Preparation...
08/26/2008
The days between now and January 4, when I land in Ho Chi Minh City, are going to fly by all too quickly. Yesterday I began taking my typhoid vaccine and I exchanged several emails with my host in Nha Trang. I asked her when the spring semester ended, only to learn that they don't refer to semesters as fall and spring semesters, but as first and second semesters. It was a gentle reminder that I need to be more aware of the language I use.
As part of my preparation for this journey, I'm reading books about Vietnam and the Vietnamese. A few weeks ago I finished Andrew X. Pham's Catfish and Mandala, chosen by my book group because it was about both Vietnam and bicycling (one of my hobbies). Andrew Pham is what the Vietnamese call a "Viet-kieu" (a Vietnamese-born person living in another country). He was just a young boy when Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) fell, and his family fled Vietnam on a boat. You can read more about his story at his website (www.andrewxpham.com). I love an old proverb that I found there--"The rewarding path is never easy, the easy path never rewarding." That seems appropriate for many of us, as we labor away in pursuit of our passions, be they earning a college degree, cycling to the top of a steep hill, writing a book, or traveling in an unfamiliar place.When I picked up the book, I thought it was going to be a travelogue, but instead I found it to be very autobiographical. As the author's webpage reminds us, the book is about family issues (when you read it you will understand), identity, and reconciliation. During his journey, Pham struggles to reconcile the values he learned as a child in Vietnam with those he acquired after moving to the United States.Not all of his stories about Vietnam and the Vietnamese people can be taken literally, after all, he has taken some author's license. Some of the keenest insights are about the adjustments immigrant children face when they are living abroad.
The book has even deeper meaning once you know what a mandala is. Translated loosely, it's a circle, representing wholeness. We can see mandalas in all aspects of life--in the sun, the moon, in circles of friends, in the closing ceremony of the Olympics (did you notice the emphasis on circles there?). In returning to Vietnam on this personal mandala, Andrew Pham sought answers to many questions that he thought would make him whole, only to find them in the most unexpected places and people. Like Pham, I know that my journey to Vietnam is going to be a transformative experience, if I am just open to it.
