Viet Kiew
In Dong Ha, my motorcycle taxi driver and I talk about Vietnam and America and the Viet Kiew, the Vietnamese Americans that return to visit. He greatly resents these people who come back to visit their families but are too self important to stay in the family homes because there is no air conditioning, hot water or soft mattresses.
I try to tell him the story of a Salem Vietnamese/American restaurant owner who filled up two visa cards in Vietnam because her husband was too proud to tell his family they did not have a lot of extra money. After all they had paid at least a couple thousand dollars to get over here, hadn’t they? He didn’t care when I told him she had to mortgage her restaurant when she got back home in order to pay off the high interest visa bills. She had a restaurant, a nice house and plenty to eat, didn’t she?
After the fall of Saigon in 1975 the communists embarked on a disastrous economic plan that left thousands of north and south Vietnamese starving for nearly 20 years. In 1994 Clinton lifted the US embargo on the country (he is loved here because of it) that allowed goods to be imported. The communist government is gradually opening up the country to a market economy but in the meantime the Vietnamese have had it hard.
When I try to tell them that not everyone in America is rich like the people they see on TV they don’t want to hear it. They don’t want to hear about the poor and the homeless in America. They say, “why they no work?” I can’t even begin to give them an answer they would understand or accept.
Tags: Conversations, Names For Foreigners, Viet Nam
Zoe