Be Present

During this time, if you remember on television, there's a lot of black and white. They were going after black people, and we were in that neighborhood. So we're all worse than them. We don't speak the language, we don't have any directions, we don't have any skill. Nothing, no relative, no friends, nothing. You're listening to the podcast stories of the Vietnamese Boat People. Hi, I'm Tracy Mwynn-Ming, and welcome back. Last fall, our team went to Northern Virginia to do some on-site recordings with families. I grew up in the area, and I still have family there. So when I was planning my trip, my brother Chris called me and recommended that I stop by a place called "Present Restaurant," located off Arlington Boulevard in Falls Church, Virginia. He wanted me to meet his friend and business owner, Gene. My father passed away one over two months old. He was in the Vietnam War. He was fighting on the South American side, so he was trained here in Quantico. Gene was born in Wuyen Kanban, the youngest of two children, to a widowed mom. He was born into unfortunate circumstances, and a country at war, and in a home with no father. And, you know, war happened, he passed. I was two months old. Arney is a man about a dying war, gave me a name, "Winkin' Moon Piece." Life would continue to challenge his spirit and faith from childhood into adulthood. What I really loved about Gene's story is how he turned adversity into opportunity, and opportunity into advocacy. During the war, my mom is a military wife, so she followed my father. She got pensions and all of that. But when the war's over, people like my family were considered sons and wife of a trader. You know, we go to school and I remember teachers, you know, yank me on the ears and calling names that, you know, your father was a trader, or, you know, names, things like that. After my father passed, my grandparents took me away from my mom. We live in Gagau. It's in the South. It's in the South. It's a very deep South. It's a really country-sized. During that time in Vietnam, when you are a man or a male teen, they'll draft you, go to war, fighting with, you know, all that. And, you know, my mom just lost her husband. They don't want to see her son's going to be the last of the descendant's going to go away. So she does everything she can, you know, what the little power she has, you know, to find a passage for us to leave Vietnam. And when that happened, she couldn't afford to come with us. Just me. I don't remember what happened, but I remember the part when she took me to a friend that's stranger I never met. And basically, she say, "Well, please take my sons and help him and make them men out of him." And then, you know, she looked at me and I looked at her and I went about a cry, you know, 78 years old. And she said, "Don't you cry. If you, if you alive, I will find you." And then, you know, I just grabbed the guy's hand, walking away, and probably Tear was going down my eyes, but, you know, I was growing up without father, so adversity and atrocity is a normal thing. You know, I face that every day in my life, so, you know, I mean, I don't live with my mother. I guess the bonding for me, the breakaway at that moment was a lot easier. And, you know, I believe in my mother because every year she promised she would come, she always comes. So, you know, I believe her. And then, you know, we left. Do you remember that journey at all? Oh, yeah. I remember all of that for whatever the reason. Sometimes I wish I don't remember, but it's, I guess, it's too dramatic, too much drama. So, I remember, I remember that we were on a small little, they called a boat, but it's not a boat, you know, that small little canoe trying to turn across the Pacific Ocean with it, you know. Our people had no idea. So, we were out in the water for about two days, maybe less, and the boat would fill the wood water. So, they had a turn back. So, we turned back and the closest place they had to go in this Vongtao. And they knew there was the men's on the boat if they were captured. They might be executed on the spot, you know, treated badly. So, women's and children have to kind of make scenes so we get arrested. So, as many men can swim away as possible. Oh, so you're a drag? Yes. So, we had a sacrifice ourselves, so we did that and we were captured. We were captured and then, you know, my aunt were with me and, you know, she hit some jewelry on the, you know, and I was sleeve. So, she used that to buy a way out of it. So, I came home and my mom was shocked. I was not going to door and mom say, "Oh my God." She, you know, first of all, she thought I was dead. Obviously, I wasn't. And mom hugged and cry and she said, "We'll never do this again." She lied. We did it again, but this time as a family. So, mom, I remember she saw our house, saw everything. And I remember she saw her small wedding ring. It's not easy that you want to leave. You packed up and leave now. It costs a lot of money and you have to know the connections and all of that because the government is cracking down on that. On the way, we were, luckily, we were rescued by an American oil tanker. The storm that night was on top. It's like one of these, the storm was just too much. My uncle was very talented trying to do the best he can. But, you know, how do you go against mother nature, right? So, the boat, they say they follow us and they were not going to pick us up because they were on their mission. But then they had to or else we would sink. And then, you know, the captain turned back, picked us up, saved us. Maybe a little bit of time later, he told everybody come out and that looked down. Our boat was shattered. You know, and to run in front of your eyes, you know. And the closest place or island that he can go to that except refugee that time was Singapore. The year was 1979 and the Singapore Refugee Camp at 25 Hawkins Road was a former British army barrack. It was established as a refugee camp the year prior in 1978 as a response to the crisis. In episodes number eight