Min-phuong's sister borrowed gold bullion from the Trans so she could emigrate to Malaysia. Being alone, she asked Tho if she could take his eldest son with her. Tho refused. In denying her assertion that he didn't trust her, he explained to his sister-in-law that his father had left children behind in China when he came to Vietnam in 1929, but was never again to see them before he died twenty-five years later. Tho had resolved never to break up his family and be threatened with the same fate. Min-phuong's sister went to Pulau Bidong, an uninhabited island off the coast of Malaysia where the authorities had designated refugee camps. Conditions were miserable and many people died of malnutrition and disease. The Malaysian authorities were overburdened by the numbers of refugees seeking haven there. After ten months she was finally able to immigrate to the United States under a refugee program created under President Carter. After arriving in Hawaii, she petitioned for the Tran family to join her.
![[Exodus from Vietnam]](pix/bp/exodus.gif)
As already mentioned, the Trans had begun to convert their earnings into gold bullion rather than reinvest in their business. They did so in anticipation of emigrating from Vietnam. The conditions were such under the communist regime that the Trans were not permitted to take the bulk of what they had earned over their lifetime, including that which was converted to gold bullion or U.S. dollars, and that had not already been taken. In this way they liquidated their assets in the quietest way they could think of. Of course they were not permitted to send large sums of money out of the country so they did so on the black market. They contacted a man through a mutual relation who had a connection, probably a relative, living in Hong Kong. Minh-phuong would give this man large sums of money in Vietnam and then the man's counterpart in Hong Kong would send an equivalent amount, less a transaction cost, to Minh-phuong's sister who resided in Hawaii. Minh-phuong's sister would wire back a message to Vietnam saying that she had received "the present" for her birthday or something of the sort without letting on that she had received cash.
A week in advance of emigrating from Vietnam, the Tran head of household had to appear before customs officials with an enumerated list detailing all they were taking out of the country to verify that they were not taking more than officially permitted. They had been able to send thousands of U.S. dollars to Hawaii, but were only allowed to take a few suitcases and about U.S.$20.00 per person with them on their journey. The Trans were in fear the day of their departure. They feared that at any moment they could be denied their exit. The customs officials searched them to see if they had anything of value that had not been declared. They boarded a plane which was filled mostly with other refugees numbering some 120 people and a handful of business tourists. The first leg of the journey was to Bangkok where they would be processed as refugees by U.S. officials with the aid of the Thai government. It wasn't until they actually landed in Bangkok, where they were to be processed as refugees by U.S. officials with the help of the Thai government, that the fear of being told that they were not to be permitted to leave was really lifted from them.
Once they got off the plane a new identity had been presented to them. They were now refugees in search of aid. These ethnic Chinese and Vietnamese refugees numbering some twenty to thirty families got off the plane first and were herded to a building apart from the terminal. These refugees were shocked by the unfamiliar surroundings and the fact they never knew what was going to occur next. Thai officials who were in charge of the refugees spoke to them in Thai, sometimes in broken English, and became frustrated and angry when the refugees didn't understand them and act as they were told. Their luggage was dropped off in this building by the airport employees as if it were trash. These bags which with the things that they held which were after all now their only possessions. Cuong noticed a few, tall white American men enter the building as these veterans met the petite Vietnamese women who were the mothers of their Amerasian children after several years apart. It was a shocking sight to Cuong who had only seen a few white people before, Russians and other Eastern Europeans in Saigon. This combined with the fact that they towered over their wives and children of mixed races as they hugged each other and cried was the first of new memorable experiences for Cuong.
The 120 or so refugees were loaded aboard three busses and taken to a fenced camp about two hours away from Bangkok. Cuong recalls being impressed with the newness of the bus, the size of the freeway, the multitude of shining new automobiles, and the bright lights of the city as dusk appeared. A refugee woman sardoncially remarked to Cuong's father, "We should thank Uncle Ho for making it possible to see the luxuries of capitalism!" [Ho Chi Minh, founder of Vietnam's nationalist movement and the Communist Party as well as the personification for legitimacy of the Communist regime there]. At the refugee camp, they were housed in simple buildings with three walls, the front wall was missing, furnished with thin mattresses to sleep on. A truck arrived every day to provide them with a portion of water for washing. Here they stayed for about a week while documentation was processed, interviews conducted, and vaccinations given. The proceedings were strange in their newness and unfamiliarity but none was so unusual as the request that they assemble twice a day for a Thai ceremony as they stood at attention in the compound yard listening to what must have been the Thai national anthem though there was no flag in sight.
