links

Two things I don't do very often:

1. Post frequently.

2. Post blogs that link you to the things that I have been looking at, in close proximity to when I actually look at them.

Number 1 I am trying to do something about, sort of. Well, I've created a rule for myself such that I post *regularly*, rather than frequently. I think I'm doing OK, but it does make my posts a little more conversational, and a little less narrative / essayist. I prefer the latter, but the former will suffice. Until I can merge the two.

Number 2 I am about to change now. I don't think I will continue with this, however.

For the people who read my blog and are interested in my law side:

Austlii is in funding trouble. I could not have survived law school without Austlii. I especially loved the transcripts of High Court cases, almost contemporaneously with when the case was being argued. I followed the case of McBain (about a single woman's right to IVF, kind of; actually more about constitutional law issues - woo hoo!) like it was a serialised television progamme. There sure were some cliff-hanger moments ...

Thank you to Legal Eagle for drawing that to my attention.

If you wish to assist Austlii to keep its services free, you can contribute here. I certainly will be, as I am of the view that, now I am earning, I can give back. I am sure there are doppelgangers of my young law nerd self lurking at the library computer terminals avidly following the advocacy, banter and witticisms of Australia's best lawyers. Oh, and you may use Austlii for educational purposes too but, like, whatever.

For those of you who read me for my Viet side:

VietK - whom as far as I can tell is neither a Queenslander nor an Australian and therefore has shamed me somewhat in being more abreast of what's going on in my hometown than me - has blogged about one of the stories at an exhibition at the Qld State Libary, featured in the local rag.

For those in Queensland, please go see this exhibition and then report to me. I am so annoyed that I am not in Australia right at this very moment!

I hope there are other reasons to read me than my law-ness and Viet-ness but today I feel compartmentalised.

chao.

Update
Blogger has been doing something funny. It kept chewing bits and pieces of this post - so some of you may have a random garble. I disclaim all responsibility.

Paradise Now

I finally watched this film, over the weekend.

The highest praise I can give to a movie is that it is well made. I remember one of the best ever comments on an essay I wrote was: "well written." That was all, and I was beaming. Since then, whenever I read a book, or see a movie, that I thought was particularly good, I think: "well written / made". Not really the most useful review, however. (Not that this post is a review, except in so far as it says: It's good. I reckon you should watch it, if you have not already.)

This film is about two young men, who are given a suicide bombing mission. The mission does not go to plan. As a result, the audience is presented with an insight into why each of the young men (but one in particular) has decided to accept the mission. It is a tense movie, exploring the issue from a number of angles. The film is set within the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; the young men are Palestinian.

I like the myriad ways one can read the title. Paradise Now: could be a statement that where we are at the moment is paradise, or an impatient demand for change, or ironically drawing attention to the poverty and despair of one's current situation. These meanings come to play in the film; it is what makes the film so very interesting.

The complex reasons for why one of the young men, Said, chooses to partake in the mission are laid out carefully, and subtly. There is talk - Said persuades the mission leader to take him back - but there is also demonstration - Said asks his mother questions about his father. The reasons are so much more than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There were some very powerful images: Said, with bomb strapped all around his chest, staring into a bus and deciding whether or not to get on; Said leaning against his mother's window, watching her prepare food; Said's friend (I've forgotten his name already!) torn between what he believes, and being a good friend.

The film reminded me of the reasons why people choose to do extreme things for a cause, whether removing oppression is possible without violent means, and of my own family's attitude towards war.

One of the main reasons that Said chooses to participate in the suicide attack is because of his father. Although he has reasons connected with the overarching conflict, his greater concern is his family's dignity. Said's friend's decision is much less complicated, and much more passionately intertwined with the conflict: he is oppressed and he hates his oppressors (that is simplifying it somewhat - after all, there are good reasons for why he hates his oppressors). There is also a young woman - she is the first image of the film that we see - who is the daughter of a martyr and who passionately believes in non-violent means of change. She makes an argument that you may be familiar with: the value of showing to the world the criminality of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians and the poignancy of being seen as victims, rather than aggressors.

I do not know suficient about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to brave an opinion. But I do understand that there may be reasons worth dying for, even if I do not think I would ever believe in anything enought to die for it.

In university, I demonstrated. When I asked a young woman to join me (in a peaceful Reclaim the Night march), she refused and proffered the following reasons: her parents had emigrated from an Eastern European country to Australia for fear of persecution for their political activity. In Australia, her parents had been persecuted for their past political activity in the Eastern European country. She would not participate in public political demonstrations.

I recall being surprised by this, and (because I am egocentric) relating it to myself: my parents emigrated from Viet Nam because they did not think they could make a life under the incoming communist party. They were not engaged in the political dimensions of the war around them; I always understood their reasons to be very simple. For the entirety of my father's life in Viet Nam, there was violent conflict - Viet independence from the French, WWII, the American-Viet Nam War, the Viet-Sino War, the Viet-Cambodian War. My father was a nationalist - but he was also very principled and he thought everyone was corrupt. He was quite disengaged from the political aspects of the wars: it did not matter what they were about, they always inhibited his making a life for himself and his family. All my parents wanted was a good and peaceful life in which they and their children could prosper, one they did not think they could have in Viet Nam. It was only when the American-Viet Nam war occurred, and when the Viet Cong won political power that my family felt it was unbearable to continue trying to make a life in Viet Nam.

It is more complicated than I am currently explaining, and probably more complicated than I - or even any of my family members who made the decisions - understand. But the reason my family left Viet Nam was not because they held a political view that communism was wrong.

I believed that my family was pacifist. This was borne out when my maternal grandmother, normally mild-tempered and sweet, threw a riotous tantrum and threatened to cease speaking with her second-youngest son when he indicated that he wanted to join the Australian Defence Forces.

It surprised me then to learn from my father's reminiscensces that he had wanted to join the South Viet Nam army, before he was married to my mother. Ba told me he thought it was a way to get away from the hard work of farming and fishing. Because Ba is a dutiful son, he asked his mother and father for permission. From what my father has told me about my paternal grandmother (Ah Ma) and from what I know of literary tropes, Ah Ma was a stereotypical dowager empress type: strong-willed and manipulative. Although Ba was not one of Ah Ma's favourites, she appreciated his hard-work and general aptitude at most of the things he tried his hand at. Ah Ma found a family with a marriageable young woman (my mother!) and married my father off to her. (I will tell that story in better detail another day.) Now, my father could no longer join the army as he had a wife, and would very soon have children, to support.

During the American -Viet Nam war, my father's primary concern was how to keep his growing family fed. He did what he needed to do: during the day, if he was found, he assisted the South Vietnamese army; at night, the Viet Cong. He tells me of occassions where he would build a bridge during the day, and dismantle the same bridge at night. Mostly he spent his time evading either army and working with whomever would take him on.

I have always known that my family are not strongly politically motivated. The paramount value in my family is the continuation and prosperity of the family. When I watch movies like Paradise Now, I am moved to wonder what would motivate me to take extreme action, or even actions that are politically dangerous in a more oppressive political climate than the one in which I grew up (Australia). I am much more politically and ideological interested than my siblings, but I think I would behave more like my father (preserve at all costs) than like Said in Paradise Now.