and nine, we cover in detail what living conditions were like at this makeshift camp. So, in Singapore, it was a smaller, I mean, it's called camp, but it's not. I mean, it's really small. I remember there's 2021 houses, a small community, and people just live everywhere. They transfer us to Galang, Indonesia, islands. And in Galang, we stay for several years. Several years? Yep. Several years. I don't remember why, but we were there for a long time. So, I remember in Galang, there's one and two. Actually, they're Galang three. The Galang three is a cemetery where people die. So, I was in Galang High, Galang Two, and it's a, they divide into zone ABCD. And each zone have many blocks. Each block have sick barrack. And each barrack have 10 families. I remember everybody left. So, I became the leader of the barrack when I was nine or ten years old. And the block left of my family? Yeah, I mean, ten years. So, we were the only one. Yeah. So, the newcomers come, we would take them and, you know, help them and, you know, get food and, you know, things like that. In '82, that we finally can come to United States. I think there's an association so, I call USCIS. I believe that's what it called, response to us, to come. But I don't see them. You know, life was dramatically changed very fast when you come to United States. I remember that was very hard. My mother, it's been mother and father at the same time. Mentor and everything. And she's always motivated, you know, so, you know, she's a fighter. But it's very, very tough. If you look back right now, and I say, "Wow, I don't know if we can do it." We were put in a very, very bad part of LA, you know, in the hood. I grew up in there because, you know, that's where they put us. I remember the rent was very cheap. It's like $200. You know, you had metal bars on the windows and walking through the neighborhoods and, you know, see your people. What were the different ethnic groups? Oh, it was a 100% black neighborhood, you know, black Americans neighborhood. It was down in Compton, and it's a crenshaw and pick-on. It was very bad. It was very bad. So during this time, if you remember on television, you know, you're looking at all that television during this time, there was a lot of black and white. So we're worse than that. We don't speak the language. We don't have any directions. We don't have any skill. Nothing. No relative, no friends. Nothing. So all this time in refugee camp, so I miss, I never been to third, four, fifth or sixth grade. So here you come to the United States, and I was in seventh grade. Because they put you based on aid. That's right. Believe it or not, go into school and go home. It's a survival. That was an easy because, you know, they were going after you. I mean, you know, they picked on you kids. But, you know, we were afraid, but then we had to plan how to survive. Everybody, all the Vietnamese doing that moment, they was going to nail industry. He's in for them to make money. Gene's mom was a teacher in Vietnam and also learned dental during the war to aid where she could for the military men and women. When they came to America in 1982, she started to work in the nail salon industry. This was right around the time when the industry was starting to boom in California. Thanks to a famous actress named Tippie Hedren, referred to as the godmother of the Nail Salon Industry. In the late 1970s, Tippie recruited a beauty school to help train 20 Vietnamese women refugees to help them find a vocation. And then she was instrumental in getting them jobs after. This was the beginning of the $8 billion Nail Salon Industry in America. And it was hard for her because this is something very different, very new, and we didn't have any money, so she had to walk through that very dangerous neighborhood every day, catch in a bus, make a few train for her to go to work and come home and walk at night. So it was not easy. And when we made enough, mom connected with her old teachers or people in the military with my dad. At the time, we were teachers that teach at Silwet in Boston. So we moved through Boston. So my mother took us and she went to Boston because she can finish her dental school. So she become re-certifications or whatever. But it was too hard. It was too hard. She doesn't speak enough English and you don't have enough to continue with Korea. So we had to go back to California the next year. Live was very, very rough. Now I remember this is like 85, 86 during that time, Vietnamese are the small minority. We're small number and we're small in size, right? And we felt that guys like us had to stick together to protect each other. So we had groups of friends that somehow we become a gang or they label them a gang or whatever. Were you up to no good? Well, no. It depends on the people. But during that time, we were in high school. We probably in sophomore, junior, senior years. And there were bad people. Older people come out and try to recruit the kids and do bad things. And the family was very poor. And you see your mom and dad struggle so much. And if somebody comes and offers you a lot of money, there are a lot of kids that are very tempted. We always keep them. Be careful and all of that. So China time was very close to us. So we were in a way lower into that kind of life also because these guys understand. They manipulate kids. They know what you want. They come out sometime. They set up that somebody else picked on you and then they jumped down. They saved you and you own them a favor. And you know, Vietnamese, when somebody doing something for you, you remember that. And you pay back. You pay back. Sometimes, 10 times, 20 times more than what they gave you. And then the older bad guys know that. So you know, they were going after us. So we had a group very tough. We had a face that life. We had a get together. Use that power, leverage that power to protect us against the local bullies to get away from that. So either you were a gang or you an individual that everybody got picked on. And a lot of fights