Bảo & the Vietnam War

Bao Trong has a powerful name, and so do his siblings. Taken together, they sound like a pludge. My oldest brother's name is Fukuok, which means take back to the country. My sister's name is Huai Hueng, which means remember the country. And my name is Bao Kuk, which means defend the country. Our names are a, are called action, alonging. My dad basically wrote, wrote our names as poetry for his feelings. His feelings about Vietnam. When I think of my name, I, I think about this event, I think about the trauma. He thinks about a moment in history that's conjured up by their names, and a single photograph. We grew up with a big framed photo of the large carrier plane at an Air Force base at a hangar in South Vietnam. The plane is a Lockheed C-130 Hercules. And the photograph is in full color, about the size of a movie poster, but hung horizontally. It was in the Trong family kitchen for a while. Now it's in the stairwell, outside of Bao's parents bedroom. As a kid, I think it was a daily reminder of the fact that my dad was an Air Force pilot, and that he lived a life kind of before I knew him as he is now. I now see it as a reminder of the country that was lost. A reminder of his dad's biggest trauma. Bao's dad, Tuan Win Trong, was a pilot for the South during the Vietnam War. The conflict has its roots in 1954, when Communist Vietnamese fighters overthrew almost a century of French colonialist rule. And shortly after, the country was split in two, the Communist North and the nationalist South. And when civil war broke out between the North and the South, the American military engaged on the side of the South to fight the Communist, the Vietnam War. This was the Cold War, and the US was getting involved in wars from Korea to the Dominican Republic. In 1968, Tuan was 18. He dropped out of med school to enlist, and because he liked to fly, signed up for the South Vietnam Air Force. For pilot training, he went to Randolph Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, and was so nervous for that first flight. When I sit in there, just like you ride an elephant, I don't think I can control that. I told my trainer, I said, "Well, I don't know if I can make it, but I'll try." And eventually, after a week, I said, "Okay, I can do that, okay, I can do it." After his training, Tuan went back to Vietnam, where most of his missions during the war involved transport, he moved cargo and people, and he was stationed in Saigon in late April 1975 when the scales of the war tipped, and the North gained control of the whole country. The last US military personnel pulled out of Saigon, and the Vietnamese people who had been working with the Americans feared for their lives. Maybe you've seen the photos. A people clinging to helicopters and crowding onto airplanes as they tried to flee. Plains just like the one framed in Baos childhood home. It's a memorial to a single decision his dad made, the day before Saigon fell. I think my dad just realized that everyone was running, and his gut reaction was to leave too. Some people run, I run, I don't have any idea, well, I just run, like the other people or I don't have any idea where we go, what we're going to do, don't have any idea. It totally kills us. Because Tuan's side, South Vietnam, had lost, he and everyone on the base was in immediate danger. The people they just abandoned, they raised, they tried to fight with, some of them, a lot of them, they fly out. Tuan truly thought he was going to die, until one of the other pilots he knew came over and said he had a plane. He said, well, I have a C-130, you want to go with me, with my co-pilot, and I'm so happy and not jumping with him. And he got as many people as he could onto that plane with him. There were about 100 people inside and even more were trying to climb into the cargo hold. So at some point, Tuan and his co-pilot had to decide when to shut the door, otherwise the plane would be too heavy to fly. At that point, you don't have any idea who you're going to take, you don't have any idea. We in the cockpit, we just control, we just take off. I thought, we're not falling, the plane is shaking so bad, I thought, we're about dying. And he flew out of Saigon, out of Tan Sang-Yuk, which is the airport they based on there. And he flew to Thailand. Thailand, because that was the closest American base. Well, we learned that the American crew, they welcomed us, they take all the gun or anything we care with us, they took everything out. We would just come out, go off the plane without anything, nothing at all. He really thought that they were just going to go and just get out of Vietnam for a couple of weeks until everything blew over and they would all go back. He left behind Vietnam not knowing when he would