I have participated in protests and demonstrations: anti-war ones, feminist ones and a few feminist anti-war ones. I recall one particular march from my early university days, protesting the introduction of voluntary student unionism. I did not know anyone else on the march, and I looked different: I wore all black (I almost always wore black, back then. Not goth black, just kind of boring-please-don't-look-at-me black). I befriended the people nearby me: a young woman in flowy skirt and wild red hair, and a young man in brightly coloured clothes. The march was mostly peaceful but I somehow found myself in a group that was attempting to storm the administration block. When I realised what was occurring, I tried to leave. As the crowd surged forwards, I was edging out and away. People shouted at me, and I shouted back - such articulate things as: No! Stop! Stop it! Let me go! I'm not part of this! The brightly coloured man called me a coward. This hurt, but I kept trying to leave. I did finally extract myself and I ran away from the demonstration and into the safety of the library where I stayed in a quiet corner with my favourite journals until I felt I could emerge. The students 'occupied' the admin block for two days, and I think a lot of them found it very exciting. I wondered then how many actually believed taking the admin block would aid their cause, and how many were there because of the momentum and peer pressure.

I am wiser these days when I choose my demonstrations. If they might turn violent, I do not attend. I believe there are other means for me to effect change, and have my voice heard.

I am not suggesting that participating in demonstrations is akin to being a political martyr or a suicide bomber, but it is doing something which may have a detrimental effect on oneself for an ideological cause. My family would never understand if negative consequences were visited upon my head for a political or ideological reason. When Ba and Um gave up so much to ensure my prosperity, how can I do otherwise but ensure that their sacrifice was not in vain?

A Goodbye Post

In my travels around the web - I was working really hard today, honest - I found this site.

The Migrant Project seems like a very interesting one. This is a little something from their manifesto:

The Migrant Project is a unique, interdisciplinary arts project, developed by a collective of Australian artists from a variety of cultural and artistic backgrounds, discovering and reassembling the untold stories of Australia’s past and present.

I am reminded of a day I spent at the National Archives in Canberra. I had planned myself a little 'Nationals' tour (only one day free in Canberra): the National Archives (half an hour), the National Library (1 & 1/2 hours), the National Art Gallery (2 hours), lunch (1 hour), the War Museum (1 hour), plane home. It did not quite work out like that because the Archives had an exhibition of the lives of people who first arrived in Australia as emigrants and who lived initially in a migrant community at Bonegilla. It was a fascinating exhibition and I spent about 3 hours there.

Each time I see things like the Bonegilla Exhibition and the Migrant Project, one half of me is inspired, and the other half exhausted. My desire to document my family story and, indeed, to find out more about my family story is re-invigorated. On the other hand, the time evidently put into these projects and the sheer talent that surpasses my own wears me down.

The Migrant Project poses this very interesting question:

In what ways do we forge a hybrid sense of self between our different identities, our different senses of home and belonging and the many identities we possess, the communities we straddle?

This blog started out telling snippets of my family story. It's morphed into all kinds of things - a little about books, a little about law, a little about race/ism, a little (probably more than I intended) about me.

In many ways, I have found it impossible to separate my Viet refugee past from my current life.

The nature of blogging itself does not assist me to keep separate stories of my past, from stories of my present. I began to worry, as I realised that people were actually reading my blog, of revealing too much about people who had not agreed to have anything at all revealed about them, to an unknown audience. It began to be safer to tell stories of my present, in which only (or predominantly) I - who had explicitly agreed to having things revealed about me and who was (mostly) in control of the revelations - figured.

I am a hybrid - not only of my Viet-ness and my Australian-ness, but also of the different identities of Oanh the daughter, sibling, aunt, partner, lawyer, reader, feminist, etc. I live a digital, and a non-digital, life. You, too, are a hybrid.

I have documented, and will probably continue to document, the transgressions between the me who aligns with my family and cultural expectations of me, and the me whom I think of as more truly myself. It is the cultural straddling I (and others) do, and suspect will always do, that intrigues me. I do it mostly unthinkingly. Have I forged a hybrid sense of self, or has it just arisen?

I am moving to the UK - a kind of confused reverse Australian migration. I will soon be struggling for a sense of home, and definitely for a sense of belonging. That won't be anything I have not done in the past, but it will be interesting to do, equipped as I am now, with the verbiage of theory. I will soon have no family and very few friend reference points for my identity. I will be behaving amongst people who will have no pre-conceptions about how to expect me to behave in any given situation (except my partner, of course, who has years of pre-conceptions, now). It is why travelling is so exciting to people, I think, this opportunity to re-create.

For my parents, my moving is not quite travelling. I wonder if they view this move as akin to their migration to Australia. It is not, of course, as I reassure them of at least 12-monthly visits home. That in itself, and the immediacy and simplicity of communication unknown when they left Viet Nam (and complicated by other factors too), makes what I am doing now, conceptually very different to what they were doing then.

This is my goodbye post. Not because I am leaving blogging forever, but, because, circumstances being as they currently are, I will need to have a blog hiatus of at least two months, maybe more. Moving across the world is time-consuming. I will probably still be reading and commenting but suspect that, too, will be sporadic. A break will be a good opportunity to think about the direction and purpose of this blog, and to return, hopefully, with a clearer idea of what I want from my blogging or an epiphany that such clarity is not possible, nor even desirable, for me.

chao.

Who am I?

In my preparations for travel to Viet Nam last year, I made multiple copies of my passport details page, asked a workmate to certify the copies and then placed the copies in a variety of places – my 'personal items' drawer at work, in my filing cabinet at home, in my sister's filing cabinet at her home. I was fearful of losing my passport. Visions of me at the Australian Embassy in Ha Noi, attempting to persuade a bureaucrat of my identity and unable to do so drove me to this neurotic over-planning.

I have little proof of who I am. My father keeps a tatty piece of paper that was our travel visa to Australia. It has a yellowing photo of me as a girl aged about two, squirming on a chair. There are similar photos of a sister and brother, squirming on the same or a similar high-backed plastic chair. My mother is also on this flimsy piece of paper, younger and more worried looking, with a deceptively smooth brow and glossy black hair that will be shaved off as soon as she reaches Australia. My father is on a different piece of paper, with two other sisters and an uncle – a pretend brother. These slips of paper were kept by Ba with a pile of important papers inside an envelope stashed under his mattress, and it was only about a decade ago that one of my siblings bought him a folder, with plastic sleeves in which to place and hopefully preserve the documentary evidence of our existence.

These flimsy bits of paper were pulled out at intervals whenever we needed to 'prove' our idenity: opening bank accounts, enrolling in school, getting a job, renting a house. The fold lines are deep, and little rips creep along where we have not been careful enough.

I do not know if, in Viet Nam, we had identification papers. I do not know if these were lost. Whenever I hear or read about all these terrible persons arriving on Our Shores (not on Our Terms) without the correct documentation, I think: That's how we came – with nothing to evince who we were.

I accumulated identification evidence around me as I grew. When I was 7 or 8, my parents became 'naturalised', taking the citizenship oath that their English language classes had taught them. I am a mere name on the back of my mother's certificate – and this is all the evidence of my citizenship, my nationality. When I opened a bank account at age 11, it was my first independent evidence of me, unconnected to my family. Then, age 16, I got social security documents and my driving learner's licence, followed rapidly by my driver's licence. Soon after, I applied for a passport and out came the tattered, yellow travel visa. The only proof of my date of birth. I took copies of the visa and my mother's citizenship certificate, got them certified by a Justice of the Peace at a bank and have them still, stored away in my own safe places.

