toan made was prompted by pure and
noble motives, which set him apart from the opportunistic crowd. And in a certain fashion, Chinh felt a little envious of Toan
for his youth, and even for his gullibility, which was almost transparently
obvious. At this thought, which
sounded rather absurd, he shook his head and smiled to himself as he drove
back to Palo Alto. From
Montreal, Canada, Chinh had more than once visited
California. Despite his familiarity
with the area, every visit seemed to have given him the impression of seeing
anew Vietnamese communities with expanding renovations and animated
activities. Instead of the
slightly-over-an-hour flight, Chinh had decided to
rent a car from Hertz at the airport and drive from Palo Alto to Little
Saigon in the heart of Orange County.
The trip was toward a young city of the future, but simultaneously it
was for him also a journey backward into the past, a trip taken in part to
contemplate a time lost. To confront
future problems faced by Vietnam at the threshold of the 21st
century, even against the cold, hard background of political reality, one
needed not only to utilize one's brain, but also to pair it with one's
heartfelt emotions, he thought. The
evil demon was seen not exclusively in the communist specter; it was lodged
in our own hearts, hearts that remained callous. One
of the statements made by Thien, Chinh's friend and colleague, meant as a joke, kept
haunting him. Tongue in cheek, Thien had said that if a mad fanatic were to shoot and
kill Le Hoang Bao Long, labeled pro-communist, how
desolate Little Saigon would certainly become. Then perhaps a second Le Hoang Bao Long would need to be found to take his place in provoking anti-communist sentiment among the
Vietnamese community, for without anti-communist fervor as a
stimulant, Little Saigon would not be able to retain its liveliness. The only thing was, it was not easy to pin
down the communists, their target ever shifting and treacherous; and given
that tricky situation, unwittingly, communist hunters were also made to move
in pursuit, only to voluntarily come full circle in no time at all, and
naturally from the first round of shots verifiable losses were counted among
their very friends. Chinh planned to meet with Thien,
author of Project 2000. The aim of the
project, which Chinh thought bold and appealing,
was to coordinate all circles of overseas physicians with a view to
"exploiting and transforming the abundant talent and energy existent in
the world into resources available to Viet Nam; opening the hearts of people
to tap a sector of the world's prosperity and channel it to the land of their
birth; shaping the destiny of Vietnam by modern technologies prevalent all
over the world". The plan was to
establish a non-profit co-op group wherein each doctor, each dentist, and
each pharmacist would contribute US $2,000.00, merely a very small
tax-deductible amount set against very big income taxes paid every year in
their adopted countries. With participation
of the thousand members, the acquired budget would come to a sum of
two-million dollars in cash. Given
that financial potential, there would be nothing that the International
Association of Vietnamese Physicians, Dentists and Pharmacists could not do:
from responding immediately to urgent matters like aiding fellow-countrymen
caught as victims in violent disturbances in Los Angeles or helping victims
of floods in the Mekong delta; to long-term projects like building a
Convention Center together with a Vietnam Culture House and Vietnamese Park
adjacent to Little Saigon; participating decidedly, and in timely fashion, in
a health project designed by WHO, the World Health Organization, for
eradication of leprosy in Vietnam by the year 2000. Chinh was aware
that right in the heart of Little Saigon alone, among the silent majority,
there existed many kind-hearted and sincere souls. There was the Colonel,
former commander of an Airborne Ranger Group, who had just arrived in the
U.S. after fourteen years in a communist prison. Paying no mind to the care of his own
failing health, the Colonel had immediately sat down and composed a letter to
Chinh requesting that Chinh,
on the strength of his good reputation, help motivate Vietnamese immigrants
to re-create the sculpture called Thương Tiếc, 'Mourning', so that soldiers who had lost
their lives for the freedom of South Vietnam would not be forgotten. The original large statue was a well-known
work by Nguyen Thanh Thu, featuring a soldier
sitting on a rock, his rifle in his lap, his dejected expression suggesting a
deep sorrow widely interpreted as representing his mourning for his fallen
fellow fighters. It had been placed in
front of the National Military Cemetery midway between Saigon and Bien Hoa. Hours after
the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, the Communists had pulled down the
sculpture and destroyed it. Then there was Tien, Chinh's former collegiate
fellow, who had taken the oath as a member of the Boy Scouts of Vietnam at an
assembly on Mount Bạch Mã,
near the city of Hue. He held but two
passions: to restore the organization of the Boy Scouts of Vietnam abroad for
the benefit of youths, and to establish the first Vietnamese hospital in
America. Of special note was Nguyen, Chinh's
former senior colleague. Almost 60, he
still remained single. For so many
years, Nguyen had continued without fail to be a devoted friend to
Indochinese boat people, and also a physician, gracefully free of charge,
serving circles of writers and artists, as well as HO families (those who
immigrated to the U.S. under the Orderly Departure Program). Lien, another doctor who had come to the
local scene rather late from a refugee camp on an island, was determined to
fight, against all odds, to undergo intensive retraining so as to be able to
practice medicine again in his new homeland.