return. But I think that to him, I think he was doing what he could do to save his many lives. He left behind his parents and six other siblings, but two brothers were with him on the flight. Tuan was a refugee now. At a time when the U.S. was accepting hundreds of thousands of refugees from Southeast Asia, he was moved from Thailand to Guam, then to a refugee camp at the Egland Air Force Base in Florida. The family of his flight instructor from Texas sponsored him out. So he came to San Antonio on May 26th, 1975, just a month after the fall of Saigon. And Tuan thought Texas was temporary. We wait for the civilization to go back to his country. I do think that I have not fulfilled what I need to do. Even right now, if they ask me to back their faith, I will do it. I grew up in the South and I was willing to die. I still feel like I didn't know where you were. The past is not past for Tuan. He left his country behind almost 50 years ago, but he's still homesick for Vietnam every day. What he doesn't know is that his son is homesick too. And now they're going to talk about it like they never have before. On this show, we take one historical moment and explore how it ripples through generations of a family. I facilitate conversations about how our most personal private moments are a part of history. And today, it's all about Bao and Tuan. From L.A.S. studios and the NPR network, this is inheriting. I'm Emily Quang. When Bao and I met, it was the middle of California summer. Save your soul from the sun, kind of weather. So he's got on a camouflage print cap with a brim, and I have clip-on sunglasses. I'm going to take my glasses off. I'll clip on, I love it. I know, I'm such a dad. I want to get some transition lenses. That's next for me. That would be cool. Talking to Bao feels like talking to a friend. We're almost the same age. He's 34. I'm 33. And he's really gregarious. We have a vibe with a 1987 Civic wagon and a cat named Lohmaine. We connect immediately. And maybe it's because he's a filmmaker, but he gets metaphorical right away. What did Vietnam mean to you as a kid? This place? I don't think I really thought of it as a physical place that was, that I was from or that our family was from. I think I thought of it as a memory, but didn't really hold any kind of real tangible quality to me as what it was. Bao was born in California. His parents met here, but he actually grew up in Texas. When he was a baby, his dad moved the family to Houston. And as he got older, he realized that the memory of Vietnam haunted his father. I remember having to do a project on the Vietnam War for some reason when I was like in fourth or fifth grade. And I remember, I traced this beautiful drawing of Vietnam of the country as my cover page. And I remember, like, consciously splitting in half and making the top half of the Vietnam, the red flag with the yellow star and the bottom half of the country, the yellow flag with the three red stripes. I remember being so proud of it and showing it to my dad and just having him just completely and raged and blew up at night. me and basically tore up my assignment and told me to never draw that flag again. The red flag with the yellow star. Because to him, it's like blasphemy. This is the flag of the Communist Party of Vietnam, the flag of his dad's enemy during the war. Seeing the fact that I would choose to represent Vietnam with a communist flag, I think it really really hurt his soul. I think that he probably thought he raised me better than that. But I just didn't know. I was completely unaware. When he blew up at you, what do you remember thinking as a kid? I think that's when I really realized that the war is still raged on, I think, in him. In simple, like, kid terms, I remember feeling really upset that I had made my dad so mad. But I also had the same time I was like, dang, dad, like, that's really harsh. I was like, it played what wasn't that bad? Was it? But at the same time, I was like, okay, this must mean like something really real to you. And so I get it. When bow was a kid, traces of the Vietnam war were everywhere in the little things too, and how the family would drive over an hour to see their dentist. I found out one day that our dental work is basically free, that we don't really pay for our dentist. And I was like, why is that? And I found out for my siblings is that because my dad saved our dentist's family from Vietnam. And so, and then I started hearing more and more of these stories about how all these people, my dad's saved, like, they all are like completely indebted to him. And that's why he's held in such like kind of high regard in the community. In Houston's Vietnamese community, Bows Dad was like the guest of honor at every wedding, popular and busy. He