I did not apply for a passport because I had overseas travel plans. I wanted more proof that I was myself, but especially that I was Australian. Before I went to Viet Nam, I would pull out the passport and check its expiry date often – to ensure that I would renew it without trouble when the time neared.

Viet Nam was my first trip overseas and out of Australia. The first visa in my Australian passport, although Thailand are the first stamps (we flew Thai Airways). When I told work, making light of my very real fears, about my concerns that I would be in Viet Nam, passport lost and having difficulty convincing the Australian embassy that I was indeed an Australian citizen, one of my bosses earnestly stated that I should call and he would help me out. My fear was probably overblown, a touch on the paranoid side. But I do have tendency to absent-mindedness.

We had no difficulties at any of the airports we passed through, although I was ramrod straight and alert, particularly in Ha Noi where my excitement at being in Viet Nam was quickly dampened by the austere and rather forbidding atmosphere. The customs officials took one look at my passport and knew I was Vietnamese. Clue number 1 – my name; clue number 2 – place of birth. They spoke to me, but their accent was so thick I had no idea if it was Vietnamese or English, or another language they were speaking, and I just stared blankly back. When I realised that the official was only exchanging pleasantries, I smiled ruefully and left the queue a little wild-eyed.

At every hotel we checked into, we had to pull our passports out and present them to reception staff. At the Saigon Morin Hotel in Hue, where we arrived dripping wet and bewildered after an incomprehensible exchange with our new tour guide, reception asked to keep our records for the duration of our stay and I refused. We reached a compromise whereby reception would take copies of our passport and return them to us – but we had to wait until dinner time. We left to visit the markets, dodging clingy vendors and then to the the elaborately rambling tomb of the emperor Tu Duc. When we returned our passports were safely handed back to us and I was relieved.

From Hue, we drove to Da Nang and into Hoi An. The drive had taken all day because we stopped at a few spots on the way (but thankfully did not go near any of the claimed 'China Beaches'). We were shown into the lovely reception area of the Hoi An Life Resort in the soft drizzle of non-stop rain we had encountered since flying into Hue. Staff at the Life Resort had, to my surprise, never before encountered Viet-Australians. They told us that no Viet-Australians had ever stayed there and were impressed by how rich we must have been if we could, like all the white travellers, afford their rates.

Because there were three of us, an additional arm chair had to be located for me to sit in while we went through the usual check-in procedures. First off – our passports. A young woman came with drinks for us but by this stage, I was frantically rummaging through my bag for the case that I kept my passport in. It was not there. I waved her away, panic setting in. My sisters, too, stared at me in horror as I patted down my person, then my bag, then my backpack, opening and closing zippers in increasing terror. One of my sisters sat me down in a chair and made me talk my way through what I had done with my passport. Rational thought was gone.

The Australian Embassy is in Ha Noi. I will have to travel there by car because you need a passport to fly. How long will that take? I am going to be stuck here. I am going to miss my flight. I can't go home. What if they do not believe me? I left my driver's licence, everything else at home. Only a passport (gone!) and my credit card (still on me). When did I last have my passport? I don't know. Where is it? Why is it not here? Where else could I have put it? No where else. It has to be here. I could not have dropped it. Could I have dropped it? But where? When? I've been so careful. Really, I have!

I must have looked as panic-stricken as I felt because our driver came into reception to ask if everything was alright, to see if we needed interpreting help. The last thing I could recall doing with my passport was taking it off reception staff in the Hue hotel and then heading off for dinner, intending to stash it away in its safe place after dinner. But I did not recall stashing it away. I pictured myself putting my passport into my pocket jacket and missing. Maybe it fell on the floor of the hotel. Maybe someone had picked it up and handed it in. What if someone picked it up and pocketed it? But I was not wearing my jacket when we returned from Tu Duc's tomb. I had not been cold. I had my raincoat slung over an arm, bag and camera straps criss-crossing over my chest.

I was readying myself to ask the driver to take my back to Hue. I turned to my sister to ask her to do it, because my Vietnamese was not good enough, too impolite. And all the while I was still thinking: But where? When?

The passport was in an inside pocket of my raincoat. I had put it there to protect it. And then I had forgotten and left the raincoat slung over the back of a chair inside the van at all our numerous stops. I was so relieved at finding my passport, I almost hugged the driver. All the potential mishaps from a lazily left behind raincoat crowded into my consciousness but I pushed them away. My sisters' sympathetic relief turned into the type of berating mothers are very good at after their child returns safe from some misconceived adventure. One of my sisters demanded that I let her keep my passport, but I refused.

I had no further passport misadventures during the rest of our time in Viet Nam and then our few hectic days in Thailand before returning home.
My paranoia about losing my identity was realised in Viet Nam by my own easily distracted mind, ever on the present and drifting away from practicalities. I still have a fear that I will be unable to prove who I am because of lack of hard evidence– everything is built on some other piece of paper. I have more now – a lease, my legal admission documentation, employment contracts. But I am still worried that if I lose one – the big one – , the rest of this identity house of cards will fall down around me and there will be: nothing.

Inspired by an Odd Traveller

Banh Canh

I am a little later than I should be. She said to arrive at 11am, which means to come at 10.30am. I come at 11.30, not entirely my fault. Maybe I slept in.

She hasn’t started yet, she says. Flustering around me, she pulls out two bags of rice flour (I’ve just been to the shops, it was so busy). Where did you go?, I say conversationally. With exasperation, she says ‘Inala’, as if there were any other shops nearby that she could go to to buy these bags of rice flour. They are each about 400g of fine bright white powder, in a clear bag with red writing all over. The writing is in a variety of languages: Viet, Thai, Chinese, English. I remember being little and being shown these bags, with careful instructions to come back with the right one (red writing for rice flour, blue writing for tapioca starch). I hesitate to tell her you can buy these at the local Coles; I don’t want to start an argument – today, I am being good. Minus the turning up late – she’ll forgive me for that.

I wander over to my father who is resting on his recliner chair, eyes closed. Shopping has clearly worn him out. Sitting down on the arm of the chair, I place light fingers on his knee. I used to sit on that knee but now I am too large, he too frail. He opens his eyes and I greet him - “Ba”. He acknowledges me with a grunt and closes his eyes again.

My mother (Um) has boiled some water and she pours some into a large bowl, into which both bags of flour had been emptied. With a large serving spoon, she mixes it in and tells me to ‘ne’ it – she will bring me the tapioca starch which she left downstairs. 'ne' is a word I had not heard before. She bustles off and I look down at a large tub filled with white dough. I have never done this part before. This has always been done before I arrive and my job is to turn the mountain of dough into large rice noodles. It is just like playing. I think about it and figure she must mean to knead it.

Um does not teach me to cook. She does not show me. I often ask her to cook things with every intention of coming by early to watch how she does it, to learn before it is forgotten how. She always starts too early for me. I have resorted to downloading recipes for Vietnamese dishes from the web. Tradition expects that my mother in law will show me how to cook, teach me how to look after her son. The notion is obsolete.

I am also the youngest. My mother had shown some of my elder sisters her cooking – they helped her in the kitchen. I did too but I did the odd jobs, the jobs you could trust the youngest kid – easily distracted and petulant – to do. You should never give the youngest kid a time consuming task, unless the reward was great. Something like “fetch me the butcher’s cleaver” was about what I could handle. Maybe rinse the vegies and herbs and sometimes, put the rice on. Nothing too involved. Beetles, praying mantis’ and lizards always needed to be found and homes built for them (they often also needed supervision so they would stay in the insect mansions). I could rarely be expected to stay in the kitchen long but I could always be called in for those urgent fetching errands.

