I’ve been getting wound up for the Lunar New Year, which is the biggest event in the Vietnamese calendar. Most people in the States call it Chinese New Year. This has always been a mystery to me…because I grew up celebrating the big event of firecrackers and dragon dances without thinking there was anything Chinese about it.
Me: I’m most definitely not Chinese.
Vietnam was a vassal to China—beholden—and Lunar New Year is probably one of the influences that came from that sprawling kingdom, which also donated a whole bunch of other stuff, including its ideograms. But like all things that Vietnamese have come to borrow, we have tweaked the Lunar New Year.
Take the Chinese zodiac. They have twelve animals and so do we. But they have the rabbit; we have the cat. The cat is actually a pun that plays off the similarity in sound that the word cat and rabbit have in Vietnamese…and so we have evolved our own peculiar zodiac.
This is the essence of Vietnamese spirit. If I could package it in gleaming little tins and sell it at a farmer’s market, I would name it Adaptability. “Come and get your Adaptability.” You can use it for anything. “Sauces. Juices. Preserves.”
Vietnamese Lunar New Year traditionally is a one-month wind-up, so it has a fever pitch that reminds me of Mardi Gras, Christmas, New Years—all rolled into one. It is also everybody’s official birthday…the moment all folks, no matter their true birth date, technically age by an additional year.
This is when we kill a big fat pig, settle scores, clean house. All debts come due.
When I first revisited Vietnam, I came back as an illegal immigrant at the ripe age of 21. The United States had had a twenty year embargo. And this meant that I never got to meet friends and family.
My grandparents were simply pictures to me.
So I knew what I had to do: as soon as I graduated from college, I took my savings and went on a four month trip to Vietnam—to see the alien birthplace that was so much a part of me. Of course, my parents objected. “It’s illegal,” my mom pointed out. “You could be sent to prison.”
This was not paranoia, either. My father was a high ranking officer in the Vietnamese Army and his name was still on lists. Both of my Uncles had been in reeducation camps—prisons—for almost two decades. And they were nowhere near as important as my father.
But I went anyway and, in the eyes of a young man, it made the journey seem even more adventurous, romantic. I imagined myself in a trench coat like in those black and white World War I movies. I took up smoking because I thought a match held close to the face made for great lighting in the camera that is the mind’s eye.
I planned the trip to coincide with the Vietnamese New Year—Tet—because I knew it was a big deal. And it was. It was such a big deal that Bill Clinton chose that exact event to announce that America would finally end the embargo—that we would begin full diplomatic relations with the United States—and just like that: I was no longer an illegal immigrant. I was made legitimate.
And this legitimacy was announced by the pop of fireworks that did not end for days. Happy New Year!
Khanh – I’d always thought that the Lunar New Yaer was an exciting time. Thanks for sharing what Tet has meant to you. To me, new years are always good times to start over, to make positive change and so on. I hope this year is a lucky one for you.
Thanks so much for the well wishes, Margot. I’m going to work to make it a good year. I wish you wealth, health and happiness!
Thank you for sharing a little piece about your first visit back to Vietnam. I’m a Vietnamese international student, I grew up in Vietnam til I left the country for college, and my mentor professor was a Vietnamese Australian who had never returned home. Our conversations were strictly professional, we spoke in nothing but English. There was only one time when I asked him about his departure, and he said his family left right after the war ended, and they didn’t like the current government. I was not comfortable. I was a Northern Vietnamese boy with a clear strong Hanoi accent, my father fought hard and proud during the war. And here he was, my mentor, whose family had to go through such tragic stories to end up in a foreign land. We should be sworn enemies.
Nevertheless, I could always see the godly kindness in him. In the Vietnamese student community we often had celebrations for New Year, Mid Autumn (Trung Thu), and even the National Day September the 2nd. The Vietnamese professors, all of them Viet kieu, were always invited. We kids missed home so much, and I could remember the countless times we had our own flag-raising ceremony while we sang our national anthem. Not his anthem. Not his flag. He would respectfully stand up through the duration of the song, as did the other professors.
In the end, he wrote a brilliant recommendation letter for me to go to graduate school in the States.
I stumbled upon your blog after reading several articles of yours on Huff Post, starting with this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/khanh-ho/stop-racial-profiling_b_3225090.html . My sister is currently attending Providence college on a near-full scholarship. Probably because the Dominican Friars had too many martyrs in Vietnam hundreds of years ago, and they thought we were devout Catholic. And so my sister ended up in a 99% white school.
Hi DD–
Happy New Year! Thanks for your very thoughtful response! I’m glad that my material is reaching people, too!
First off, let me say that few Vietnamese people of my generation feel any grudge toward Vietnamese in Vietnam; if anything, academics of my age often feel fascination.
Your Australian professor probably felt nothing but good feeling towards you and this showed itself in the way he chose to mentor you: writing a glowing letter of recommendation. No doubt, you were also an excellent student. Certainly, the quality of your writing indicates this.
Also, just because your Vietnamese mentor did not speak to you in Vietnamese did not necessarily mean that he was trying to be cold or distant. He could have done so to be professional (as English is the medium of instruction). Or he could really have limitations in Vietnamese. When I speak Vietnamese, most people laugh.
I’m probably of the same generation as your Australian-Vietnamese professor. I, too, have mentored my share of international students from Vietnam. They are always so impressive, and I am always happy to help them find their path…precisely because I know that their skills are vital for the development of a nation that still needs to find solid footing.