operated a bunch of Pequando schools. Bows mom worked at MD Anderson Cancer Center and bow grew up with the culture. His parents sent him to Vietnamese school to learn the language. Took him to the Buddhist temple, but on the block where he grew up, things were a little different. The family lived in Kingwood, a master plan to community. We're almost all of their neighbors and most of Bows friends growing up were white. I wanted to be like them. I wanted to be the best of them. When they started skateboarding, I started skateboarding. When they played football, I played football. When they listened to Ramones and Led Zeppelin, I was like, yeah, I love Ramones, Led Zeppelin. I'll wear a CBGB shirt, you know, like I wanted to fit in. And I think that a lot of people call, you know, the derogatory turn back then was who I was a banana. Asian on the outside, white on the inside. So when Bows would go to Vietnamese school, the other kids would notice his punk fashion, his indie music, but he learned to own it. Being different actually made him feel special. He's still this super confident guy, but this whole time he was haunted by this feeling that was hard to put into words. I felt a sense of placelessness as a child. I felt like I obviously stuck out like a sore thumb. I didn't belong anywhere. And Houston just never felt like home. This is another way that bow and I click. I grew up in a white majority town too. Fairfield, Connecticut. And my sister and I were one of the few Asian kids in our elementary school. So I understand on a bone deep level what it's like to try to fit in, but not belong in the place you grew up. One time in first grade, I came home miffed that none of the teachers knew what Lunar New Year was. You know, only the holiday that's celebrated by two billion people on planet Earth. But I guess no one in 1995 at my elementary school knew that. And my mom wasn't having it. She wanted her daughters to be proud of being Chinese. And as a white woman was constantly going to bat for us when strangers would pass judgment. Like that one time in the supermarket when my mom was asked what country I was adopted from. She told her off and I love her for that. And to bring Lunar New Year to my first grade class, mom helped me walk around to all of the other kids and hand out home bow filled with chocolate coins in place of money. And I remember feeling special, popular even because I had a reason to hand out chocolate. We delivered home bow for a few years. My sister too. And then suddenly we stopped. Middle school was starting for me and it felt kind of bad to stand out. But I also think there was another reason I just didn't want to call attention to the fact that I was Chinese in this all white town. I was tired of having to teach people who I was and having no one around who just understood. So I pushed that part of myself away for many years. I liked being different, but I didn't. It's still really easy to talk to him though. He understands what it's like to distance yourself from your culture to survive. And it stayed that way for a long time until we both left for college. I went to New York City, bowing to Austin. And he decided to become a film major and began watching for the first time really Asian cinema. Directors like Wang Kar-Y and Oppie Chop-Pong were a Satokun. Thal loved Oppie Chop-Pong's film, "Cindrams and a Century." It's a deeply Thai, deeply Buddhist kind of filmmaker. It really spoke to me. And I realized that our stories are beautiful and that I need to dive deeper into my identity to really like access what my truth is. If I want to be a filmmaker, I want to start at the roots. Which meant he had to inspect his own relationship with being Vietnamese. And bow was full-body slammed by the realization of what he'd been pushing away. What did I leave behind? And I think it was at that in this moment of like clarity of like young adult reflection that I started feeling really nostalgic for this self that I left behind. This culture that I turned by back away from for so long. I look back at my life and I feel very embarrassed at how long it took for me to come around to accepting who I am. And bow finally had a name for this placeless feeling he had as a kid. I have this concept of inherited nostalgia of being homesick for a place you've never known, a place that's never been home. So in 2018, bow moved back to California to Los Angeles, to work on his filmmaking career. And there he made more Asian friends than he ever had before. Ralph, Kreis, Jeff, we just wanted, we all love cooking and we just want to cook for each other and play magic. And they start hosting these elaborate dinners, cooking their parents' Vietnamese and Taiwanese dishes. The classics and new takes on old recipes. Word