There were exceptions. Fresh tofu was one: I could stand and curdle that tofu for happy, anticipatory hours; my taste-buds eager for the silken flavour of home made tofu, my greed overcoming my need to rescue unwilling insects or climb frangipani trees in the neighbour’s yard. Banh canh – today’s lunch – was another. The store bought noodles were nothing on the flavour and texture of home made ones.

Um comes back: “Where would you like to make them, on the floor?” No, I say. I’d prefer the table. Better for my back, used to sitting at computers all day. She looks at me strangely and says – it is easier on the floor. “Oh, I just prefer the table”, I say diplomatically. “That’s why your back aches, Um”, I don’t say.

I spread out the bowl, a chopping board, a plate and another serving spoon. I wish for music, but not aloud in case Ba hears me and turns the Vietnamese radio on. Um has gone again and it’s just me and a large bowl of dough. I put my whole hand into the dough, only to withdraw it and run to the tap. The dough is hot. After running my hand under cold water for a while, I come up with a plan. I go to my bag to get my book. Using the serving spoons, I turn the dough over, break it into bits and generally mush it. Then, as the steam rises, I bring the book to my nose and read. When the steam subsides, I repeat.

“Is it ready to ‘se’?” Um says. I guiltily put the book down and say – no, the dough was too hot and I could not knead it. She looks at me again, to inspect whether I really am her daughter or some hopeless Australian who just looks like her daughter. I’m both, honest. She looks at the book. I show her my splotchy red hand – a hand that reads books more often than it plunges itself into hot dough. “You put hot water on it” I accuse. “Of course I did”, she says impatiently. Pity we came to Australia for a better life, education, opportunities. Look how I’ve turned out – unable to knead dough.

‘se’ is a verb. It is in the present tense. All Viet words are in the present tense. Yesterday, I se the noodles. Today I se the noodles. Tomorrow I se the noodles. It feels as if I have always se the noodles. You use the same word and it does not matter what the time structure is (although if you are my parents, early is best). Context is important to ascertain meaning. Context is all you’ve got to go on. Unfortunately for the dough, my context is higher education and a professional job. My hands weren’t toughened in the context of bonded labour (traditional Viet marriage). Context is also my family.

After about an hour of lonely ‘se’, my sister turns up, both kids and husband in tow. She sits down beside me, youngest kid on her lap and starts chatting. I invite her to join in the fun, but she declines. Her husband helps instead. They are a liberated family. In another hour, another sister turns up. This time, the kids are in the lead (they’re older). They too sit down. I invite them to join the fray – to speed up lunch. Luckily, they do with enthusiasm.

To ‘se’ is to roll small parts of the mound of dough into smaller, long, noodle-like parts. Picture yourself playing with playdough as a kid. Remember making worms? Just like that, only not colourful and hopefully hygienic. Repeat. Repeat some more. It is better, if you can manage it, to have family turn up and arrange themselves around you. They should start chatting, the louder the better. Some should join the ‘se’ and others can outright refuse to. For added interest, the kids could cry. Maybe one of them should be super cute, and say something precocious, preferably bi-lingually. Another is probably on the cusp of being an adult and she’ll want to talk about hair, boys and clothes. You will try not to be disdainful, but you won’t succeed especially when she tells you she is reading magazines instead of books. You will despair (even though you were that way yourself).

Um is downstairs, making the soup to accompany the noodles. I always miss out on this part because I am the person who ‘se’. As if telepathically connected to the mountain of dough, Um turns up with the soup when there is one tiny hill left. We divide it and ‘se’ in excited conclusion – the last few are thinner and less consistent, but made with more laughter.

The noodles are cooked in soup (it has crabs and prawns – we were fishing folk ‘back home’). Bowls are placed in front of flour dusted people, and we sit down elbow to elbow to eat. Fresh eschallots, coriander and pepper is added to your taste. Ba likes large pieces of pepper so he takes the lid off the grinder and places whole peppercorns into his soup. I mimic him and discreetly choke on one behind a cough. We have banh canh for lunch. Its flavour is enhanced by our work and the warm chatter.

Census Night

The ABS records the languages we speak at home. I will not know how to answer this one, when I am faced with it on Census Night.

I do not want to answer that English is the language I speak at home because I know what the question is trying to elicit. But it is an inaccurate way of recording my ethnic diversity to answer, untruthfully, that Vietnamese is the language I speak at home.

And I am always confused by 'home'. I have made my own home with my partner – it's a workers cottage in inner city Brisbane (you'd love it) – and my parents have visited me there only once. But I will regularly say, while I am at home with my partner, that I am going home for a while. What I mean is that I am going to my parent's house in the suburbs surrounding Brisbane. The house I experienced my teenaged years and the rising racism of Pauline Hanson and ilk. The house I still consider home.

Before that house, we had another, smaller home near to where I now have my current home. In my dreams, that house is our family home – it is the house of my earliest memories: a kind of cosy mish mash of too many bodies, too few rooms and a stronger community. In that home, we hosted many families – either more recent arrivals from Viet Nam or family visiting from interstate. Family that my parents had to draw airborne diagrams to explain the connection to our family before I would call them by their appropriate title (uncle on my father's side, great-aunt on my mother's side), aunts who were younger than me, nieces who were my age but had to call me aunt, cousins I called 'older brother', 'older sister' and whom I begrudged giving up my bed to. This house is my archetypal home. There, I started school and made my first friends who were not family. There I developed a sense of myself, separate from my parents and siblings. And there, I refused to bathe in the bathroom where I had once seen a slug. (Until we moved out, I bathed in the laundry sink.)

On census night in 1988 when I was old enough to interpret for my parents and answer the questions with my brothers and sisters, the question about how many people lived in our house worried me. Why did they want to know that? I knew enough to know that the census form was for The Government and had experience enough to be fearful of authority. I had an inchoate concern that if we told them just how many people lived in that falling apart three bedroom Queenslander (what would be a 'Renovator' today), some person would descend and move a distantly related uncle, aunt and kids, away. Perhaps they would even take a sibling.

My friends at school did not have as many people in their family as I did – no, neither Naila's Muslim Lebanese family nor Ellen's Irish Catholic family had so many people under the one roof. The logic behind the fear had something to do with knowing that other households had fewer people and that the Government had power to help, and hurt. My parents received social security from the Government, and so did some of my older siblings. But I never understood why we received it, why it would occasionally stop and cause my parents an array of anxiety I was not a part of, and what was done to regain it.

By the next census in 1994, we had moved to a larger home and I was a teenager who was much less fearful of Authority arriving in white shirt and tie to take me, or my parents and siblings away. Indeed, I was vocal, political and unafraid to thumb my nose at Authority although I was still afraid to thumb my nose at my parents. By then, I knew that people in white shirts and ties who turned up on our doorstep were either Mormons, or people from Telecom trying to sell us pay TV. All were turned away politely. When I was younger I slammed the door and hid. By then, we were also Naturalised – Australian Citizens – and I was ready, willing and able to wield the force of that category against our enemies (usually more perceived than real).