Even so preoccupied, Lien did not give up on his ardent dream of
bringing into existence a monumental sculpture of "Mother Holding Her
Child" plunging into the immense ocean and drifting to another horizon,
which art work would symbolize the huge exodus of two million Vietnamese who
were on their way to creating a super Vietnam in the heart of the world. Chinh could think
of numerous other symbolic characters and noble thoughts, yet at the same
time he asked himself why, in spite of all that, he and his friends continued
to lose touch with one another in the darkness of "arrogance, envy and
delusion", to use Thien's words. For a few decades now, Chinh had remained a tormented soul, an intellectual
witnessing tragedies in a time of turmoil and of glittering and bright
deception. In the midst of so much
noise and the reverberation of depraved words and expressions, surrounded by
false political realities, very often Chinh wanted
to retreat into tranquility and quietude, doing away with tortuous thoughts
which only caused personal distress and did not seem to do anyone any
good. But he would not be himself if
he chose to walk that path. Forever,
he would definitely be himself, a man of strong conviction. To use electronic computer terminology, he
had been programmed, and, as such, there could be no question of change or
alteration in his pattern. The only
possibility he could imagine was that he might try to become more sensitive –
to the extent that he would feel amenable to dialogue with viewpoints
different from his own, all of which he believed could come together in the
end, even though the result would be a rainbow coalition. But, after all, multiple forms and colors
are the ferment of creativity, he thought.
Chinh realized that the number of people who
were still with him and supported him was dwindling with time. Not opposing him openly, the others simply
detached themselves from his sphere and each chose to walk his own way. As for Chinh,
certainly for the rest of his life, he would continue on the straight path he
had drawn for himself, no matter how deserted it grew. The ready forgetfulness and compromise
exhibited by overseas Vietnamese – which Chinh
considered damaging to their political dignity and refugee rights – together
with the extreme joy shown by people inside Vietnam because of the so-called đổi mới
renovation, only served to sharpen his heartache. In the end, everyone tries
to accommodate himself to new circumstances in order to survive, Chinh told himself.
A life abounding in instinct is ever ready to shed old skin, to change
colors, and to proceed with fervor.
The very few people who were as highly principled and constant as
himself seemed to be facing the possibility of becoming an endangered
species. Chinh's
mother, hair completely white with age, still lived in Vietnam. One of his dreams was simple: that real
peace would come to his homeland, so he could go back to see his mother before
she passed away, and to visit his old village and watch children play in the
village school yard. What a great
happiness it would be if he were able once again to provide medical care to
familiar peasants who were ever honest and simple, from whom the fees he had
received sometimes were no more than a bunch of bananas, some other varieties
of fruit, or a few newly laid chicken eggs.
His dream was seemingly not so unattainable, yet it still appeared
beyond reach and far into the future.
