At the end of the day, we are small grains of sand, trying to identify ourselves in this big and noisy world. And in the world where the noise is not in our native language, our identity struggles a bit more.
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I woke myself up this morning at 11:11. Wollongong was raining and my head was a bit dizzy.
I went to bed at around 4 in the morning. People said I might have been, still, suffering from jet lag after the two-month trip back home in Vietnam.
And here I am, crawling to a corner of my bed and typing nonstop as thoughts and ideas just spilt out through my chubby fingers, to the keyboard and ultimately dancing on the laptop screen.
My eyes earlier caught a post while I was scrolling down the profile of a new friend I just made on Facebook. That post later stucks in my head and I felt myself being swallowed by emotions.
The post was written by a Vietnamese – American talking about how she was touched reading a writing piece of Viet Thanh Nguyen (the author of The Sympathizer and a Vietnamese – American himself) where he claimed his Vietnamese self through a tiny little story that moved souls. Forever and always, I am a huge fan of those small stories with powerful messages.
I am not a Vietnamese – American or in precise words, not a Vietnamese migrant or a child of Vietnamese migrant parents. Nevertheless, I am Vietnamese living in a foreign country (Australia), so the experience I shared with this story does count, right?
Let me do this little summary of Thanh’s story. It was a story of himself going to a store in the US where he heard a father, a complete stranger, spoke to his child on the phone in Vietnamese. “Con ơi! Ba đây. Con ăn cơm chưa?”. Just a short, concise sentence in his mother language and Thanh was moved by how much he felt Vietnamese at that very moment.
In literal meaning, “Con ơi. Ba đây. Con ăn cơm chưa?” means “Hello kid, this is your father. Have you eaten (rice) yet?” in English. Simple, plain, not much to say. But in Vietnamese, that sentence just means a lot. Four years in Australia, and to this time of life all I wish sometimes when life is just overwhelming (well I did try my best to manage that overwhelming but since we are all human and at the end of the day, overwhelming is the feeling that worth) is my Dad to call me on the phone, asking “Con ơi, Ba đây, con ăn cơm chưa?”.
There is just so much love in that tiny little sentence. It spreads the feeling of ‘safety’, as I wish to call it that way, in a parent-child relationship.
‘Con‘, a Vietnamese word for ‘kid/child/darling‘ or whatever people called their children in English, gives me the feeling of a close connection between the parents and their children.
‘ơi‘, I don’t want to say it’s similar to ‘hey/hi‘, but in literal translation, it may mean the same thing. In Vietnamese, when someone calls your name and includes the “ơi” part, it just sounds so intimate and loving.
“Con ơi!” creates a feeling of affection. Suddenly I remembered a time a few years ago when I was alone and sick, Dad called and said the first thing first “Con ơi”. I hung up the phone and cried myself until sleep.
“Ba đây!” – “It’s Dad!”. In Vietnamese, this (might) gives the listeners a sense of safety and protection. “Ba đây” translated to my own language will be equivalent to “Dad is here, your beloved is here and don’t be scared of anything. I’m just right here, protecting you no matter what!”.
“Con ăn cơm chưa?” – “Have you eaten (the rice) yet?”. Here comes the most tender way of giving care to someone you love. Simply by asking if they have eaten (the rice), the father in the story and the father in any Vietnamese stories are showing how much they care about their children.
“Con ơi. Ba đây. Con ăn cơm chưa?” might just give someone a real sobber. Eight words only, but that is everything a Vietnamese needs to hear when they are in their worst.
Vietnamese is just as beautiful as that.
Call me subjective and emotional, I am just a little girl observing and creating meanings for the stories I accounted in my daily life, especially those that make me feel so much a Vietnamese, the stories that connect to my journey of finding my identity – my true self living in another country. On that journey, I am not alone. And I am never alone as there are many Viets out there, born in a foreign country and give a strong meaning to themselves being Vietnamese.
At the end of the day, we are small grains of sand, trying to identify ourselves in this big noisy world. And in the world where the noise is not in our native language, our identity struggles a bit more.
I have recently shifted my academic research topic and now look at the experiences of Vietnamese migrants in the Australian healthcare setting. I have always been drawn to the lives of Asian migrants, Vietnamese specifically, in countries that are not their origins. The fact that how they alter to adopt a new culture but still recognise themselves as Asian, as Vietnamese and never giving up on their own beautiful cultural backgrounds amazes me. Marking my very first steps to this research journey, I was afraid of so many things. The ethics, the how-to-deal with Vietnamese migrants when I hardly know them, how deep the conversations should be, what if their beliefs and my beliefs (as an international student who was born and raised 18 years in Vietnam, a girl who is strongly influenced by Vietnamese culture and beliefs) clash?
But then in this cosy morning when I just woke up and had not even washed my face yet, this story about Vietnamese identity moves me. It suddenly gives meanings to what I am doing and what I am always passionate to learn about. I am now not afraid anymore. As we, my future research stakeholders and myself, are Vietnamese. No matter how different we are in our lifestyles and how long we have been here in a foreign country, we are Vietnamese in blood, since birth.
And we will always be.
And my research, let me summarise it concisely, is now a journey to the East in the middle of the West.
A special thank you note to Alex who introduced me to the book “Journey to the East” that helps connect all the little dots in my daily life stories and craft a meaningful living experience where everything connects and make sense.
