The Rotten Apples

Prime Minister of South Vietnam, Nguyen Cao Ky, and his wife made a two-day visit to southeast Queensland in 1967. (link to newspaper article http://www.couriermail.com.au/ipad/wild-welcome-for-vietnam-pm/news-story/57a5dd5fc8d76c59d83d166e7d9e5d4e)

<<Facts, pictures, and video clips related to this post – visits, investments in Vietnam by the family of the ex-Vice President’s family>>

I always feel very lucky that I was accepted to resettle in Australia after escaping the Communist. However, I also feel inferior and have developed a complex seeing the bad things other Vietnamese refugees did in Australia that made headlines. Crimes such as drug dealings, forming gangs, welfare fraud, immigration tricks,… I don’t join Vietnamese groups that habitually gather to speak loudly in our native language and yet don’t mingle with others at social events in Australia. I distance myself from unruly, uncivilized, unethical and small-minded Vietnamese. Another friend once told me that he felt good that Australians often mistook him for Japanese because he didn’t feel proud to be recognized as Vietnamese.

More than ever, I witness the financial burden brought on by recently arrived asylum seekers as well as the social issues coming with them while Australia struggles with budget deficits. These days, like those in later generations of Vietnamese refugees that I know, I feel embarrassed to be recognized as a refugee in Australia. I dislike reading stories of Vietnamese boat people that said they escaped the poverty induced by the Communists. I don’t like to be blindly grouped as economic refugees.

The death of Đặng Tuyết Mai, on 21st December 2016, brought mixed feelings to me. She was also known as Madame Nguyễn Cao Kỳ, the former wife of Nguyễn Cao Kỳ, South Vietnam Vice President until his retirement from politics in 1971. As the country fell to the Communists in 1975, Mr and Mrs Kỳ fled to the US.

In 2004, Mr Kỳ returned to Vietnam, playing golf with Communist leaders, calling for peace and reconciliation with a government he once fought and hinting that he might even move back to Vietnam. Mr Kỳ later was involved in organizing trips to Vietnam for potential U.S. investors.

In September 2009, Madame Tuyết Mai went back to Vietnam and opened a plush restaurant called “Pho Ta” – specialised in the traditional Vietnamese beef noodle soup – on one of the busy streets in Saigon.

Mr Kỳ’s daughter from his second marriage to Madame Tuyết Mai, a former stewardess, is Nguyễn Cao Kỳ Duyên. Kỳ Duyên was a 10-year-old girl when Saigon fell in 1975. She and 20 others escaped in a crammed military cargo plane to Washington. Her father flew his own helicopter to a waiting U.S. aircraft carrier. Now she is a well-known mistress of ceremonies on the thirty-four-year-old and famous “Paris By Night” show. The Vietnamese-language musical variety show is popular overseas as well as in Vietnam and features musical performances by renowned pre-Saigon Fall performers and modern-day young stars.

Liberty T-Shirt

The shirt had a photo of the “Statue of Liberty”, the famous icon of the United States showing the ideal of humanity: Freedom and Democracy.

Comments about this post on ABC Open 500 Words – What I was wearing.

After the Vietnamese Communists occupied South Vietnam, being a Lt Colonel in the South VN Army, I was detained in various labor camps in the far mountainous areas of North VN for nine years. Then I was released in 1984 but remained under the close supervision of the local security service for two years. Finally I was acknowledged as a new citizen of the new Socialist Republic of Vietnam, and basically had the right to vote.

In 1987, a general election for the National Assembly was initiated across the country. Unfortunately all candidates were required to be primarily selected by the local communist branches, that means no independent candidate was approved, something that was strange compared to my experiences of elections in the free world. Disagreeing with that policy of election, I voted blank in protest.

Harder than Acting

They’re the sand embedded in my shoes that wear me out, and yet all I can do is grit my teeth and smile.

Comments about this post on ABC Open 500 words – Faking it.