The reason was, he firmly told himself, because he could not, and
would not, return to his country as a mere onlooker, as a tourist, or even
worse, as a comprador shamelessly flaunting his financial success. Though he longed to see his mother, Chinh could not by any means return to Vietnam in his
present state of mind and current external circumstances. Since the middle of the
1970's, following the fall of South Vietnam, there had been a massive influx
of Indochinese refugees spreading all over the United States, the greatest
concentration of them being in California.
Difficulties faced by those who had arrived first were not few. To their camps, like Pendleton and Fort
Chaffee, humane and generous American sponsors had come to give them aid and
moral support. On the darker side,
there was also no shortage of local residents who discriminated against them,
who held ill feelings toward them and wanted to send them back to where they
had come from. "We Don't Want
Them. May They Catch Pneumonia and
Die", so went a slogan. Among
that first mass of refugees were Chinh's former
colleagues. Currently, the number of
Vietnamese doctors had reached 2000 in the United States alone, not counting
smaller numbers living in Canada, France, Australia, and a few other
countries. Out of a total of about
3000 physicians in the whole of South Vietnam, more than 2500 had exited the
country. This was not unlike a general
strike staged by the entire medical profession, a strike which had prolonged
itself from 1975 until the present. Chinh knew for sure that he himself had been one of the
few who had effectively mobilized and led that endless and unprecedented
strike. Chinh had a clear itinerary in mind. He would visit various places: San Jose in
Silicon Valley, valley of high-tech industries; Los Angeles, the city of
angels that ironically was about to become a twin sister of Ho Chi Minh city;
Orange County, the capital of anti-communist refugees, in which is located
Little Saigon; and San Diego, known to have the best weather in the
world. All these locations were full
of Vietnamese, and their population kept increasing, not only because of the
newly arrived, but also due to the phenomenon of a "secondary
migration" of Vietnamese from other states. In the end, thus, after having settled
elsewhere, they chose to move to California, a place of warm sunshine, of
familiar tropical weather just like that in the resort city of Dalat in Vietnam, as they told one another. Eventually, the Vietnamese
immigrants embraced standardization, a very American particularity. Big and small, cities in America all look
alike, with gas stations, supermarkets, fast food restaurants like
McDonalds. Likewise, entering crowded
and bustling Vietnamese shopping centers on Bolsa
avenue, one readily sees, without having to spend any time searching,
restaurants specializing in beef noodle soup, phở; big and small supermarkets; pharmacies; doctors' offices;
lawyers' offices; and, naturally, newspaper offices, given the insatiable
Vietnamese appetite for news in print. Chinh's colleagues had been among
the first group that arrived in this land.
They represented a collective of academic intellectuals most of whom,
with help from a refugee services program extended to all refugees like themselves,
had quickly returned to practicing their profession in extremely favorable
conditions. After that, if only everyone of them had retained good memories about their
initial feelings and emotions when forced to abandon everything and to risk
their lives departing for an unknown destination, they would have conducted
their lives differently in exile, Chinh began
silently grumbling to himself.
Engraved in Chinh's memory were those days
in an island refugee camp where Ngan, one of Chinh's former colleagues, once and again had confided
that he only wished to set foot in the United States some day, having no
dream of venturing to any further place, that he held no high hope of
practicing medicine again, that happiness and contentment for him would be no
more than breathing the air of freedom, living like a human being, starting
all over from the beginning to set up a home solely by manual labor, and
sacrificing himself for the future of his children. Luckily, reality had turned out better than
what Ngan had expected. With his intelligence and relentless
energy, and, of course, with luck as well, only within a short period had he
become one of those who resumed their medical practice. To work as physicians in America meant to
belong to the upper middle class, and, therefore, the status and position
accruing to this group of newly certified doctors was a dream even for many
native-born American citizens. But Ngan and a number of others in the profession had not
felt content to stop there. And,
eventually, what was inevitably to happen had happened. Concerted police raids on a number of
Vietnamese doctors' offices uncovered what was labeled as "the biggest
medical fraud in the history of the State of California". The news made headlines in newspapers and
television networks all over the United States. By then, only nine years had passed since
the fall of South Vietnam, a traumatic occurrence which was still an
unmitigated nightmare for its displaced people. And these same displaced people had to face
the humiliating February 1984 medical scandal, a second nightmare of an
entirely different nature. The name
Vietnam had never been mentioned so very often as it
was in the entire week that followed.