That house is now largely empty and on Census night in 2006, my parents will ask one of my siblings to assist them to fill out the form. In my new home, I have reverted to impolite refusals of unexpected guests, who these days telephone rather than turn up knocking at our rotting wood door. I no longer hide. But I still cannot come up with a satisfactory way to answer what language I speak at home.

Traditional Costume

I had never really considered the phrase 'traditional costume' before. I have certainly thought about my traditional costume – the ao dai (long dress/shirt – it's a long tunic, with long sleeves and slit either side up to the waist to reveal long culotte-like trousers worn underneath). What I had not thought about was the diminutive word costume, and the way when stressed – traditional costume – it sounds somehow dismissive, derogatory. The speaker could be saying: the ao dai is not real clothes – it's a get-up; a costume.

When I wear the ao dai, I do feel as if I am in costume. I have only worn it thrice in my 26-odd years on this earth: once to my cousin's wedding when I borrowed one of my cousin's ao dai because I was in the bridal party and her mother was horrified that I would be the only woman not wearing an ao dai – even one of the whities was wearing one!; once to my sister's wedding when I was bridesmaid and master of ceremonies – my sister had asked me to wear another outfit that she really liked but another sister had recently traveled to Viet Nam and had returned with an ao dai just for me, so I donned that instead much to my sister's, her new husband's and myriad family members,' friends' and strangers' amusement; and last and most recently to my mother's 60th birthday party where my eldest sister thought Um would be chuffed if we all wore ao dai. My eldest sister was right, Um was chuffed. Most of the women wore ao dai that night, and when a female guest turned up not in ao dai, she turned around and dashed home again to change into one.

Firstly, the ao dai is not suited to an indelicate person such as myself. I forget to flick the back skirt out when sitting down and find myself standing up again as the collar chokes me. The trousers are too long – they are meant to be worn over and covering high heels. I wear them with flat shoes and trip all over the trailing hem. The press-stud buttons that run up one side are not made for women who gesture wildly when talking – mine invariably pop at inopportune moments and I am faced with subtly pressing studs shut against my chest, or making frequent trips to the bathroom. So something happens to me. I find myself paying more attention to my outfit, smoothing it out, checking the buttons are still done, moving more carefully. I talk less, and not so volubly, because the state of my conversation and volume are directly related to how excitable I am and if I can remain calm in my conversation, my clothes will not attempt to eject me into the unsuspecting world. I sit more upright, with hands clasped in my lap, neck and nose held high – it is difficult to slouch in an ao dai, you pull at the fabric at your back which you are sitting on because you forgot to flick the back skirt out and you are afraid the press stud buttons will burst at any moment.

I am in costume when I am in ao dai. I am pretending to be the Viet girl who knows what to do in a wedding train, the bridesmaid who dutifully follows the bride around and the daughter who hasn't forgotten her heritage. But I'm not. I tripped along in that wedding party hating having to be there and carrying the red-cellophane wrapped mock dowry as an offering; I was a better master of ceremonies than bridesmaid, highlighting my discomfort for others' amusement but completely forgetting about the bride; and I might be wearing an ao dai at my mother's birthday bash, but I cannot converse with her friends.

And what is traditional about it, for me? It is not part of my tradition. I never wore one to school, nor did any of my sisters, who never got that far in their schooling before my family came to Australia. One of my sisters did wear one throughout her early years at the Viet community school that she attended and was briefly the poster girl for. I stomped my way out of Viet community school after the second week of classes when my precocious comparison of English and Vietnamese (I was taken with how the word No in English meant No but could mean full in Vietnamese and gee, I just would not shut up about it) earned me a ruler across the back of my hand. I recall telling the teacher that the English school teachers would never do that; to which he responded that I was probably not so naughty with the English teachers because I could not be sassy with them. I was sent out of class to ruminate over my terrible behaviour and I ruminated my way home, to announce to my mother that I was never returning. She did not try to persuade me of the errors of my way (although now, I wish she had) because I was a stubborn child who knew her own mind. In some measure, that incident is why I am so 'well-integrated'.

There is a new tradition, of course, for those of us in Australia (and other countries that are not Viet Nam) and whose family desire that we remain 'Vietnamese'. (I do not think I've ceased being Vietnamese just because I wear the ao dai so uncomfortably.) But we trot out the 'costume' at important life functions – the wedding, the milestone birthday, the lunar new year and family photo opportunities. It seems that the ao dai becomes the formal dress of the emigre Viet; where in Viet Nam it is indeed the formal dress as well as a work and school uniform. Was it once, traditionally, worn more ubiquitously than that? My mind vaguely recollects reading an article about the sari in India. A part of the article discussed the changing context of wearing a sari – where once it had been worn everyday (and of course, nicer saris worn on special occasions), it was becoming relegated to only special occasions, and sometimes work. Is the same thing happening in Viet Nam? It is certainly happening in the Viet community of which I am a part, in Brisbane.

Occasionally, I contemplate wearing the ao dai to a formal work function. I usually disregard that thought pretty quickly. I already feel enough of a fraud wearing the ao dai without the added complication of appearing 'authentic' to others who do not necessarily know better. I do not want to represent myself as knowledgeable about Vietnamese-ness (Vietnamese-dom?) and the wearing of the ao dai might suggest to others that I have retained more of my ethnic 'heritage' than I, in reality, have. I have, once, worn a mock-up of the ao dai to a friend's new year party. I wore the tunic with low-cut jeans, revealing my pierced navel because the ao dai was split down the middle, rather than the more traditional splits either side. An affectionately drunken friend was flabberghasted at the exposed belly, repeating admiringly oft and to many – oh, they'd never wear it like that in Viet Nam. Shocking, just shocking. I enjoyed wearing the ao dai that night; I was more comfortable in the tighter jeans that allowed my freedom of movement without forcing a false grace on me.

And what of the traditional costume of central and northern Viet Nam? Why has the ao dai become THE Viet costume? Not merely because emigrants from Viet Nam are from Southern Viet Nam in statistically significant numbers. I found myself disappointed when in Viet Nam to sense the disappearing significance of the traditional costumes that belonged to the various regions of Viet Nam. I was saddened by seeing women staff in hotels and restaurants wearing the ao dai, even in Ha Noi. The depth and richness of traditional Viet clothing is falling away and no one is trying to arrest it because a women in an ao dai elicits such powerful responses about culture and beauty, grace and tradition.

Why is it only women's traditional clothes that are retained and imbued with this significance? My theory is that women, because of their child-bearing and rearing role, embody the continuation of culture. Thus, the vision of women in the clothes of their country of origin is a powerful statement about how they have retained and will continue to retain the connections with that country. How women dress is also more scrutinised than how men dress. Women are more symbolic. Men can transgress from – and return to – a minority culture more easily. Plus, men's costumes were less attractive anyway – but this is complicated by the fact that our notions of attractiveness have been developed through the male perspective.

What about the costumes of the ethnic minorities within Viet Nam? I am reminded of images of Sapa girls in their colourful highland dress, the red Hmong, the blue Hmong, the Khmer who all live in the many mountainous regions of Viet Nam and who are disparaged by the 'true Viet' (and I include myself and my family here) as not really being Vietnamese when these communities have lived, worked and loved in those mountains for generations. My father tells me of the smaller 'tribes' who lived around the Delta where he grew up – the ones chased away, scapegoated by other Viet families in the region when times got tougher. I wonder where they 'escaped' to?