and I'm pretty sure there's a petty theft and you know, whoever, whatever that the older people control you to do. And then they will manipulate these kids up until we're old enough. Old enough meaning you're 16, 17 and you realize that these guys are using you. So you know, during that time, I think the Vietnamese gangs, you know, all group, very tough. You know, a lot of my friends doing that time, they don't even have their parents with them. They would bite themself. They call them the miners when they came to the United States and yelling. And you know, those guys, uh, been tick advantage of. It was hard. It was a very hard life. Then in 1988, after attending a cousin's wedding in Northern Virginia, Gene's mom decided to move the family to the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. The area is considered the third largest concentration of Vietnamese immigrants in America. The first two are Southern California and Houston, Texas. And in 1988 was very, very different. We, my family, started the nail industry here. What was the first nail salon? It's called Nails For You. So I remember during that time, there was two nail salon, one here and one in Maryland. Maryland belonged to Peter, Peter Half. He was one of the pioneers here. And in Virginia, it's just us. So we started and it was not easy. So did you work at the nail salon or used to do in high school? No, I finished. I work at a nail salon now. So, you know, I do that trying to make a living. I saw an opportunity that, you know, you kind of figure that it's going to be like California. There's nobody knows about this. But during that time when I left California, I had more nail salon than gas stations everywhere. So you figure it's going to happen here. But nobody knows that yet because there's no internet. You know, nobody knows. So I knew that. I knew that Virginia is going to be booming. I knew that. I want to open as many salon as I can. So I felt that this is the first time ever in my life have a head start. Usually, I'm all the way at the back, right? But my mother said, no, we can teach people how to do this. And I said, "Mom, oh my God, no, mom, we don't want to create competition yet. Give me a few years. Let me get a head start." And she said, "No, let's open the school." And we fought back and forth. And I lost, of course. The reason she said that for the many years we were in the refugee camp, she prayed God every night. If I ever family ever made it to the United States safe and we would have a decent life, she wanted to do something to pay back. And she said, "There's nothing she can think of right now better than the nail industry because the nail industry helped our family get out of that terrible neighborhood. And during that time when we came here, there's no nail industry." Three immigrants who come to this country had an industry that was creative for them. They were to survive, to move on, to thrive and to assimilate with the community, right? And the nail industry was that for the Vietnamese. And so did you become an instructor? Well, right away because my mom did not have a privilege to learn English here in the United States. So it's hard for her, although she's a teacher in Vietnam. And I have to help her with that part. It's time to go by a few months later to say, "Good job. Now it's yours. Run it." So I disagree with her. But then a few years down the road and I know that was my mission because we help thousands of people. Last time I checked a few years ago, I had 22,000 students. So did you open more salons or you just ran that school? Because we opened a school. I felt that it's really wrong to open a school, teach a student and open a salon next to them to compete with them. Maybe I was wrong to think of that. You wanted to empower them to do this. Yeah, I want to help them. I want to teach them. And even today, we don't teach them how to do nail. I teach them how to walk my path. I teach them how to, you know, first come here with nothing, no English, no education, no skill. I teach them how to quickly assimilate. I teach them how to be successful so they can make enough money to support their family. You know, now people can learn from each other. But what I teach them and what I motivate them, it's different because I have walked from the very bottom up. I was struggle so much. And I was hoping that somebody would come, like, you know, like in the movie, somebody would show up and save you. Nobody ever did. Nobody ever did. But what it did, it's made me very strong. And then when it come to people who needed help, you just obligated to help them because, you know, that's what you want, right? I think got some, had some funny humor about this, you know, okay, you want people to help you? Well, you help these people. I always want to be an entrepreneur. So, phrase they say like a "feet who look full." That means if you're not a business owner, you're never going to be rich. You're going to be worked for somebody and, you know, all of enemies understand that. So I opened the first coffee shop here, called Kefe Yvang. So we opened a coffee shop. We were very successful. With, I brought all the things I know from California. So Virginia, although we're very close to the Capitol, but things that happened in New York and California years before it's going to happen in Virginia, right? So, you know, this is before the internet. Now things are moving quicker. So we opened a very successful coffee shop because of that. I got in a lot of confrontations with the local Vietnamese local here. Because they felt that I was at the outside. I was a Californian. I came here and I'm taking over the business and all of that. So my God, there was a lot of story. We just have coffee. Very good Vietnamese coffee. And then we have pool table, singing karaoke and all of that. So daytime, I'm a teacher and nighttime, I run a coffee shop. So my mom always said, "I don't understand you." And today, in the morning, people call you the teacher. And at night, you hang out with all the gangster