Congratulations on your success in the United States. May the year of the horse bring more. And, if you find the things I write at all compelling, I hope you share it with your friends.
Best,
Khanh
And I forgot, Happy New Year!
Hi Khanh,
Thank you for the prompt reply. I’ve been living and studying overseas for the past 12 years, starting with Singapore and then now the US. I still could remember the reservation I once had when communicating with overseas Vietnamese. “Hide your accent”-my Hanoi people always told me. And that was how I ended up using English in Vietnamese restaurants and barbershops most of the time when I first came. To be honest there were pangs of guilt, I was condescendingly using a foreign language to talk to my working class countrymen who struggled with it. But after a while, it did not matter anymore. I started cracking self-deprecating jokes, and started making fun of them as well. There are many other things that connect us other than the past, and I was not part of the past.
What I love the most about the US is that everybody’s an immigrant, either now or a few generations ago, and everybody has his own stories to share. I am fascinated everyday in this melting pot, hearing stories of people of different descents.
If I remember correctly from my readings you were a professor at Grinnell? From what I gather the school has one of the best language programs in the nation! I have a few Vietnamese friends who went there some years ago, and they are all brilliant.
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Back to this blog entry: Chinese New Year was the term that I only first learned when I was in Singapore. To be honest I was slightly offended. It’s not a unique celebration just for the Chinese people. Later, I learn that real native Chinese speakers in mainland China call it “Spring Festival” (Chun Jie – Xuân Tiết – or Tết – hence our pronunciation of the word), or simply “Lunar New Year”.
When an American friend said Happy Chinese New Year to me, I jokingly told her “well I’ll accept that, but I will say Merry White People’s Christmas to you”.
Thank you for the pleasant exchange, prof Ho! And I look forward to more blog posts of yours on Huff Po. I will definitely share them!
Hi DD–
Thanks for the many lovely words! Regarding your self-consciousness in speaking Vietnamese, especially with your Northern accent: you shouldn’t worry. First, Vietnamese refugees immigrated to the U.S. from all parts of Vietnam: South, Central, North. Our immigration is a true melting-pot. It’s not uncommon to hear a Hue accent (which is so weirdly distinctive for a Southerner like me). I had a college roommate who spoke with a perfect Northern accent. My mom is a Northerner who moved further Southward and she loves to turn that Northern accent on. My father is a Nha Trang man and he has that great, laid back way that Central people talk: no-nonsensey and direct.
Overall, most Vietnamese people find the Northern accent cool–educated, polished, aristocratic. And Vietnamese now living in the United States will just be happy that you speak their language. Only the fanatics will hold a grudge (but most of the fanatics are pretty much dead).
I spoke Vietnamese as my sole language until I was 9. Then, I started losing it, so my vocabulary has frozen. But I do recall many folks in Little Saigon–mostly men–treating me very badly because I wouldn’t speak to them in Vietnamese. “Speak Vietnamese” was the ass-holey thing they would say to me…and it was a bit of a power trip.
This is a long way of saying that you should probably not try to hide. Do whatever’s comfortable for you. Also, if you’re worried about repercussions, it might be easier for you to speak a more generic Northern Vietnamese than a slang-y, authentic Hanoi accent. Anyways, my guess is that after 12 years, your Hanoi accent no longer sounds that authentic. Language and especially slang moves fast in Vietnam :).
Khanh, You are really prolific, and you respond fast!
After all those years I made so many Vietnamese friends from all regions, each having their own mix of dialects inherited from their parents. I once had a college roommate from Da Nang, we understood each other very well, but when he called his parents I would try to eavesdrop and could not make out a single word! Of course, I was telling my own story about the initial hesitance in communicating with other Vietnamese, I no longer hide my own accent nowadays. In fact, I have adopted a lot of new regional words from my friends and I can’t say that I am really authentically Hanoian. The years of speaking English even left some bad traits in our pronunciation, for example my sister and I often catch each other pronouncing the last consonant in a Vietnamese word.
When I first left the country I tried really hard to protect my command of mother tongue. I remember reading about Nehru, who was British educated and could barely speak Hindi. Everyday I spent an hour or two writing a long email home. My parents are both literature professors, so a lack of Vietnamese fluency is not acceptable in our household. Nor is code-switching, which my sister and I do very often outside of the house.
I think your students at Grinnell may be very bright and they adapt quickly. When I first went overseas, a friend of mine and I decided to work ultra hard on our English. We really had to because we barely understood people, and people were growing impatient with our halting speeches. And I was already among the best at English at a competitive Hanoi school, trust me! Every morning we sat down in the dorm common area, turned on the news to just let the language rhythm flow into one ear and flow out of the other, while we looked up word by word in the daily newspaper. 2 or 3 hours would be gone in no time and we had not fully deciphered the first article yet.
Now anytime I look back, I cannot help but chuckle at how hard it was for us to make it past the front page. Good thing I started with Singapore newspapers, which were fairly simple compared to the British or American variety. If I had started with something like The New Yorker, I would have hated English to death.
Thanks for all the kind words. It’s interesting that you are the child of literature professors. I just wrote about a Vietnamese folk singer and I would love to get your opinion! In regard to my students at Grinnell, they were pretty awesome…but Grinnell is a top school that is famous for its crippling reading load and this could be extremely difficult for foreign students. I knew one Vietnamese student who had one semester left but dropped out…because she had become a success in Vietnam and just didn’t care enough to keep up with the reading anymore. She had directed a successful film and was working for Vietnam Vogue and jetsetted from Paris to London to Tokyo all the time!