How returning to my motherland helped me find a sense of belonging and to discover more of my story.
Home is where we belong
Growing up as a child of refugees meant that I never quite fit in the place I called home, the only place I ever knew for a long time until I ventured out. Every member of a diaspora knows this feeling of never feeling like they belong, even being unsure of who they are.
Prior to visiting Vietnam, a part of my identity or story had never quite felt complete that I always felt something was missing. So, when I arrived in my motherland for the first time, I had two things on my mind; firstly, I needed to explore as much as I could. I wanted to meet family, to experience the culture, to understand the people. Secondly, I wanted to find the other half of my identity — the part of me that may have been, had my parents never made their escape in subsequent years after the fall of Saigon. Being in Vietnam finally meant I had the chance to trace my origins and a part of that meant visiting the hometown of my parents, where I was transported to a place that I could have called home, in another life.
It was life-affirming to come back to my motherland. Initially, it was what I had imagined but even more. Actually, everything was different here. Life was a little slower. The weather permitted it and the relaxed culture provided for it. But what stood out to me was that the people were really kind (like really kind). It was like we were all one big family. I’m sure there were problems, like any other family and it certainly was no utopia, but on the surface, it felt like it. Not that I could feel entirely at home when this was not my world but when I looked at the people around me, I knew no one would harm me. It was the safest I had ever felt. Was I finally home? There was no chance here of being told to go back where to I belong or be called a Gook, Ching Chong, or worse threatened because I had looked different from what people considered Australian, or even quizzed on my allegiance. I’m not sure what that entails sometimes, to be a citizen of a nation, yet not feel like one. All I knew was I could never truly belong, in a place that I could never feel truly accepted.
Throughout my alienated teenage years, I had my own issues of belonging, coming in the form of feeling different to my peers in regards to thought and passions — for which I sought solace in obsessively listening to The Beach Boys album ‘Pet Sounds’. It gave me a sense of belonging. Being in Vietnam, I thought that I finally found that place where I’d belong, the one Brian Wilson had spoken of in ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice?’ I know the sentiment of the song was more directed to finding the person you could love, even fit in with, and not ever feel lonely. But why had I not considered that I could find it in a place too? Surrounded by the sounds of motorbikes all around me, I had found life again here in Vietnam. It was the very same feeling that I discovered in New York City of aliveness and the sense of belonging I felt for who I could be, in the cultural melting pot of ideas, culture, art, and exchange. Suddenly, it all came rushing back, the mechanizations of the motorbikes here were akin to the violent reaction of industrialism and the daily grind on NYC, but this time around there was a level of harmony. In NYC, I liked the feeling of being contained in its world and enjoying the feeling of not belonging anywhere, it was freeing. Here in Vietnam though, it was the opposite feeling that I liked. Everywhere I went in this country, I knew what to expect — how the people would treat me, that for me gave me the most secure sense of belonging I had ever felt.
My father often speaks of this concept of Đồng Bào. Its translation is something along the lines of fellow countrymen, citizens, or simply compatriots. But it goes deeper than that. According to our creation myth Âu Cơ, we were all descended from the same eggs as offspring between a Dragon Lord and a Mountain Fairy. I don’t believe in myths as such, but I believe in the power of its story. This myth reminds us that, we the Kinh ethnic group of Vietnam were all related. That’s why we see each other and treat one another like family. Except perhaps with exception to some notable periods where those foreign ideologies took hold. First, it was imperialism, then communism. Then those ideologies clashed too. I suppose my story draws its roots in this clash. But I was given a safe passage growing up in Australia, of course not without its problems. But like I said, something in my life was missing growing up in Australia. In a matter of weeks, it was amazing how much belonging I felt, being home where my family once belonged.
Our home pond is always better
Before my arrival to Vietnam, my father’s younger brother reiterated to me a proverb, Ta Về Ta Tắm Ao Ta, Dù Trong Dù Đục Ao Nhà Vẫn Hơn. Uncle Cảnh reiterated this to me in his almost scholarly preacher-like manner (he’s a very educated Catholic Priest). Phased, I had asked him what that meant. He translated it as such;
“Come back and bathe in your own pond, whether clear or murky your home pond is always better.”
According to an online search of Vietnamese proverbs, it was translated as ‘I return home and bathe in my own pond, regardless of whether it is clear or shallow, my home pond is still better.’ Both translations were good enough for me, the sentiment was the same.