Calling certain clothing 'traditional costume' has an anachronistic ring to it. I am not sure why. Perhaps it is the word 'traditional'. It is certainly inaccurate – what about the blouses and pyjama-like trousers worn by Viet farmers, men and women. That has not become 'traditional costume'. I can see the appalled mouths of my mother and my aunt should I ever arrive at a wedding clad in the peasant trousers they would have all worn most days as young women and claiming that I am wearing my traditional costume. I smile at the horror I imagine lighting their eyes, and the way they will whisper to each other, and how my mother will march me into a room to start off berating me only to end up laughing or merely giving up with her incorrigibly inaccurate daughter.

The Gangster we are all Looking for

A Novel By Le Thi Diem Thuy

This wonderful novel opens with a little lesson into the Viet language – one of the things I also love about Vietnamese:-

“In Vietnamese, the word for water and the word for a nation, a country and a homeland are one and the same: nu'o'c.”

Especially for me, and my family, water is a particularly apt description of our country of origin. The place where all my siblings and I was born is surrounded by water – and then the families of the area create more water with which to thrive: dams and canals, huge vases containing drinking water and smaller ponds containing good luck fish.

But water is also an accurate depiction of how we, and the family in the novel, are carried to a new home country. My family traveled by boat to Malaysia, and then by plane to Australia. The young girl narrator of the novel – whose name we do not discover until near the very end – is carried by water with her Ba and four uncles to the shores of the United States of America. There, we learn that water separates her Ba and herself from wife and Ma; and that water has claimed her brother, who ghosts beside her as she navigates the sadnesses and struggles of her parents in a place far from family and familiarity. We also learn that water is the tie that binds her to her uncles, whose fate in the United States the novel loses track of, much the same way as a child forgets the people who are no longer part of her everyday life. Water recurs in her descriptions of her experiences in life.

The novel tracks back and forth in time but is written in the present tense. This gives Gangster a sense of a child's memories and perceptions. It starts with the home in the US that she shares with her parents, then reverts in the very next paragraph to how she, her Ba and her uncles “float across the sea” to Singapore, then California. In one paragraph, the author condenses the actual migration from the beaches of Viet Nam to the shores of USA. At the same time, she manages to capture the sense of how difficult this journey was, its incomprehensibility and evasion of time, and a blinking arrival in a completely new, completely unknown and unexpected place. Her mother's eventual reunion with husband and child is unremarked: one chapter, her mother is a figure on a faraway beach and the next, a real person in the child's life. How father and daughter are separated from mother is narrated later still, as if the child only then recalls it, having been otherwise pre-occupied with learning English, wearing itchily starched dresses and discovering a new home. What must have been a short time spent obsessed by a butterfly trapped in amber takes an entire chapter to relay. And she ends, grown up but relating to her parents in the same way as a childhood night-time trip to the beach.

My partner and I, in an unrelated discussion, were talking about how readers find time-jumps disconcerting. Instead of disorienting the reader, Le Thi Diem Thuy's narration is timeless in a most evocative fashion. The novel is a series of memories, narrated from the perspective of the child at the precise point in time in which that child is experiencing those memories. On reflection, the novel grows in its descriptive beauty and sharp eloquence.

In particular, I found that how she captured and explained her growth and distance from her parents resonated with me:-

“In the fall of the year I turned sixteen, I jumped out of my bedroom window and ran away. The night's black roads wound like long stretches of river. ... The streets ribboned out in all directions. I lifted first one foot and then the other, ready to run down all of them.”

I did not run away from home, but I did move interstate when I turned seventeen. It felt then as if all the paths I could take went forever away, all unknown and me all unknowing. And I wanted to take all of them unthinkingly and indecisively. The path I eventually chose – or may have had chosen for me – was one of return. In some ways, this was a braver decision that the one to leave, and I am pleased with how it has all turned out.

As may be evident, I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. The dust jacket informs me that this is Le Thi Diem Thuy's first novel. It was published in 2003, and although the fact that I picked it up in one of those seconds book-stores does not bode well, I hope that she has written more and that they will float across the oceans from the US to me.

Que Nha

This incomplete bridge is one of the reasons my family left Viet Nam. My father's land, and my father's family's land, was taken by the government for reasons that included the building of this bridge. Twenty something years on, and this is the bridge. It sticks out no more than 10 metres from the river bank - indeed it is not even joined to the river bank, just a random structure of concrete and steel, jutting out of the Mekong, without purpose and abandoned. It makes a joke of our leaving for a new life.


These neat rows of well-tended vegetable garden is where my family home was.


I am pleased that my father's home is now a thriving garden of watermelon, herbs and 'rau cai' (a medley term for an assortment of green vegetables necessary for all meals). Ba is an excellent gardener, and it is appropriate that the home he built should birth meals for his younger brother's family.

***

This is my uncle's home, which is directly behind the garden above. It is made of concrete and corrugated iron; inside it is tiled and cool. It is a rich man's home for the region.

On one side of my uncle's house lives another aunt - older than him, but younger than my father - one the other side is another uncle. Their houses are built of palm and patted clay.


My father is sitting in the left corner - the guest's place where he sits and is served tea, coffee and food, where brothers, sisters, cousins, nieces and nephews come by to meet him. One of my female cousins leans against the door, taking a break from her daily work, or calling a child home. A cousin's husband is carrying around his son, stooping to pick up something. A visiting uncle perches on the banister, chatting with my father; and the uncle whose house it is, is gathering the tea things - to make more tea, so the decade of catching up is lubricated well into the late afternoon.

***

This is one of my younger male cousins, resting from his work. He is perched on the fishing net that delineates where this place is. It is an unamed place, except for the number of the fishing net (9). This is Hang Day Chin - fishing bay no. 9 - where my family hail from.

Anonynmity in Hoi An

This is one of my favourite photos of me. Mostly because I don't really look like that. And it's such a well composed picture, don't you think?


Taken at the delightful Mango Cafe in Hoi An town. There are chyrsanthemums in the foreground, the window is painted in bright blue, a palm tree and Hoi An's main river just outside.

I had a splitting headache but loved the town. My sisters wanted to do more shopping but I wanted to watch the world go by. I'm just not into haggling when a little woodpecker is jabbering away behind my right ear.

I sat outside for a bit and chatted to three male tourists at the opposite table. The Accountant took this photo while I wasn't paying any attention.

I smile a lot - happens when you grow up and your mother is telling you always to smile. The three men were nice enough and I told them a little of my history. They were a ragtag bunch of travellers - little in common except that they were on the same tour. The youngest was Greek and had been in Australia a few months prior, the two older were from the UK and America. They were intrigued by the fact that my sisters and I spoke a mish-mash of English and Vietnamese.

After I told them we had been Viet refugees and were now Australians, the American delighted in wanting to know if I was going to visit My Lai.

I was short with my response. No, I said. Why not? He said.

I stared at him.

I don't think it is appropriate, I said primly.

He stared at me. It's your history, he said.

I looked at him quizzically, my ire growing. I could not really articulate why I did not want to see, and that it had never occurred to me to visit, My Lai. I had been shocked by his asking. Although an important part of the American War, and an iconic turning point in the rest of the world's understanding of who was really being hurt in that war, I could not bring myself to contemplate visiting a place where so much horror and agony had occurred. I can't imagine making it a place to visit, on a tour of a country. Just like, though it is not part of my culture's pain, I would never vist Auschwitz.