Nor had the past ever been so cruelly violated. This event was indeed an ignominy to the
past of South Vietnam and its people, a past defined by many sacrifices for a
righteous cause. The image of a horde
of Vietnamese doctors and pharmacists, Ngan among
them, handcuffed by uniformed police, seen in the streets, exposed to sun and
wind, had been thoroughly exploited by American newspapers and television
networks. All members of Vietnamese
communities felt their honor damaged by this scandal, which instilled in them
a feeling of insecurity and fear. In
fact, immediately afterwards, there had arisen a wave of abuse which local
people flung at Vietnamese refugees in general. In factories and companies, some insolent
employees in a direct manner rudely referred to their Vietnamese co-workers
as thieves, while others in a more indirect fashion stuck American newspaper
clippings, complete with photos of the event, on the walls around the area
where many Vietnamese worked. Those
average honest Vietnamese citizens, who had come to the United States empty-handed,
who were trying to re-make their lives out of nothing except their will and
industrious hands, suddenly became victims of a glaring injustice projected
by discrimination and contempt. Choked with anger, a Vietnamese worker
screamed to the absent academic intellectuals, that even way back in the old
country, any time and any where these intellectuals had been happy and lucky,
so it was about time they showed their faces in his workplace to receive this
disgraceful humiliation they themselves had brought about. The scandalous
event of almost a decade ago appeared as though it had occurred just the day
before, so heavy was the flashback that flooded Chinh's
mind. He tried to liberate himself
from stagnant residues of memory about a woeful time in the past. He pressed a button and automatically the
car windows were rolled down, admitting from the ocean a strong breeze which
flapped noisily against the interior of the car. Blue sky and blue ocean – it was exactly
the same deep blue spreading over the two opposite shores of the Pacific Ocean. The sight brought to mind a Chinese
statement Chinh had learned while in prison without
knowing its origin: "The sea of suffering is so immense that when you
turn your head you cannot see the shores." Freeway 101 along the Pacific coast
triggered his memory of National Highway One in the beloved country he had
left behind on the other side of the ocean.
Over there was seen the same great sea formed from the tears of living
beings, the same stretches of glistening sand, the same fields of white salt,
the same rows of green coconut trees.
The homeland in memory would have been absolutely beautiful, if not
for the intrusion of flashback-like film strips projecting scenes "along
Highway One", showing the "highway of terror" and "bloody
stretches of sand" during the last days of March, 1975. Little Saigon,
his destination, is always considered the capital of Vietnamese refugees, Chinh reflected.
In a certain sense, it is indeed an extension of the city of Saigon in
Vietnam. On the other hand, if one cares
to look at historical records of this geographical area and its people, one
will note an irony of history, which is that the first Vietnamese to live in
Orange County was an ugly Vietnamese named Pham Xuan
An, a communist party member. On the
surface, he was known to work for ten years as a correspondent for the
American TIME magazine. What nobody
knew then was that he was at the same time a high ranking spy for Hanoi. Supported by a fellowship from the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs of South Vietnam, An went to the
United States to study in the late 1950s.
After graduation, he traveled all over America, and ended up settling
in Orange County. Subsequently, An
returned to Saigon where he worked for the British Reuters news agency, then
for TIME until the last day of South Vietnam.
