THE COMMUNISTS CONFISCATED EVERYTHING MY family owned: the business, the house, the cars and motorcycles, the television, even the slightly used refrigerator that had never been plugged in. But there was one asset that the Chungs managed to retain, and the only reason my family didn’t lose that, too, was that the communists knew nothing about it.
It was a farm.
At least everyone called it a farm, though a more accurate description might be orchard or garden. It was a ten-acre tract of land in the Mỹ Xuyên district on the opposite side of the Bay Sao River; about a mile away was the house from which my family had just been evicted. When the family business had been at its peak, my grandmother was searching for places to invest money, and one venue she decided to try was real estate. She bought the farm and planted it with fruit trees and a garden with the intention of making it a sort of weekend getaway or private retreat. She never expected to have to live there.
In fact, she never did. There were eighteen in the extended family at the time they were evicted from their home, and it was impossible to find a new house large enough for all of them to live in together. The problem wasn’t money, because my family had managed to stash gold, diamonds, and a fortune in currency before the communists could take it away. The problem was no one could risk spending any of it. The new government had required all assets to be declared, and my family was expected to be poor now. If my father or uncle had started doling out cash for a large house, my family would have found themselves headed for a New Economic Zone. To avoid suspicion, it was decided that my grandmother and my uncle, with his wife and children, would search for an inauspicious house in Soc Trang while my family would move to the farm.
The farm was an L-shaped parcel that backed up to the Bay Sao River. Facing the river was a house, if you could call it that; in reality it was more like a hut. The front wall of the house was made of brick, but the other three walls were a patchwork of palm and coconut thatch combined with the occasional sheet of plywood. The roof was made of corrugated tin, which my father would later cannibalize to extend the front of the house as the family grew larger. The house itself was shaped like a square, and in the center there was a tall wooden pole that supported the sagging roof. The beds consisted of two wooden platforms covered with rice mats. My father and the boys slept on one of them, and my mother and the girls slept on the other; each bed had one thin blanket that had to stretch to cover everyone.
The house had no running water. Water for drinking had to come from captured rain while water for bathing and cleaning had to be carried from the river and stored in cisterns outside the house. The Bay Sao was part of a river system that emptied into the South China Sea, and every night the rising tide forced salt water into the river and made it undrinkable. The next morning, when the tide went out again, the brackish water retreated to the sea and fresh water from upstream filled the river again. It was easy to remember: when the river was low, it was safe to drink; and when it was high, it wasn’t.
There was no outhouse on the property. The younger children used a ceramic chamber pot that had to be taken to the river and cleaned out after each use. For the older children and adults, the toilet consisted of a trowel and any patch of dirt they cared to use. They simply dug themselves a hole, squatted, then covered the hole again—all the time hoping that they were the first one to dig there.
There was no electricity either. Light had to come from oil lamps, and the stove was an old cast-iron unit that burned rice husks, coconut branches, and wood when we were able to find it. My mother set up the kitchen with the few household items she had been able to bring, and Jenny helped with the cooking, which was no easy task for a tiny nine-year-old. The stove burned fast and hot, and the opening where the wood had to be inserted was almost level with Jenny’s face. It was like working in front of a blast furnace for her, but as always she did it without complaint.
There were five children in the family when my parents first arrived at the farm, but before they left, there would be three more—me and my twin brothers Anh and Hon. The biggest challenge was finding enough for a family of ten to eat, and that was where living on a farm came in handy. The farm was part orchard and part garden, and they ate everything the land would produce. There were papayas, bananas, coconuts, guavas, mangos, and figs; my family grew corn, sugarcane, watermelon, several kinds of potatoes, and yams. They even grew lemongrass to keep the mosquitoes away.
Nothing on the farm was ever wasted. My mother had an almost supernatural ability to multiply loaves and fishes and to turn inedible objects into dinner. Rice was a staple, but there was never enough to go around, so my mother made it go further by cooking a thin porridge. Cassava root could be soaked in water until it fell apart, then dried and ground into flour that could be used to bake bread and muffins. There was an irrigation ditch that ran from the river to the garden, and when the river rose at night, water would fill the ditch and bring the occasional fish with it. There were also small frogs that came up from the river, and when my brothers and sisters could catch enough of them, my mother served them for dinner.
