~ Le Viêt Nam, aujourd'hui. ~
The Vietnam News

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Vietnamese helps keep culture alive

Vietnamese exiles remember April 30 the way the rest of us remember a death in the family. It wasn't just Saigon they lost that day in 1975. Those who fled to America also lost their houses, their jobs, their stature, their fortunes and their homeland.

People such as Bao Nguyen see it as their responsibility to make sure the exiles and their American- born children do not also lose their Vietnamese identity. Mechanical engineer by day and literati by night, Nguyen, a soft- spoken and meticulously dressed 50-year-old, devotes his free time to promoting Vietnamese poetry, music, customs and language, focusing particularly on youngsters at risk of forgetting their roots. The organization he founded, the Vietnamese Culture & Science Association, exists to make sure younger Vietnamese thrive in America while still remembering their ancestry.

"I meet a lot of young Vietnamese -- people in their 20s and 30s - - who don't speak the language and don't know the culture," Nguyen said. "They are very sorry about that, and I try to help them." The VCSA offers an annual luncheon to honor local Vietnamese high school valedictorians, and holds a summer camp in Tennessee where 300 young Vietnamese gather to learn the language and hone their leadership skills. The group, founded in 1990, is headquartered in Houston and maintains a cultural center and office on Bellaire Boulevard. It has 400 members and five chapters across the country.

Jeff Watkins, head of YMCA International, speaks Vietnamese and works closely with the exiles. He calls the VCSA "one of the most vibrant and effective" of the Vietnamese heritage groups. "(Nguyen's) passion is Vietnamese literature," Watkins said. "And he's very passionate about it." Vietnamese are not the only immigrants who worry about the loss of their heritage. Asked by a University of Houston researcher what concerns they have about their family, nearly four in 10 Asian immigrants said they most worried about their children losing their cultural roots.

But while other immigrant groups have regular contact with their homeland, the Vietnamese kept their culture alive in isolation. The communists who took over Vietnam in 1975 threw the country into a decade of isolation, which meant exiles had almost no contact with their birthplace. As a result, the exiles in America preserved their culture much as it existed before 1975. Visitors from Vietnam say it is like entering a time warp. The etiquette, mannerisms and songs of the exiles all come from before the end of the war. Even the language is different.

While the language spoken by the exiles remains remarkably similar to what it was in 1975, the slang and expressions in Vietnam have evolved over the years. Sometimes the two groups have trouble understanding each other, Nguyen said. Nguyen credits himself as only one of 13 VCSA founders, though others say it was his idea from the beginning, and he usually demurs when offered the spotlight. He has declined being honored in the past and only reluctantly agreed to be profiled by the Chronicle.

During an interview in his Sharpstown home, where he keeps a tidy yard with orchids and an expanding library of Vietnamese literature, Nguyen was more comfortable talking about the successes of his children than himself. He told of how his twin sons have each received eight-year scholarships at the University of Houston-Baylor College of Medicine Houston Pre-Medical Academy, which means they were provisionally accepted to medical school right out of high school. The eldest of nine children -- birth order is important to the Vietnamese -- Nguyen spent the first two years of his life in Hanoi before being taken south to Saigon at age 2. The communists under Ho Chi Minh took over the northern half of the country in 1954, and many families -- particularly Catholics such as the Nguyens -- fled to the south.

By age 16, he had memorized the entire Tale of Kieu, a 3,000- line poem considered a classic in Vietnamese literature. He served briefly as an officer in the army of South Vietnam, where his father was a colonel. The family fled Vietnam by boat on the day Saigon fell, 28 years ago today. They were assigned to a host family in Houston. Like so many of his generation, Nguyen worked during the day and studied at night. He graduated from UH with an engineering degree and is now a senior engineer at Lockheed Martin.

It was in 1990 that the brainstorm came. His own kids were in grade school, and Nguyen realized that he needed to do something to help them and so many others from their generation learn their history. He met with other exiles and worked together to create the VCSA. "We had been here about 15 years," he recalled. "We had struggled for so long, and then we were stable. We decided we had to do something more for our community."

By Edward Hegstrom - Houston Chronicle - April 30, 2003.