Only much later did one learn that An had
joined the Viet Minh, 'Vietnamese Independence Brotherhood League', very
early on, in the 1940s. Initially, he
had worked as a not-so-important messenger and guide, and finally had become
a strategic spy who, under the cloak of a correspondent for the prestigious
American magazine, had escaped detection by various CIA networks. Now, in the 1990s, An
lived quietly in Saigon, witnessing first-hand the failed revolution which he
had loyally and wholeheartedly served for more than forty years. In the meantime, it was estimated that
about three hundred thousand Vietnamese lived in Orange County, where An had previously established his residence. If An had a chance
to come back, he would not be able to recognize the area at all. From a dead place with poorly developed
orange orchards, it had become a youthful and bustling Little Saigon. In spite of all the hardships they shared
with their parents as the first generation of Vietnamese immigrants, many
children proved very successful in school and at college, and helped raise
the standards of local education a step higher. They graduated in every field of
study. This was more than what could
have been hoped for from Ðông Du –the Go
East Movement – in the first decade of the twentieth century, which sent
Vietnamese students to Tokyo for modern education. After a period of less than two decades in
the United States, the Vietnamese produced for the future of Vietnam a whole
stock of experts who could serve all areas of Vietnam's social and economic
life. In his life of
exile, not being able as yet to directly contribute anything to his homeland,
Chinh nonetheless nurtured a small dream for the
year 2000. After attending many
conventions, he had the impression that he and his friends and colleagues
were still like homeless people, even though they were lodged in no less than
four-star hotels. In view of that, he
decided that during this present field trip to California, the first item of
construction he would campaign for was not merely a home base for the
International Association of Vietnamese Physicians, but more extensively, a
Cultural Park complex comprising a Convention Center, a Museum, a Culture
House, and a Park. It ought to be a
representative project of great scale and high quality, which would be given
utmost attention in various stages of construction. As much as the village's đình làng, or
communal house, symbolizes the good of the village, the proposed Culture Park
complex would be an embodiment of cultural roots, indispensable roots that
should be jealously safeguarded by generations of Vietnamese immigrants from
the first days they set foot in this new continent of opportunities. The complex would be like a common ground
for the currently very divisive Vietnamese diaspora,
and would help younger generations advance with pride in their adopted
country, while looking toward Vietnam for their true identity. It was envisioned that the Cultural Park
complex would be built in the southwestern part of the United States,
specifically located in a large area south of highways 22 and 405, adjacent
to Little Saigon. It would be a place
conducive to a lively introduction to unique Vietnamese cultural traits,
through attempts to re-enact periods of history, both glorious and tragic, of
the Vietnamese people since the establishment of their country. This project
would not solely be the job undertaken by a Special Mission Committee
composed of the cream of the diaspora, drawn from
all areas of social activities, Chinh thought. Rather, it had to be a work of the whole
community of free overseas Vietnamese, without discrimination on the basis of
differences displayed by individuals and various camps. To begin with, if each immigrant simply contributed
a dollar per year, Chinh estimated, there would be
more than a million dollars in addition to the two million expected from the
Association of Physicians, Dentists and Pharmacists, and whatever else from
the Society of Professionals and business people. Three million dollars per year was by no
means a small amount with which to build the foundation for Project
2000. The first five years would be
spent in identifying and acquiring a piece of land big enough to meet the
requirements for the Cultural Park complex.
Of the buildings, the convention center would be the first to be
erected, for it would serve as a cradle of community activities in culture
and the arts. Thinking these thoughts,
Chinh at the same time could not forget how many
times he had heard the so-tiresome refrain of dismissal that Vietnamese were
incapable of constructing works of great scale, because so many destructive
wars, in addition to the humid weather of tropical Asian monsoon, would not
allow any great man-made work to survive.
But like himself, they were in the United States now, and he wanted to
prove the fallacy of their argument.
After all, the essential element was still man. As long as he had a dream worthy to be
called a dream. Then what was needed
was a cement substance to bandage and join broken pieces in the larger
heart. More than once, Chinh had proved his ability to lead an intellectual
community that had consistently did nothing for the
last two decades. Now he was
confronted with a reverse challenge, that of mobilizing the strength of the
same collective to do something, if not inside Vietnam then outside, within
an end-of-the-century five-year plan, before the 21st century
arrived. He dreamed of a five-year
period significant with planning and action, not with a
passive attitude of simply watching things run their course. But reality
told another story, Chinh reminded himself. After but a few tentative first steps of
sounding out others' feelings, Chinh had come to
clearly realize that it was indeed easy for members of the Association of
Physicians to agree on non-cooperation with the Vietnam government in
everything, including humanitarian aid.