Behind the house there was a chicken coop, where the family raised chickens and ducks for their eggs and geese because they were believed to kill snakes—a comforting thought in a land that had serpents such as the banded krait. American soldiers used to call it the “two-step snake”—one bite, two steps, and you’re dead. That was an exaggeration, but the story kept American soldiers on their toes and made my family take very good care of the geese. Whenever my mother killed a chicken, it was a feast, and a single chicken had to feed the entire family. My father always got to eat the best parts, which were the head and butt, where most of the fat is found.
My family also kept dogs but never fed them. In Vietnam there was no such thing as dog food, and giving human food to a dog was unthinkable. The dogs ate whatever they could find, just like everyone else, and they seemed to do just fine.
Whatever my family didn’t eat was sold to earn a little bit of money. Yam and potato leaves, for example, were sold for food. My father would bundle them and take them into town on a bicycle to sell. Sometimes his entire load earned just enough to buy two loaves of bread or a can of condensed milk. The most profitable item was coconut branches, which were commonly used for fuel. A wooden pull cart was used to haul them into town; the cart was nothing more than a flat wooden platform with a wheel on each side and two long poles protruding from the front. My mother took hold of one pole; Bruce would take the other; and together they would drag the cart through town until they found a buyer; and after the sale they were expected to haul the cart to the buyer’s house to off-load and stack his purchase.
The family made and sold anything they could think of: small arrangements of fruit, a slaw made from our vegetables, rice wrapped in banana leaves folded into the shape of little boxes—Jenny even sold lotus flowers that grew in the garden. There was too much competition in the town market to sell merchandise there, so my father or Bruce or Jenny would just sit on a street corner with a tray displaying our wares until someone stopped to ask, “How much?” Ironically, most of the buyers were communist officials; in the new regime they were the only ones who had money.
My family raised pigs, too, because it was the only way to get pork. In the market only communists could buy pork—only those with rank could afford to buy meat at all. Though the family had hundreds of thousands in currency hidden away, my mother was afraid to buy pork in the market; revealing the fact that she had any money at all would have raised eyebrows and started inquiries.
When North and South Vietnam were reunited, one of the first things the new government did was establish a new currency. The old Vietnamese dong was replaced by a currency of the same name, but the value changed radically. One new “liberation dong” was worth five hundred of the old dong, which meant the money my family had managed to hide away was worth only a fraction of its original value. By revaluing the currency, the new government made sure the formerly rich remained formerly rich. Citizens were allowed to exchange their old currency for the new, but they were allowed to exchange only a limited amount. My family had mounds of the old currency, but only a fraction of it could be converted, and the rest was worthless.
For a while the family held on to the cash in hopes the Americans might return and the money would regain its original value. But after a couple of years, it became apparent the Americans were not coming back, so the Chung family resigned themselves to the fact that they no longer had stacks of money—they had reams of paper.
But paper at least burns, and pigs need to be fed, so my parents began to burn the money to cook pig food. They didn’t dare burn the money in the daytime because the community had become a network of spies and informers, and there were always prying eyes. The family wasn’t supposed to have any money, so it wasn’t a good idea to let anyone know they had money to burn. Burning money at night was risky, too, because the ink on the old currency burned a distinct color of green, and even from a distance it would be obvious what they were doing. So they were forced to burn the money a little at a time—a stack here to cook the pigs’ food, a stack there to cook their own.
Another challenge on the farm was keeping everyone alive and well. Because doctors were highly educated, many of them had been shipped off to reeducation camps or New Economic Zones, and there were very few left, so medical care was left up to the family. Maladies that would send any sensible American rushing to an emergency room were things they either had to cure on their own or simply learn to live with. As an infant I suffered from what my sisters called a “rotten ear.” It was a persistent infection that caused one of my ears to swell shut and constantly seep. Traditional Chinese cures did nothing to help, and the condition persisted for months. I cried for hours at a time, and Jenny still remembers having to hold me with one arm while she played jump rope with the other.