got out on social media and that turned into a pop up dinner series called Mr. John. It was a warm night in September when bow and the other johns as they called themselves hosted a dinner to celebrate the mid-autumn festival at open market in LA's Koreatown. About 60 people came. And it was a four-course meal. And oh, I soaked the pomello in the dressing just so whenever you bite into it, it has like a, explodes with the dressing. Bows in the kitchen, preparing one of the dishes for the second course, goi boi tom. It's a salad of cabbage and ralrum, Vietnamese coriander, and it's topped with shrimp and pomello. All of the people cooking tonight have stories about their dishes and they can't stop telling me about them. There's duck congee with Utah, tikka, mala ice cream. They're all friends or social media acquaintances and they volunteered to help the johns make this meal happen. At the counter is gyro dang, a writer, poet, and journalist who was born and raised in LA. They're helping bow prep that pomello salad. Right now I have been on her herb duty for the entire evening. Just washing, drying, and picking the leaves of herbs. And right now I'm picking some mint. Yeah. It's actually quite relaxing. It is. Jara is Taiwanese Hong Konger American. Volunteered for meal prep to meet people. Just find that sense of connection. I feel like the way I connect to my Chinese cultures through food primarily because I don't speak Chinese and when I came out to my family as queer, I didn't feel like I could have access to like Chinese cultural spaces anymore because the main connection I had to like my own community and culture was through this Chinese American church that I went to from like the minute I was born. Right. And so when I left that community and also like moved away from home, I felt like really estranged from my Chineseness coming into this new phase of adulthood and also just trying to like figure out what my values are. I think this has been like a really cool space and also the people here have been super welcoming. Everyone I talk to is riding this same wave. Whether they're in the kitchen, creating the flavors, or at the dinner table, being reminded of their parents cooking, everyone is just smiling and laughing. Once dessert service begins, thou steps outside and looks at the glow of people inside, eating the homemade mooncakes. Looking out at everyone's faces, everyone eat, laughing, talking, hearing the buzz, it feels like I'm a grandma's house. You know, it feels warm, I feel hugged, I feel loved, and I feel like this is like the community I've been looking for. Does this scratch the same itches you wanting to go to Vietnam itself? Like where is that for you right now? No, it doesn't scratch it. I think that's that is only going to be satiated by being in Vietnam. That's a whole different thing. Here's the thing, Bal wants to live in Vietnam. And it started a few years ago. His family had visited twice before, but 2016 was the year he began to build his own relationship with the country. It was the first time he went without his parents, and it was to work on a personal film project. The film he wanted to direct was a love story called parallels and departures. His movie is about two Vietnamese characters, one in Vietnam and one in the United States, who are spiritually linked, and includes footage from Baos' own family. In Vietnam, he was 27 shooting on location for two months, making friends, getting to know the local art scene, and discovering this younger generation trying to distance themselves from their parents' war trauma. He was, as he puts it, falling in love with the country. Being there alone on a mission to try to tell the story, make this film, was when it really, really clicked for me. It was when I really felt like I was home, you know? - You felt like you were home? - Yeah, I felt like my life had split into two, and I was like, this is like the half of me that was always meant to be here. I felt like I was finally amongst peers, amongst friends, making my own like, friends as an adult in Vietnam really made me feel like I was home. I remember like sitting like in a cafe, and it was pouring rain, and I was just sitting there drinking my third or fourth iced coffee of the day, and smoking a cheap cigarette, 'cause that's what everyone does there, just smoking a cigarette, drinking coffee, and waiting for the rain to pass, and really feeling in tune and in time with my surroundings. And in that moment, I think of just sitting in that cafe, doing something so simple as waiting for the rain to pass, I felt life in all of its slow beauty. - I'm surprised only 'cause like that immediacy of like feeling belonging is, yeah. - I was very much an outsider still. People could tell that I was