It was difficult enough to contemplate reconciling myself to the Viet Nam of today, let alone the Viet Nam of 1976. And what about my history beyond the war that got Viet Nam to the notice of the rest of the world? Just because the Viet Nam / American war and the My Lai massacre might be part of this man's guilt and understanding of Viet Nam - it wasn't mine. I didn't quite know, and don't know still, what is my understanding of Viet Nam. (My guilt is more explicable.) But there's more to it than the War.

I don't recall my answer after that. Some muttered politeness and we left.

Where are you from?

The question is heard often when travelling, and understandably so. But I am asked this question rather often at home. The question took on a different flavour while I was in Viet Nam and Thailand – I did not mind it so much.

But in Australia, this quite banal question riles me. One particularly aggravating exchange:-

It's 6.00pm. An Asian looking girl, in a suit, is standing at a bus stop, presumably waiting for the bus. That Asian girl is reading a novel and leaning against the wall, her head excited about the possibilities of travel and a holiday in the very near future. A boy, roughly the girl's age, approaches and stands beside her. The boy keeps looking at his watch in exaggerated and distracting movements. He finally leans in towards the girl and says:

Him: The bus is late.
Me: Mm.
Him: Where are you from?
Me: I'm sorry?
Him: Where are you from?
Me: What do you mean?
Him: Where are you from?
Me: (You do realise that you are just repeating yourself, don't you?) Um, Brisbane.
Him: No, where are you really from?
Me (looking perplexed and feeling angry but remembering my partner's generosity towards people): I'm really from Brisbane.
Him: Oh, I get it.
Me (not aloud): (Do you now?)
Him: Where are your family from?
Me (sighing): Viet Nam.
Him: What are you doing here?
Me: Waiting for the bus.
Him: No, I mean what are you doing here?
Me: I live here.
Him: No, like are you studying?
Me: I live here. (repeating himself worked for him)
Him: Oh, wow. So are you from the north or the south?
Me (my generosity – what little there was – gives out. I am exasperated.): I am from Brisbane.

He laughs. As if I made a joke. I look at him. As if he is an ignorant racist. He realises at least that I don't seem to want to talk to him anymore and becomes quiet. I return to my book.

In Viet Nam and Thailand, and probably other developing nations for which tourism is one of their main industries, the question is a way of engaging the traveler, before trying to get some money out of them (usually). I find the children who call out: “Where you from? Where you from?” particularly adorable. More so when I wander over to tell them and they respond with blank or fearful or surprised expressions. I grin, they grin.

Perfect communication. Just a joyous way of saying 'hello!'

The above exchange (verbatim with some blogger licence) is a convoluted way of saying 'I'm racist and have heaps of preconceptions about Asian women, belonging, identity, and no sense of general etiquette about waiting for a bus.'

Reluctant Refugee

This story is not mine.

While traveling my sisters and I spoke with a young man, working as a bell boy at one of the many 4 star hotels we stayed in. We fascinated the local Vietnamese who worked at the hotel. They had never before had guests who were of Vietnamese origin and were curious about us. I happily conversed with whoever asked me a question.

This young man called me “Miss Oanh” and I found it at once deferential and amusing, and inappropriate and startling. I had not asked anyone their background, beyond asking whether their family lived locally and the usual Vietnamese questions of how old, married yet, kids yet. I did not know how to go about discussing their lives, especially in light of how I must appear to them: same same but so very different.

This story jolted me. I was reading at the time, waiting for bby. There was slow, light rain and I had meandered around taking photographs of lotuses as my sisters chatted to each other and eventually to this young man. I listened to his story but did not close my book. I found myself unable to look at him.

I am ashamed to say that I have forgotten his name. Let’s call him Binh.

****

When Binh was young, his family lived near Hoi An. Hoi An was Viet Nam’s first coastal port town. It was soon overtaken in importance by nearby Da Nang and became a quainter, quieter version of its bustling and brash sister. The beaches of Hoi An are reputed to be very beautiful, unmarred by war like distant China Beach or Vung Tau.

In 1983, Binh was 8 years old. I can see him as a child – his face is one of those that do not look like they changed much from childhood. He has a lightness about him, an openness. On a day in 1983, Binh was playing on one of Hoi An’s beautiful beaches that open out to the great blue-grey ocean. It cannot have been particularly late in the day, but Binh cannot remember what time of day it was, or where the rest of his family were.

Binh plays and, like children everywhere, he is easily distracted. He pauses to watch a random collection of people in quiet chaos climb aboard a boat. He may have seen some of these people before – with his mum at the market or in the street. Some may be his neighbours. Binh is young, he does not really know what they are doing. It is a strange thing: the sobriety with which so many people – men, women, children – undertake this business of boarding a boat. Some of the children cry or struggle, as young children will, but the adults are oddly quiet.

Binh watches for a long time. It seems as if whole families get on the ship, and it seems as if it will never end. He comes closer because he is an intelligently curious child, and continues to watch. A few men approach him but he is too busy watching the families, the other children his age, to notice. It is not until the men are almost upon him that he sees them. They are determined, unfriendly. Inchoately realising their intent, Binh turns to run, struggling away from their snatching arms.

But Binh is 8 years old. He is neither strong nor fast, and he does not evade the men. They bundle him up, struggling, onto the boat.

For uncountable days and nights, Binh sits fearfully in the dark, with other children and women. He does not speak, is profoundly confused. Mothers try to draw him out, but most are too caught up in the web of their own lives and their own frightened children. Binh does not know where he is going or with whom.

Things happen on the boat. There are moments of noise and chaos, followed by silence. All of it is meaningless to Binh.

One day, he is taken out of the boat - pushed and shoved forward. When he looks about him, he stumbles. There is little he can see other than the bodies of people – people who have become familiar but are still unknown to him. People who look like him shout out, pull him forwards, push him backwards. He does not understand them.

Binh ends up in Hong Kong. He lives in a detention centre for 6 years, alone, with other lonely boys. Some of them were on the boat with him. Some of them were not. He is educated in the detention centre and learns a little of the language.

Binh makes friends in the centre but new people arrive and other people go. The numbers dwindle; it is not uneventful living in a detention centre: there is a desperate kind of community there but not one that lasts.

When Binh is 14, he is taken aboard another boat, larger than the one that he remembers when he was 8. He fills out a form about who he is and where he came from. Binh is deported. Back to Viet Nam. Back to Hoi An.

In Hoi An, Binh cannot find his family; to them, he is long dead.

****

Binh has made a life for himself. I do not know and cannot imagine what the years between when he was 14 and now must have been like for him. I wish I could say that his is an unusual story but it is not. So many young people were kidnapped because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. So many became reluctant refugees.

Home again

I have returned from Viet Nam and I am ... ambivalent.

Only a tiny portion of the trip was about visiting my family home in the South Mekong Delta. The tourist part will be discussed elsewhere - I am still doing my best to keep my genres clean.

The landscape around Hang Day 9 was undeniably beautiful, and poignantly bare in places. Where our house once stood, a thriving garden of watermelons, chilli trees and random herbs now live in neat rows. My uncle's house is a new structure of concrete and tiles, bright and gaudy in the way rich Vietnamese like, and is directly behind where my father's house was. It is luxurious for the region. I preferred the dark palm leaf huts with their patted down clay floor. All my father's family have given up rice farming, and some have given up the fishing life, hiring out the fishing nets to people who are poorer and have to work harder to survive.

