I have no memories of Vietnam. And now, after 25 years of wanting to visit my birthland, after 25 years of thinking and saying "one day I'll go back and visit," I am in Vietnam. I can't quite fathom that I am truly here. You may not understand, but for 25 years, Vietnam was always over there, but now, it is here.
I see green grasses and waving palm fronds. I see remnants of old concrete structures. Perhaps left over from the war? I may have been born in Vietnam, but I realize that I perceive almost everything from the perspective of an American. I grew up in Bloomington, Minnesota. Later I went to high school in Chanhassen, home of the famed Chanhassen Dinner Theatre. I enjoyed my college years at Macalester College in St. Paul. I'm as American as they come, yet I am Vietnamese. And I've never felt so confused about my identity until now, as I step onto the land of my ancestral roots.
How to cross the street, Vietnamese style
On the taxi ride to our hotel in Saigon (as Ho Chi Minh City is still called by the locals) we are introduced to Vietnamese-style traffic. It's absolutely marvelous to watch. Because almost everyone is on an efficient scooter, traffic jams are nonexistent. Traffic flows continuously and smoothly, like a school of fish -- crowded, yet fluid, with each person reacting to the vehicle ahead, beside, or behind. As scientists have observed, even chaos has a pattern.
Our taxi driver discovers my little sister and I are viet khieu, or Vietnamese-Americans. He hears of my father's reluctance to return to Vietnam, for fear of retaliation by and corruption in the government. He laughs, and says that times have changed. Today, he says, one can even curse the government! They will not do anything about it.
I learn how to cross a street in Vietnam. Here, instead of waiting on one side of the street and looking both ways until it's safe to cross (if you did this, you'd never get to the other side!), you have to do as the locals do: that is, to walk -- in a very slow, meandering way -- across the street. This gives the scooters, cyclists, cars and cyclos enough time to gauge your speed and position and thus zoom around and not into you. Do not run across the street, unless you have a death wish.