and everybody. I say, "Mom, they're not gangsters." They just kids. You know, a lot of fights, a lot of trouble. A lot of things happened in this community. And I watched this community. You know, before I got here, a lot of local gangs, they fight with each other and all of that. I felt that I was the big part of fixing that. After the coffee shop, I opened a nightclub. I went bigger. I opened a nightclub. We called Diamond Nightclub inside the Eden Center. So it was a very big, it was 10,000 sweatfoot. So we bring singers from all over, California, Paris by night, Vietnam, anywhere. and we had our community. So it was a lot of fight, a lot of trouble. You know, oh, at the nightclub, I remember we had a separate-- - A great brother there. - Of course. Your brother is one of my best clients. Weed's very decent. In the very nice guy, but I was a great guy. So he was more like a lover than a fighter. You know that, right? So, you know, we had to separate the Vietnamese from Maryland on one side, the Vietnamese, and Virginia on one side, and then finally talk to them and, you know, squash all of that. Now I think this is very good. - Jean was now running several businesses. The nail academy, a nail salon, and a nightclub in Eden Center, known as the largest Vietnamese commercial center in the East Coast. It was his experiences as a business owner at Eden Center, where he started to expand his focus from business to advocacy. - So the Eden Center right here, I would say, is the only plaza that represents Vietnamese here in Maryland, in the West Virginia. This is probably the worst landlord we ever know. I mean, if you look back on their records in the '70s, the owners of this, they were lawyers. They earned their own biggest personal injury law firm in Connecticut. They cheated thousands of clients out of their money. They were fairer and dited. They lost their license. They moved to Florida. They used them to use them to use them to protect their assets. And then they prey on community like us, who don't know enough about the law, don't have enough credit, have a lot of cash. So it was very bad. They didn't take care of a place. They were just people just going there. All they had their dreams opened the business. And the landlord treated them really bad because they were lawyers. And me, it was afraid of lawyers. And they know that. - According to an article published in the Washington Post, the average retail rental rate in the false church area where Eden Center is located was anywhere from 22 to $35, a square foot. At Eden Center, however, the tenants were charged $100 or more per square foot. On top of that, the tenants said they had to pay for their own building repairs. And sewage was backed up, resulting in poor air quality. And that, of course, turned off the customers and resulted in reduced foot traffic to the shopping center. Gene began to organize community meetings with police and government officials. He invited business owners and residents to his nightclub to discuss their concerns. - So, we told them, I came in, I worked with them, and I've seen all of that. So in 2009, I formed the Vietnamese American Chamber of Commerce with a lot of good brothers and sisters here to help Vietnamese merchants and community. Maybe we can evil, equal out of the level playing field, get some fairly treated. We did some really good stuff with the Chamber of Commerce. So we came and we told the landlord, you need to fix it. This is unacceptable. I mean, I have raw sewage running to our restaurant and it's just terrible. So we called the Washington Post, Washington Post came, agreed that a huge story, they don't fix it, so I had to take them to court. In 2012, 16 Vietnamese business owners in Eden Center filed a lawsuit over conditions at the mall. At the time of the interview, Gene said the lawsuit is still going on. Gene also went in front of Senate to lobby for equal opportunity for nail technicians. According to a 65 year old tax law that stated cosmology and barbers could file as independent workers using 1099 versus W2s. But at that time, the law did not recognize nail technicians as part of the cosmology industry. This had many tax and employment implications on Vietnamese individuals whose livelihood depended on the job, but they were subject to hefty income taxes that left them very little to take home. Gene solicited the support from many large corporate executives and politicians in the area. And in March 2016, the Bill SB679 was approved and adopted, allowing nail technicians to have the same equal rights as cosmologists. - You know, Vietnam had a 4,000 year of history. We always been a war. China came over our country, took over the country for 1,000 years. 1,000 years of long time. But we never lost our language. We never lost our culture. The French came for 100 years and all kind of war. This is the first time Vietnamese ever left Vietnam. And we left for a reason. Some people look at Vietnam and say, "Mun muc nuk, we lost our country." I disagree strongly. The country is still there. We're still there. The government changed. Nothing lasts forever. Even the Roman Empire got destroyed. I mean, so how long is the current regime it's going to stay? But because of 1975, people like us had spread all over the world. - Today, Jean also owns present restaurant in Fallsridge, Virginia in Saigon Street at the MGM in National Harbor, Maryland. He is married with three kids and he continues to advocate for equal rights for the Vietnamese American business community. I asked Jean why he named the restaurant present. His response was simple. Don't dwell on the path. Don't agonize about the future. Live in the moment. Appreciate the present. I'm tracing Wen Meng and thank you for helping us preserve history. Don't forget to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast app. And please, take a moment to rate us and provide us feedback. And if you have a story to share, contact us at [email protected]. (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music)