Nevertheless, the area is still very dependent on the river. Travel was entirely by boat - our initial trip out from Ho Phong to Hang Day 9 was on a small, low 'long tail speedboat'. It was about one metre across, 7 metres long and half a metre deep. One could stand in it reasonably comfortably, but 3 sisters, Um & Ba plus all our luggage filled it up quite quickly. The rest of our travel on the river was on a suong - also a long tail speedboat but this time only about 70cms across, 4 metres long and about 30cms deep. One could not stand and it was best if one sat serenely in the middle, with as little shifting as possible. The locals squat, but our cousins knew we would not be accustomed to doing so and had placed reed mats on the floor of the boat for us to sit on.

I felt lost and timeless out there. We left when the tide was high, ate when we were fed and went to bed not long after dark. I never knew where or when I was going next and I never grasped the geography of the twists and turns of large river and little and littler tributaries.

I wished to be left to myself more, to wander around the prawn filled dams, my grandmother's tomb and the gardens surrounding the area but each time I walked off, someone would follow me for fear that I would get lost or fall into the river. My westernisation comes out most strongly in my desire for peace and quiet and my inability to spend lengthy amounts of time with people. This all manifested in a migraine which I could not shake the whole three days I was there, because I could never lie down in a cool, dark and quiet spot.

The twists of filial relationships confused me and I called most of my male cousins: older brother (hia or anh - also the polite term for any male). Many of them are older than me and almost all have young families. Most traced their relationship to me, meaning that they were to call me older sister (che) and I to call them younger sibling (em). I could not do it. I was so useless and dependent out there, I had no claim to demand a term of greater respect.

My female cousins I did not see very often. They were almost always busy in the kitchen or garden. They woke before me and started breakfast. After setting up and clearing away breakfast they disappeared into the garden to collect the vegetables and begin preparing lunch. And after lunch, the routine was repeated for dinner. I wandered into the kitchen a few times to talk to them but was ushered out again after it was discovered I did not want anything. I offered my washing up services but was politely declined. My mother suggested that I would be unable to do the dishes because I was unfamiliar with how it was done. When we wished to bathe, my cousins boiled water for us and came to get us when the water was ready. I felt coddled and suffocated. The only cousin I spoke to for a lengthy period of time was excused from serving duties because she had a child still at the breast. She conversed with us in between dealing with her young son.

My position would have been no different if we remained in Viet Nam. I was only served because I was a guest; in another life, I would be serving. All my female cousins called me 'che' but I tried to use their names. Even they called each other by filial denominations and I was confused again.

I found Viet Nam beautiful and moving, and I could imagine living there - as a foreigner in the city. I could not live as my cousins do. I have changed too much to be able to accept their life. I am too outspoken, too feminist, too intellectual and too different.

We could start somewhere else

On 20 April 1983, my family arrived in Australia.

The story of our migration from Viet Nam to Australia is full of so many threads that I have yet to pull together, yet to fully comprehend.

I guess the real story of my family’s migration to Australia started well before I was born and has its phases: the broad story of why, the intricacies of how and when.

In early 1975, towards the end of the Vietnam War, US troops who were leaving Vietnam made a unilateral offer to take any South Vietnamese who wished to go with them to the US. Three of my uncles, the third, the eighth and the twelfth (Tien, Quan and Y) decided to take this offer. Without telling my grandparents, they left Vietnam with the expectation of arriving in the US and then bringing the rest of my family over. Unfortunately, the Vietnamese who went with the US troops were unceremoniously dumped in Hong Kong, the troops returning to the US without taking my uncles with them. My grandmother did not know where they were, and was distraught. My father, being a practical and logical man, realised that my uncles had gone with the US troops. I do not know how my uncles finally contacted my grandmother, or even when they arrived in Australia.

In 1979, the communist government of Vietnam declared that part Chinese persons were free to leave the country. My family lived in an area that was predominantly Chinese-Vietnamese (Bac Lieu); both my maternal grandparents’ parents had been Chinese and my paternal grandfather was half-Chinese.

My grandmother chose 1979 as the time to leave. Assisting her decision was the government's decision to compulsorily acquire my grandfather's fishing business and boats. She went with my eldest brother and the rest of my aunts and uncles (excepting my mother, aunts number four and seven), and their children. At this time, only my immediate family was almost fully formed. Only I, the youngest of eight, was yet to be born. Aunt number six was married and had, at that stage, two sons. Her husband’s mother refused to allow the eldest to leave Vietnam and so he remained. An aunt-in-law, the wife of uncle Tien (number three) had one son. She also accompanied my grandmother.

My family were not strongly political. My father’s family were landowners, and he himself was staunchly nationalist but despised most political leaders for their unethical behaviour. All of my family, both my father’s and mother’s side were pacifist – evading where possible any involvement in the war.

My grandmother, eldest brother, aunts, uncles and cousins went by rickety boat, onto the high seas. I do not know if they went first to Malaysia, as we later would, or whether they travelled as directly as they knew how. I do not know if Australia was then their goal, or if at that stage it was the US. At that time, I believe my grandmother knew that her sons had aimed for the US, but still did not know their exact whereabouts. This astounds me; that with the distance and time, that we still found each other in the end.

This rickety boat was picked up by an Italian Red Cross ship, and taken to Italy. This part of my family stayed in Italy a few years, and under the refugee programme eventually migrated to Australia, because this is where my three uncles ended up. Somehow, at some time, the connection was made.

A Beginning

There is a photo; it is old and curled at the edges. We have thumbed it many times - it is the first photo of our arrival in Australia. It is a photo crowded with people, newcomers and the people waiting impatiently for them.

I am in the centre of the photo, grasping my mother's hand; half pulling her forward, half seeking her comfort. I am looking straight out, but not smiling. It is apt that I lead my family into this land: many years from the taking of this picture, I will consider this country my only and fight many fights to have others recognise it as such.

My mother (Um*) is wearing a light coloured dress, her hair bunned up: she has vowed to shave off her hair when we arrive safely - it will be the first thing she does when we come to rest at the government home. Um smiles a tired, nervous smile; her dark eyes are looking at one of her sisters, her shoulders laden with bags of many descriptions; one is full of food we did not eat on the plane. Um cried when they gave us food; she did not expect strangers to be so kind. We kids happily ate the food, my father (Ba) did not.

Behind Um and I (#9), are Ba; my brother, #8; my sisters, #s 4, 7 & 6; and some strangers. We crowd the edges of the picture, seeking a way in. #8 looks wild - his eyes are round, his hair spiking at slept-upon angles. #4 is but a step behind Um, ready to support and comfort her. # 6 & 7 are together, ushered into the photo by Ba. #7 is also staring, unsmilingly out of the photo, towards the land we must now call our own. Behind them are other people, who are pushing forwards, smiling at unknown others, looking at their feet in weariness.

In the foreground are the backs of many heads - my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. In a stroller is a young girl - the first Australian born. Off to the side, but somehow separate from the rest stand a young boy and a young girl. They stand self-consciously, the young boy looking out eagerly, the young girl is looking sideways at an uncle. They wait more awkwardly than the rest, more unsure. They are my second eldest brother, #3 and second eldest sister,#5 - they have pulled away from the fake parents and fake siblings who got them here; Um and Ba will soon claim them warmly.

This is how we arrive in Australia - a mass of people; separate, together, confident, fearful, anxious and hopeful. We are seeking a new home, in an unfamiliar place.