via Q, which means like the Vietnamese foreigner, but at the same time I felt so held by the friends that I made. - Well. - Did you feel like the two halves were uniting? - I definitely felt reunited with my missing half that I didn't realize was there the whole time. Nowadays, I think Vietnam calls to me every day. - Bows told me that growing up, he felt bisected, always split into. And living in Vietnam seems like the best way to truly grow his relationship to the culture and let that inspire his filmmaking. Realizing this, he had to tell his dad about this new path he discovered. - I came back from Vietnam from that 2016 trip and being like, "Dad, Vietnam is so cool." Like there are so many things happening there like everyone's so nice in him being like, "No." Like that's not real. - That was his response to you coming back? - Yeah, he was like, "That's not real. "Don't trust everything you see over there. "He's very proud of me for like being interested "in that stuff, I think that he just wants me "to be careful 'cause he doesn't have faith in Vietnam." - Well, gosh, you know what this reminds me of my dad? I've lived in a few Asian countries for short periods at this point, India and Mongolia being the ones I lived in the longest. And I really want to live in Taiwan. And all these had to get like cleared by my dad. Not that he could have stopped me, but I'm not gonna do something that's gonna hurt him, you know? - Oh, we got it, yeah, totally. War with Japan was the reason my family left China in the first place, but the reason most of us have stayed away has to do with the rise of the Chinese Communist Party. Members of my family left for anywhere that settling made sense. The US, Europe, Taiwan. Taiwan is where my auntie Linda and Uncle Dick grew up. And they've been really supportive of my dream to live there to really learn the language. But China, as far as my dad is concerned, is off limits. And he's like, you can never live in China, ever. And I think he's like, we work so hard to get out. And like, why do you want to go back? - Exactly, exactly. - What are you doing? - Like the constant draw I have towards Vietnam, it feels like a betrayal to my parents. 'Cause it's like, yeah, like you said, they're like, what? Let me tell you about our trauma again. Let's see if you really want to do that. They came here with nothing and they made a whole life. I'm so impressed. I'm so floored by like my parents and what in the life they've made here, you know? But yeah, it does feel like it hurts. It's things to think that we would wanna leave. (laughs) - That doesn't want to live in Vietnam forever, by the way. Just for a while to establish his filmmaking practice and connect with parts of himself that he simply can't in the US. And he wants to know he can do that without betraying his dad. And ask which right now seems unaskable. That's why he reached out to our show. For some help in figuring out how to have that conversation. - Totally, I feel whenever I started being interested in you, love you, love you, love you happy. - I feel like I'm sick for you. - I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. - Okay, good luck. - Coming up, Baal finds a way through poems. In preparing to interview Tuan, Baal and I think about the fact that they're both kind of homesick and the different ways they process it. Baal cooks, his dad writes, "Tuan has written hundreds of poems, all in Vietnamese, "and Baal speaks the language, but not well enough "to make out the nuances, which is a problem "because poetry is how his dad expresses himself. "Like one time I asked Tuan over email, "how'd you meet your wife?" and he responded with a love poem. So, understanding Tuan's poetry is key to understanding his relationship with Vietnam. A few years ago, Tuan started paying musicians to turn his poems into songs. A lot of them are about missing the country. (singing in foreign language) - This song is called Bae Tom Lai Sa Gong and the first first Tuan wrote goes like this. Oh Sa Gong, my beloved city. I feel like a stranger when I returned on a rainy evening. Rain drops like cold tears filled my soul with sorrow. - Yeah, this is the type of sadness I have lived with. - As Baal and I listened to this music together, he has a look of intrigue and shame on his face 'cause this genre of music is just not his bag. - My dad is probably like a pretty prolific like artist, musician, poet, and none of his kids engage with his artwork, you know? That's brutal. - But now he wants to engage. He started to copy and paste the song lyrics into Google Translate to get at all these missing nuances of what his father feels. Because these songs are way in. A launching off point for Baal and his dad to talk about their conflicting feelings for