On the other hand, it was a much more complicated problem when it came
to a concrete plan which demanded participation and contribution from
everyone, resulting in numerous questions of "why and because"
issued from the very people whom Chinh thought to
be his close friends, having walked a long way with him. Given this state of affairs, Chinh thought, the upcoming Fifth Convention would be a
challenging testing ground for the willingness, not only of himself but also of the whole overseas Vietnamese corps of medical professionals, to commit
themselves to this meaningful cultural project. From Chinh's point of view, instead of standing as onlookers
from the outside, the International Association of Vietnamese Physicians
should play a pioneering role, getting directly involved from the beginning
in the construction of the Cultural Park complex. The building of it would be a rehearsal,
serving as the blueprint of a model for the museum of the Vietnam War
envisioned by ISAW, Institute for the Study of American Wars, an American
NGO. ISAW was planning to build Valor Park in Maryland comprising a series of
museums dedicated to seven wars in which the Americans had been directly
involved since the foundation of their country. Of course, among the seven was the Vietnam
War, the only war of just cause lost by the United States, along with its
South Vietnamese allies. Providing
correct facts and searching for answers to the question of causes would have
to be the proper contents of this future Vietnam War museum. Surely, two million people who had left
their native country in a huge exodus could not accept a second defeat, an
eternal one at that, at Valor Park, imposed upon them by a repetition of
falsified historical facts, manipulated by the communists as usual. In fact, if things went according to ISAW's
plan, the museum would exhibit incomplete, one-sided testimonies which would
show, for example, that the war was between the United States and North
Vietnam, ignoring the role of South Vietnam in the conflict. It was not simply a matter of who had won
and who had lost. Rather, it involved
the political personality of two million refugee immigrants who were
struggling for a free political system in the land of their birth. Furthermore, Chinh believed that the process of constructing the
Vietnam War museum by ISAW had to start by drawing from the planned project
of the Vietnamese Cultural Park complex of 2000, to be located right in the
capital of Vietnamese refugees. This
Park was to represent an overview and a selection of images, data, and
testimonies related to various historical periods of the Vietnamese struggle
for independence. It was intended to
be a place where younger generations of Vietnamese immigrants could get help
to look toward Vietnam in search of a lost time, to fully understand why they
were present in this new continent. In
such light did the envisioned Cultural Park complex constitute Chinh's dream. Between Chinh and his son Toan there
transpired a silent conflict with regard to the battlegrounds of their
dreams. Toan's
dream was thousands of miles away, back in the native homeland. But then, Chinh
asked himself, what dream can't one dream, inside the country or out? Realization of any dream did not depend
solely on the brave heart of one person; it had to be based on the will of a
collective whole that together looked in one direction, together cherished
and longed for the joy of a fulfilled dream.
As for Chinh personally, what he was wishing
for was not a temple to worship in, but a warm sweet home for "A Hundred
Children, A Hundred Clans" – Vietnamese descending from the mythological
union of the fairy Au Co and the Dragon King Lac Long Quan.
This home base would be a location where values of the past were collected
and stored, a gathering place where the ebullient spirit of life in the present was demonstrated, and a starting point from which to
challenge the course of the future. It was to be, above all, a pilgrimage
destination for every Vietnamese no matter where in the world he or she
lived. NGO THE VINH Little Saigon 01–1995 [Excerpt from The Battle of Saigon, Published
by Xlibris 2005] The Writers Post &
literature-in-translation, founded
1999, based in the US. Editorial
note: Works
published in this issue are simultaneously published in the printed Wordbridge magazine (ISSN: 1540-1723). Copyright
© Ngo The Vinh
& The Writers Post 2005. Nothing in this
magazine may be downloaded, distributed, or reproduced without the permission
of the author/ translator/ artist/ The
Writers Post/ and Wordbridge magazine. Creating
links to place The Writers Post or any of its pages within other framesets or
in other documents is copyright violation, and is not permitted.
|