I finally knew what that had meant now as thoughts of my father permeated my mind when I came across the province of his birthplace, Nghe An. I had called him to tell him of how special the place felt and how it did not rain here as it did anywhere else in the world. It was a calm splatter, as I would describe it, there was a harmony to it. The place really was special. Or was everything magnified because of its significance to me? No, there was something special about it. This part of Vietnam is known for its modest people. It’s one of the poorest areas of Vietnam, still being mainly agrarian-based. There was also something peaceful about it. The province name even translates to ‘governance in peace’. I wonder if a name makes a place or if a name makes a person? Regardless of how I felt about my ancestor’s hometown, it was special anyway, as it bore one of our most important and revered figures, a revolutionary by the name of Hồ Chí Minh. He remains a polarising figure, depending on what side of the war you were on. Much before the Vietnam War broke out, he was a national hero (he still is), again not without critics. Was there something about being surrounded by the agrarian life here that spurred him to see what Marx called this farce of history repeating itself when he came across struggles for power? Or was it a result of those very same outside influences and ideologies that took hold of our country? Either way, I was brimming with hometown and national pride that this very same man was responsible for kicking out the evil imperialists (plural). Sometimes belonging does come in the most contradictory of forms.
Anyway, I did feel some sense of belonging in my ancestor’s hometown. Here, I even understood the accents, but they differed a lot from my father. He only had tinges of it. As I spoke to my father on the phone, I wondered how much my father had missed his country, his home pond. Though he had some not-so-nice sentiments of the government, when I reiterated my wonders of our people, he had many good things to say. He even longed to go back, to enter again where he once called home. When I first arrived in the city of Vinh, in the province of my father’s ancestry, I recall a sadness that he hadn’t known the feeling I spoke of. He wouldn’t remember it as such. His hometown was where he had grown up, further south of Vietnam where he migrated to after the events brought forward by the 1954 Geneva Accords. Anyway, he showed more excitement for what he knew and what he remembered of where he grew up, not where he was from. I suppose that says a lot about our thoughts of home. As for his country, he still loved it with all his heart. My maternal grandfather also had every reason to share the same sentiments as my father, for he was on the losing side of the war as well but he talked of Vietnam with such longings too. That love and appreciation were necessary, after all, our home will always be home.
Home is where our story begins
Many years after my grandfather's death, I came to know more of his story when I wound up visiting his hometown of Huế, Vietnam. It was there that I had come to learn of another side of him, at least in an imagined sense. There I also experienced the hospitality of my mother’s family, who reminded me that we’re never truly alone if we have a family. Given, my grandfather's movements over the course of his life, I found myself trekking through the mountainous province of Lâm Đồng, a place so hilly that driving through it meant a turn that would leave you gasping at its views while the very next turn would leave you feeling queasy. In such place, remained a portion of his family. When I spent a day with them for Tết (our new year’s celebration) I had met a lot of his family members and I was shown the graves of his parents, my great grandparents. I was taken aback when I saw the name of my grandfather listed on their tombstones. He was their eldest child. Upon seeing that, I had for the first time in my life thought of my grandfather as a child. He was once, funny that.
Beginning with his death, I had documented my Grandpa’s life in reverse, as if his life was a real case of Benjamin Button — for I only got to see his life unfold backward. The last time I ever saw him, he was a crippling old man being reduced to his child-like state. Then in between his passing to visiting the graves of his parents and his hometown, I saw him as a child once again, especially as a child of his parents, a grandchild of his grandparents, and consequently as a living being — a child of the universe. As every one of us, he was a product of the spacetime continuum and a product of life. He was like anyone else but he had his own separate path. As a man who had done many miles in his journey, I’m sure he would have thought a lot about paths, especially in his journey from his homeland to where he paved a new home in the U.S. In fact, we Vietnamese have a special relationship with the concept of movement, we give meaning to it — this is not limited to our diaspora. Even in something as simple as the way we think about water. Our word for water is nước. It is also our word for country. Therefore, the home was synonymous with water, whether it be our home pond, the water we drink, and perhaps given more meaning for the diaspora in this case — the water we came across to find new homes. I thought about this as I traversed along the rivers of Vietnam. Was I home, or was everywhere home as long as I occupied a space in this universe. Vietnam is where I am from but I could not quite call it home. I wonder how much we take this into account. I suppose we’re always on the move in this life. Just like one of many tributaries I floated upon in my travels here in Vietnam, members of my lineage would go on to find their ponds all over the world. If we reversed our movements, our story unfolds further. I was lucky enough to discover more of my story in such a short amount of time. With it, I have a treasure trove of memories and adventures to tell, but still, I long to go back. After all, it had become another extension of places I could call home.
Had I not gone back to where I once belonged, my story would have never been fully realized for it had laid dormant in me. My sense of self finally awakened in the midst of returning to a place I consider home and as I hoped, I emerged from the other side from my return to knowing more of my story, become more Vietnamese, becoming more me, and found that sense of belonging I was longing for. All it took was a journey to where I came from and in a place that could have been home. Understanding more of my story and the story of my ancestry is something that I took with me when I left, but my spirit also remains there. And though my home pond remains between two worlds, it was also wherever I chose to float along in this path. Going forward, I’ve not felt a feeling more liberating than knowing more of myself and then freeing myself of the search for what other part of me laid out there. Returning home to Vietnam gave me an opportunity to finally be at one with the world, allowing me to weave through time and space to bring comfort and fulfillment in the knowledge that my soul had finally found a place it could truly belong.