Vietnam. - I will thank you. I take the opportunity to make with you. It's maybe not the best my language. It's not that good. So we'll try. - Today is the day of the interview. We're on the back porch of a family friend's house. The wooden slats of the roof cast diagonal shadows across our faces. I look around the table. It's me, Baal, his dad, Tuan, our producer, James Chao, and our host, writer Neely. We're all huddled around a laptop ready to listen to Tuan's music. - Yeah. (singing in foreign language) - I am afraid that when I die, my soul can't find a Vietnam. - Yeah, the translation you have written here is I'm afraid that someday I'll be buried on foreign soil. - We listen to another track. (singing in foreign language) - It's beautiful. - Reading the translation is, I had no idea that it's really heartbreaking to read the lyrics about Saigon being a fated dream. Like the Saigon you knew just being forever lost in the past. And you wouldn't think I would relate to this, but I do. And I swear to God, I've inherited your nostalgia. You've passed your own trauma onto me. (laughing) - Sorry, well, sorry, I'm not sorry. - Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry to me. (laughing) - Watching this, I'm thinking to myself, how really is his dad's son? A generation apart, they still feel homesick for the same place. It's an easy way of connecting. That sets the stage for the way harder part of the conversation. The fact that Bao wants his dad's blessing to live in Vietnam. It's a version of the same conversation they've been having ever since 2 ripped up Bau's school report. Vietnam is still run by the Communist Party. Political opposition is suppressed. Civil rights curtailed. It's dangerous to speak out against the government, online and in the streets. So it's no place Tuan wants his son to live, but it's still the place that Bau yearns for. In making his case, he wants to be gentle, and he stays that way the entire conversation. - So dad, I really appreciate you wanting to do this with me. I've been very thankful for how supported I feel by you. - He's talking about how his parents supported him in becoming a filmmaker. No questions asked. - Oftentimes I feel there's this stereotype that Asian parents all want their kids to be doctors, lawyers, engineers, and that's still true, it's still true. - But up to them, each of them what they want to do, we support them totally. I believe in this life that whatever the children want to do with the best, that they'll not be successful on that, and now we happy to support with whatever you want to do. - Yeah. And then I remember when I started turning my attention back to making films out of our family, and thinking about making films out of Vietnam, how that makes you feel whenever I started being interested in Vietnamese culture. - It's very, very happy because through that, you can see how we live our life, and how we survive in this new world. So yeah, we're happy. - This feels like the land of common ground. Bow being a filmmaker, that's good. Bow being interested in Vietnamese culture, also good. But he's about to jump off the cliff, and he doesn't take a running start. He slides into it by telling a story. - I remember whenever I went to Vietnam back in 2016, when I went by myself for my film, and I remember coming back and telling you all these great things about it, how I loved it, I felt like I was at home, and I remember you telling me, don't believe everything you see, it's not real, 'cause our relationships are so different. - That's the issue, yeah, that's the issue, too. - I didn't know that, yeah. - But it's interesting because I feel like you talk about how sitting in the rain, you felt sadness. He's talking about one of his dad's song lyrics. The one that went, "I feel like a stranger "when I returned on a rainy evening." Rain drops like cold tears filled my soul with sorrow. But Bow wants to tell his dad about the afternoon he spent in the rain at the cafe in Vietnam. - And I feel like I remember sitting in the rain and feeling content, feeling like I was like finally, like where I was supposed to be. - Uh-huh. - And so I think about how we both see Vietnam, we're processing kind of the same events very differently. - Yeah, but what I'm trying to say, what you see is the cosmetic, what they put in there right now. It's not a real Vietnam that we want to see, that what I'm saying. It's just a fresh pain over something that tries you high. - But I still think that there's validity in kind of the people there. Like even though the people there, they just want to have a good life. Like they feel powerless to do anything. - Yeah, that's not very true. - But they're doing their best to have a happy life. And I feel like that's what was