At the end of a week someone came to Tho and told him that their flight to Hong Kong (they were to go to Hong Kong and then fly to Hawaii via Japan) was scheduled for that day. They were taken in a minibus to the airport only to learn that their flight was not scheduled until the next day. The official in charge aiding them apologized profusely and since the minibus had already left asked them to get into the back of his pickup truck so he could take them somewhere for the night. He treated them to a lunch and refused repayment and then took them to some government building. The outside looked much like an office building, but the inside looked like a dilapidated warehouse because the interior walls had been torn down. This building, they learned, was a jail of sorts for illegal immigrants. The "inmates" looked liked the flotsam and jetsam of East Asia: Cambodian, Lao, turbaned Indians, many dark skinned people that Cuong had never seen before strewn about the building in various states of dress; mothers breast feeding their babies; smells that assaulted the senses; and no privacy. The next day they were allowed to take a shower before going to the airport. It was their first in a week and they couldn't be happier. At the airport they saw many of the same people who had enviously looked at them leave the refugee compound..
There were several times during the journey to Hawaii and his new home that Cuong felt like he was loosing his identity and really felt like a refugee. Aboard an Air France plane from Saigon to Bangkok, the refugees cleaned and stored away their utensils, plate and bowl they had been given with their lunch because they were just used to do such a thing. They had know concept that some of the items were worthless and that others were the property of the airline and had to be returned. Cuong felt uncomfortable because he noticed the shock on the faces of the business travelers as they watched the refugees. When his family waited to board a plane in Tokyo he realized how different his family looked from the other travelers. It was not because of their faces, but the way they were dressed in such a way that distinguished their economic status from the rest of the international travelers.
More complex identity problems occurred when they had dealings with other Chinese. From Bangkok, many of the refugees flew to Hong Kong where they were again questioned by customs officials. The officials here were Hong Kong citizens, but as such were Cantonese and spoke to the ethnic Chinese in Cantonese when chastising them with the words: "You Vietnamese don't know how to stand in line! You are always trying to push your way to the front!" Then when they were on board a Hong Kong operated plane the one Cantonese speaking flight attendant was telling another, "These Vietnamese are all thieves. They steal everything. They even stole my flashlight!"
After residing in America for a dozen years the Trans feel varying degrees of belonging. Cuong still suffers from an identity crisis of sorts and longs for a feeling of belonging. Cuong's aunt used to suggest that he tell anyone that should ask that he was from Hong Kong, "people have a stereotype that Vietnamese and other people from Southeast Asia sit down and take advantage of the welfare system in the U.S. without working." One of his high school teachers in Hawaii, a Chinese-American, asked Cuong if he was going to adopt an [Europeanized-] American name when he became nationalized. It was considered chic to do so because those who kept their Asian names were considered to be "fresh off the boat." Unlike his two brothers and sister who did just that, Cuong resisted and decided to keep "his" Vietnamese name[because of the falsified birth certificate that Cuong's father had obtained during the war, Cuong and his brother exchanged names so that their official identities would still reflect their order of birth]. He has done his best to capture his Chinese identity by studying written, literary, and spoken forms of Chinese.
Because his identity is complex, Cuong has had to develop an understanding of himself that he wishes to present to others. In European-dominated American society Cuong signs all documents in the traditional Northeast Asian manner with his surname first, followed by his given name. When he meets Vietnamese people who after hearing him speak Vietnamese ask him about his identity, he proudly states in Vietnamese that he is a Vietnamese of Chinese ancestry. To Hong Kong-Chinese who ask him about his heritage he states proudly that he is huaquiao, overseas Chinese. He is particularly proud to be huaquiao because Dr. Sun Yatsen, the leader of the 1911 Revolution which ended the Qing Dynasty was also a huaquiao. When he married, Cuong married a woman from the same province in China his grandparents were from. His cultural conflicts with this woman have once again pushed him in another direction, this time realizing how Americanized he has become in spite of all his attempts to remain true to his Asian heritage and experience. As time goes by, and he matures, he is beginning to realize along with the difficulties, there are also many strengths that can be realized from such a diverse experience but it hasn't been an easy journey.
Cuong's younger brothers and sister have more comfortably assimilated into American society than he has perhaps due to the age differences between them and the time in their life when they immigrated(Cuong was born in the year of the Tet Offensize, 1968, his two brothers were born two and four years after him, and his sister was born in 1975, the year of the Communist takeover). In totality the Trans are experiencing an American reality of economic stability that began as a mere dream two generations before their own and nearly seven decades earlier when Chang Kung-li became the first generation of this "boat family"'s odyssey in search of relative prosperity.
PRINTER-FRIENDLY FORMAT![[Odyssey of the Boat People]](pix/bp/odt.gif)