But for the most part my family was healthy during our stay on the farm. There was never enough to eat, but what we did eat was always simple and farm-fresh: fruits, vegetables, rice, and the occasional chicken or fish. We could have eaten more, but in terms of nutrition and health benefits, we couldn’t have eaten better.
You would think the transition from a spacious two-story French colonial to a run-down shack without electricity or running water would have been overwhelming for my mother, but she had no problem making the adjustment. That’s one of the many things I admire about my mother: she is a remarkably flexible and adaptable person, which, I suppose, is the result of growing up in an environment that was constantly unpredictable. My mother believed it was a waste of time and energy to long for the past or grumble about new circumstances; the only thing to do was just keep moving forward. That perspective might sound a bit callous, but as I would learn later on, it has tremendous practical value.
My mother had no illusions about the reality of life on a small farm. She knew it would require backbreaking physical labor, and it didn’t help that she was pregnant with me at the time. But pregnancy was not a new experience for her; out of the ten years she had been married, she had been pregnant five of them. For my mother, being pregnant was like having a cold; sometimes she felt miserable, but she still had to go to work. She thought there were even benefits to being pregnant on the farm. One time the pig got out of its enclosure, and when she tried to stop it, the pig bowled her over, and she had to chase it down. She said chasing the pig was her exercise program, and staying in shape was the reason her deliveries went so well.
She knew it would be an enormous challenge to raise her family on the farm, but then again, for the first time in her married life, she had only one family to raise. Leaving the house in Soc Trang cut the size of the Chung family in half, and that reduced her household duties considerably. Best of all, leaving the house meant leaving Grandmother Chung; that meant no more broken dishes, no more nightly back rubs, and no more temper tantrums with dangerous objects flying through the air. My mother was finally free—or so she thought.
As it turned out, my grandmother visited the farm almost every single morning, which my mother found extremely irritating. Grandmother Chung lived in town with my uncle and his family—why couldn’t she stay there and mind her own business? But to my grandmother the farm was her business. The way she looked at it, our family had not left the rice-milling business; we had just switched to the farming business, and that still made her CEO. The farm belonged to her, along with any profit it produced, and so did any money she had hidden away there—that made her CFO too. Each day she dropped by the farm to bring us a little money from her secret stash—just enough to buy a few groceries for the day, but not enough to make tomorrow’s visit unnecessary. My grandmother liked to be needed, and she knew that of all the ties that bind, purse strings do it best.
She also took a daily accounting of exactly what the farm had produced, and she kept a record down to the individual piece of fruit. That made it difficult for us children because when we got hungry, we were always tempted to climb a tree and pluck a papaya or mango. But we knew that if we did, the next day my grandmother would give us one of her smoldering glares and say, “We’re missing a papaya,” and that tended to keep our feet on the ground. My grandmother could be a very kind and gentle woman, but my brothers and sisters knew not to mess with her; during her visits she used to trim the coconut and banana trees, and I’m told it left quite an impression when you saw her walking down a row, swinging a machete like a Kabuki chef while branches rained down around her.
Since my grandmother had intended the farm to be a private retreat, she made sure the property included all the accoutrements of home—including a family shrine. The shrine was constructed entirely of palm and coconut fronds and rested on a square concrete base. Inside the shrine was the usual assembly of deities and honored ancestors, and in the back there were a hammock and a coffin. The hammock was for my grandmother to rest in when she visited the shrine, and the coffin was for her to rest in when she died. Grandmother Chung liked to plan ahead, and it gave her a sense of security to know that she had a final resting place waiting for her. She was also used to approving all decisions, and the only way she could approve the choice of her coffin was by making the choice herself.