resonating with me. - Bow is thinking about the people who live there today, the friends he made. While Twana's thinking about the people who lost their lives in the war, and at the hands of the Communist Party in the years that followed. - Yo, great good, Father. - Well, well, I suppose, badly by a Communist. So I don't want to do anything with that Communist. So I'll wait now. - Oh, I never knew that. This is your, my great-grandfather. So your grandfather. And you, you witnessed that or you, how do you know about that? - I know that. - In Vietnamese, Juan starts to tell Bow stories he's never heard about how their family's land was taken by the Communist government. And how Juan's brother was sent to a re-education camp. These were essentially labor camps to repress and sometimes torture former members of the South Vietnamese government. Juan blames the government for his brother's death. Bow is looking at his dad with wide eyes. He didn't know any of this. And it's dawning on him that his father's hatred of the Communist government is as personal as it gets. What's keeping you from going back to Vietnam? - The Communist, I can't stand to see them. If I see them, I'll just sit, I'll get angry. I can be there and we're not going to be there until they're gone. And then that won't be home. - Vietnam won't be home for Juan until the current government is gone. And he holds his palms up to the sky as he says it. It's something he does whenever anything feels fixed, inevitable, like it's a law of the universe. But Bow wants to create some wiggle room here for his dad to imagine something differently for his son. So he says. - What do you think home is for me? - Home for you if for here, I know. I know. - Do you think it's here? - Well, what you were born here? Well, if you're here, I know, yes. I want you to think about Vietnam, of course. But it's not necessarily for you to go back there. You don't have the love for the country, just like I know. I know how much you love me. I know you, how much you want me to be happy. But my happiness, do you, how do I frame this? I've always felt this from you, that you have this deep longing for Vietnam, for your home. And I think that I have that too. And I don't know how to, how to navigate that. I feel homesick for Vietnam and it's not even my home. And I feel like I want to live there, but at the same time, it's a lost country to you. - It is a lost country. Hopefully, when they come, the country regain the freedom, back, non-communist, you can do a lot of to serve the Vietnam. - But what if Mao doesn't want to wait until that political change, which may never happen? - No, I don't want to do anything with that regime right now. Nothing, even if you want to come back, that you do the documentary, it's anything that's just getting properly under for that country, I don't want them. I will prevent them to my best. We go back and forth about this for a while. Tuan's attitude is hard-line, but I am starting to get where he's coming from. The government that's in power now was his enemy. The cause was one he was willing to die for, so he'll never accept the current regime. So Mao decides to make one last ditch effort, by appealing to something they truly have in common, which is their love for Vietnamese culture. - I want to figure out how to keep our culture alive, how to pass our Vietnamese culture down to the next generation, how do you preserve the kosher? I'm very strongly relieved that you do, so I don't worry about that part. I just want you, a human Vietnamese generation, back there to serve the country at this point. - But even Tuan's got to admit, that was not a child anymore. Even if you want to do something, I said, "Well, I don't want it, but you want to do it." "What can I do?" - You know, my time is so good. - You're saying, at the end of the day, it is his choice. - Yeah. - Well, yeah, I understand what I'm thinking, his choice, that's his life. - But I believe I trust you. - That's about as positive a validation that I'm gonna get from my father in a great way. - It's like both are true, actually. You don't want him to go, and you trust him. - Yeah, your choice, your life. You have a long life to go. So that's fine with me. (laughing) - Listen, I trust you. I trust you. I put total trust on you. - Yeah. - I'm sorry, one of her talk about the country, I always get moody. Probably cannot hold my tears. Never. I went born and just served a country, yeah. - Hearing his dad's often like this, I think it makes bow open up more fully too, and finally tell his dad what's just true for him. - I just don't think I'll ever love America as much as you love Vietnam. I don't know if that's the expectation that I'm supposed to. Okay. Yeah. You know, if I feel torn between two