It is easier to act in a play than fake liking ‘them’! To me acting is genuinely living as the character, thinking and reacting as if I was them. When my facial muscles want to contract, my hands shake and my heart beats faster and louder, I find it is actually harder to betray my body, my feelings and put on a happy face in front of ‘them’.

I often wonder, “Why did you have to marry into my circle, so for the group’s sake, I have to keep the relationships in harmony?” Then I remember the time my father was incarcerated in the torturous communist jail, the maltreatment the Communist gave my family and my deadly escape from Vietnam.

Passing through the threshold of the door, I felt relieved that I had held my façade, successfully giving a strong handshake and a warm smile to ‘him’. He migrated here under the sponsorship of his sister.

Harder than Acting poem

(Bridging-title-style poem)

<<Story related to the poem>>

In the social twilight

I do have a secret fright,
That people go underground,
With their communist background,
With their hugely, filthy wealth,
So to migrate here by stealth.

Image credit
by Abby.

Duty, honour, country

I have a duty to honourably commit myself to serve this country just like my father.

Comments about this post on ABC Open 500 words – Family trait.

Ten people were in the meeting room, plus seven others in offices around Australia hooked up to the room’s conference phone. It was a big meeting, with the attendance of section colleagues and business stakeholders, to review Monsieur Yuppie’s system specification document.

Duty, honour, country poem

(Sonnet-Petrarchan-style poem)

<<Story related to the poem>>

When power frowns at the tight deadline claim,
And staff resource for demand is so low,
Yet future staff retrenchment is to grow,
The workplace chaos then becomes aflame!

The deserted neighbourhood

My neighbourhood was made up of blocks of four-storey houses around An Dong market, in the Chinese quarter called “Cho Lon”, Saigon. (In picture, 13-year-old hiMe with her Mum and siblings on Chinese New Year Day 1975 in front of her house, next to the radio shop).

<<Facts, pictures and video clips related to this story – the exodus of ethnic Chinese during 1978 and 1979>>

Comments about this post on ABC Open 500 words – Odd one out.

My neighbourhood was made up of blocks of four-storey houses around An Dong market, in the Chinese quarter called “Cho Lon”, Saigon.

A family at last!

The drought of happiness has finally ended after long lonely years! (In picture, hiMe’s family arrived at Canberra Airport in November 1990 aboard an Australian Airlines flight from Sydney: her Dad, her younger sister, her Mum (wearing glasses), her youngest brother and her youngest sister.)

<<Facts, pictures and video clips related to this story – The Humanitarian Operation that let political prisoners to immigrate to America.>>

Comments about this post on ABC Open 500 words – Endings.

30/4/1975 was the day of the fall of Saigon and because he was a Signal Corps Lieutenant Colonel of the South Vietnam Army, my father spent ten years in various hard labour camps. On release, he was issued a “TEMPORARY RELEASE” paper which meant that he could be re-arrested at any time for any reason. Moreover, every week for two years, he had to present himself at the local police station to report what he did, where he went, whom he met during the week. During that two years, he was not considered a citizen of his birth country and wasn’t allowed to work. Even after he was restored his “Citizen Rights”, with his background, no one wanted to hire him.

The women who were left behind

They were the faithful, the miserable, the immoral, the beautiful,…. I couldn’t forget my encounter with that poor and forlorn woman.

Comments about this post on ABC Open 500 words – Cringe.

I helped Mum preparing food for the quarterly visit to Dad’s communist prison (glossily named re-education camp) .

Six dozens boiled egg yolks were mashed and dried on an electric stove. Two sliced sandwich loaves were toasted and spread with butter mixed with sugar.

The women who were left behind poem

(Couplet-style poem)

<<Story related to the poem>>

Comments about this post on ABC Open 500 words – Cringe.

Tears in the night,
Flow for the plight,
Of the wives left to wait,
Lonely, contrite, dying, self-hate.

Image credit
by Smabs Sputzer.