The coffin may have given my grandmother a sense of security, but it had a different effect on my brother Bruce. It was supposed to be my father’s job to visit the family shrine each evening to light incense and place the traditional bowls of fruit, but when my father was too tired to carry out his duties, he sent Bruce to do the job instead. At night the shrine was dark and damp, and Bruce remembers seeing geckos clinging to the walls and abandoned snake skins draping from the roof like strips of gauze. Near the back of the shrine, there was a statue of a lesser deity. To place incense in front of it, Bruce had to stand beside the coffin, and the instant his duties were completed, he took off like a rifle shot and didn’t stop running until he reached the house.
For my brothers and sisters, the hardest adjustments were outside the farm. When the communists first came to power, school simply stopped, and when classes finally resumed, everything had changed. There was no more Mercedes to deliver Jenny, Bruce, and Yen to the front door; they had to walk to school now, and the school was two or three miles away. When it rained, the half-mile dirt path that led from the farm to the main road could get knee-deep in mud, and my father had to carry one of them on his shoulders and one under each arm as he trudged his way through. Even on dry days it was hard to stay clean, so Jenny, Bruce, and Yen used to stop at a friend’s house halfway to school, where they could wash the dust off their shoes before they went on.
Jenny had been a star pupil before the communist takeover. She especially loved math and writing but excelled at everything she tried; she even dreamed of becoming an engineer, a lofty goal for a young girl in Vietnam in those days. When the end-of-year exam was given, Jenny always finished first in her class, which granted her the right to sit in the honored position of front row, first seat on the right. When the teacher entered the room at the start of each day, it was Jenny’s privilege to be the first to snap to her feet and call out, “Good morning, teacher,” and when she did, the rest of the class was required to follow her lead.
But when the communists came to power, there were no more crisp school uniforms and far fewer of the math and writing lessons that Jenny loved; much of the school day was now spent learning songs of praise to Ho Chi Minh—“Uncle Ho,” they were told to call him. Translated into English, one of the popular songs went something like this:
Last night I dreamed of Uncle Ho.
His beard is long, his hair is so white.
I’m so glad, I kissed his cheek.
Uncle Ho smiled and told me I’m a good kid.
But some clever student composed a parody that became even more popular:
Last night I dreamed of a money bag.
In the money bag, there were four thousand dollars.
I was so glad, I told Uncle Ho.
Uncle Ho smiled at me, “Give all the money to me.”
Only two hours per day were devoted to learning, and the rest was spent planting trees, picking up trash, and collecting dung on the streets of Soc Trang. Jenny became frustrated; she just couldn’t understand how singing communist songs and collecting dung would help her become an engineer.
The entire atmosphere of the school had changed. There were no more friends, and there was no more talking. Even children understood that the wrong accusation—even a false one—could land a family in prison. In the old school everyone had known that the Chung children came from a wealthy family, and we were proud of it, but in the new school we prayed that no one would remember. My parents even gave Jenny, Bruce, and Yen false names to disguise their true identities. Instead of Chung, they were told to use the name Diep and later Nguyen. My sister Yen didn’t even know her real last name until we came to America.
When I listen to the stories my older brothers and sisters tell about life on the farm, it sounds as if it was a grand adventure, and in a way, for the children, it was. The farm was our little oasis in a world that had changed overnight, a world that none of us understood anymore. But life on the farm was simple: work hard, find enough to eat, go to bed, then get up and do it again. There was hard work, but there was play too. There were trees to climb, frogs to catch, ducks to chase, and geese to run from.
For my parents the experience was different. My father, once the COO of a multimillion-dollar business empire, had been reduced to a common street peddler. My mother, who used to carry home baskets of food from the market each morning, now struggled to scrape together enough for her children to eat.
And they knew their new life wasn’t temporary. The communists may have spared our lives, but they would also see to it that my family would never again have money, position, or power. My parents knew the farm wasn’t just their new home; it would be their entire world for the rest of their lives.
Hardest of all was the realization that the farm would also be their children’s world. We would spend the rest of our lives scraping to get by each day, and we would never be allowed the opportunity to change our fate. If times were good and the rains came at the right time, we would live; if not, we would starve—my mother and father were not willing to take that chance.
That was when they knew we had to leave Vietnam.
“Anything would be better than this,” they said.
But they had no idea.