countries constantly. - I understand, thank you for telling me a lot of things that I didn't know that you'd think before, But now that can. that whole pack of my tears for what do you plan to do. But whatever it is for your life, you go on do that, just like when you chew your school, you're on your own. And I'll trust you and make a right decision. So I'm not good at this. Was right. Was it was. He's kind of like, I claim no responsibility. Whatever you do, it's on you. Tuan is holding up his palms to the sky again. I take that as a sign of compromise, that he's taken a step towards his son, gone from forbidding Vietnam outright to saying, "Look, I don't like this, but I trust you. It's not a blessing. But it's enough for bow and Tuan to at least sit back in their chairs, and feel like they've been heard. Get some cloniac. Four months later, I hop on a video call with Thal. All right. Let's do this. And to my genuine amazement, he and his dad have kept talking about what Vietnam means to them. Things have kind of more emotionally opened up for us, and I know that we have been able to hop kind of more easily about things. Like they can meet each other halfway, because they have a better understanding of how the other person feels. Because we've broken through that barrier, that it's something that we, it's a bridge that we're willing to cross more easily now. This has been especially true since Tuan revealed a big dream to backpack through the rural countryside of Vietnam from north to south. While he's been back, he's never been to the countryside itself. And Bao wants to make that happen for him. I can't let my dad's life go by without him going back to Vietnam, at least trying once. And so we made a promise to each other that if I'm married by 2026, then he has to go to Vietnam with me, and that we're going to go on a father-son backpacking trip. When we started working with Bao, I never thought he and his dad would reach to this point, make a pledge to each other to honor their homesickness together. And I'm grinning into my laptop camera while I listen to Bao make these plans. Many Vietnam's live inside the Trong family. Bao's from 2016, Tuan's from 1975, and of all the versions, maybe this backpacking trip can be the one that they share, the memory they have in common. Next time on inheriting, a Japanese American woman traces the progression of generational trauma in her own family. And in the process, she finds a new connection with a cousin as they talk about mental health for the very first time. inheriting is entirely funded by supporters like you. If you've found meaning in this story and want to hear future seasons, donate right now at laus.com/inheriting and click the orange button to help us make season two. Something really special is going on right now. Your donation will be matched dollar for dollar, thanks to Ghee and Peter Hub. Please help us tell more of these stories. Thank you. If you want to learn more about any of the historical moments we talk about on our show, visit our website laus.com/inheriting. We have put together a variety of resources for you, as well as lesson plans from the Asian-American education project. inheriting is hosted, reported, and co-created by me, Emily Quang. The show is a production of laus studios and distributed by the NPR network. Anjali Sastry Kerbachek is the senior producer and co-creator of the show. This episode was produced and sound designed by James Chao. Minju Park is also a producer on the show. Sarah Sarasen is our senior editor. Katherine Mailhouse is our executive producer and director of content development at laus studios. Shayna Naomi Krokmal is our vice president of podcasts. Mixing and engineering by Donald Paz, original theme music composition by Eastcott Kelly, fact-checking by Caitlin Antonio's. Our intern is Tony Morales, podcast pilot by Christina Chung, visuals by Samantha Hallou Hernandez, social media and video by Christine Malixie and Josh Lutona. Jen's Campbell is our production coordinator. A big thank you to Viet Lai, Justin Yan, and Nguyen Zhu Hong for editorial guidance. Also to Nhi Li, who hosted us for this interview, the staff of OpenMarket, and the volunteers for Mr. Zhang, especially the Zhangs, Jeff Tang, Ralph Xiao, and Kras Wen. Special thanks also to Bao for permission to use video footage that he recorded while in Viet Nam. And some of the music you heard is, of course, Juan's original compositions. Major support for inheriting is provided by Ghee and Peter Hutt and Cass Abink, as well as many more who gave specifically to inheriting without whom this show would not exist. Thank you so much. This podcast is also supported by Gordon and Donna Crawford, who believe quality journalism makes Los Angeles a better place to live.