country as the Communists suppressed religious freedom and democracy. Geographically, Vietnam is not quite as big as California, and had previously endured 1000 years of Chinese rule, followed by a century of French colonization and twenty years of American bombing. Most surviving Vietnamese were malnourished. Fast forward to today: Vietnam is one of the top three rice exporters in the world. Many of the people who escaped the country, like my parents, were oppressed religious adherents, political asylum seekers, and the economically poor. The pro-American Vietnamese who missed the American-aided escape hid in the shadows of the Communist rule to plot their exits. Both of my parents were originally from South Vietnam. After the war, my father taught math to children in Bien Hoa, located sixty miles north of HCMC; the city once accommodated a big American military base and dabbled in the tea trade. Vietnam had two seasons, a wet one and a dry one, each lasting approximately six months. Father told me that the pre-1975 Vietnamese families consisted of five to fifteen children, likely born nine and a half months after the rainy season. I suspect that a large number of family members contributed labor for field work and served as insurance to carry on the lineage. Vietnamese families commonly didn’t use names, but instead called their children by numbers based on their birth order. I have vague memories of my childhood in Vietnam, but remember being happy and grateful for a small spoonful of rice. The Vietnamese live in a hierarchical society where the eldest person is the most respected one, and leader of the household. My father’s mother occupied that position, and so received the best food from our family, as culture dictates, mainly rice and fish or chicken. I would wait anxiously for any of her leftovers because I was literally at the bottom of the food chain. As I learned about the country of my birth, I understood better the risks my family had taken in that 1979 escape. My parents, seeking a better future for us, hatched an escape 4 P.M. COUNT
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