Merlion and Vietnamese Refugees

This week is the second week of Jordyn's three-week semester break. Although private schools in Melbourne, Australia charge high tuition fees (approximately north of twenty thousand dollars yearly), they give their students more time off than public schools. It sounds illogical because if you study less, you can't be good. However, based on reliable statistics, not “fake news”, it is common knowledge that private school students usually achieve positive results in terms of educational aspects and standards. Therefore, the waiting list for their admission is quite long, sometimes up to two or three years.

On the contrary, in the past in Vietnam, public school students were the pride of their parents. In 1971, I sat for the examination to enter the sixth grade of the local public secondary school. On the morning of that big day in my student's life, I woke up very early to organise my pens and papers, and dress neatly like the first day of the traditional new year (Tết). My father also woke up early as usual to prepare the family store in the main provincial market, roughly thirty minutes on foot.

When he saw me at a desk studying, he gestured for me to follow him. I didn't ask him what his intention was, because I would know it sooner or later. My father said very little, whereas I talked a lot. Maybe this is an affirmation of the old saying,

"When the son is better than the father then it is a blessing for the home"!

It was not yet morning, the sky was still dark outside. The dew on the branches and leaves of the big tamarind trees along both sides of the road occasionally fell on my head. On the road, there were only street hawkers and peasants carrying vegetables and fruits from the countryside to the market. My father was a fast walker, but he deliberately walked slowly to allow me to stay next to him. I was extremely excited because of my careful preparation for this exam, and my father accompanied me to the examination.

We walked silently under the weak light of the street lamp, just enough to shine on our steps. Finally, arriving at the market, he led me to a restaurant, famous for its delicious Chinese breakfast dishes. I had passed by this shop all the time on the way home from school; however, I had never stepped inside because I was afraid that they would not receive children. The atmosphere in the shop was very bustling; people were eating, drinking, and talking. It was all men, old and young. Some waiters nodded and greeted my father cheerfully. He proudly introduced me to them:

"He is my second son. He is doing well at school. This morning, he will sit for the examination for the sixth grade of the provincial public secondary school. I bring him here to have a good breakfast, hopefully, a full stomach will help him to do his exams well.'"

My nose swelled because I felt I suddenly became an important figure in the people’s eyes. My success in passing the exam would be seen a perfect example of a koi (carp) jumping over the gate to become a dragon.

The Chinese folklore says that when the earth was newly formed, God sent dragons there to make rain. However, there were not enough dragons to do the job. God established a contest to enlist other animals to become dragons. The contest had involved swimming upstream against three very strong waves to reach a gate at the end. Many species of animals entered but all were eliminated because no one could pass the challenge. Finally, a koi appeared. It had precious pearls in its mouth, making it a special kind. The koi surged forward, surpassed the three waves, and released its pearls over the final gate. There, it magically turned into a dragon as dictated by God. As the new dragon, the former koi joined others to make rain over the earth, helping the soil fertile, bringing vitality to all people, animals and plants.

I knew from the bottom of my heart, my father firmly believed in my academic ability and that I would achieve good results for the examination. He ordered some Chinese pork buns and dumplings for me. If there were a Vietnamese dish like “rice with grilled pork chops”, then I would definitely go for that dish to create a good omen as far as a Vietnamese expression was concerned, literally translated "as easy as eating rice with grilled pork chops" (easy as pie).

While eating, in good mood, he revealed something I had never heard of or known:

"This shop is the first place where I got a job when I came to this town. I was then only seventeen years old with no family, relatives or friends, and empty hands. You should aim high with your education. Your future depends on it."

I listened but showed no emotion. At that time I was only eleven, too immature to be able to appreciate the significance of his revelation. Almost ten years later, when I successfully escaped the country by boat and resettled in Australia under similar circumstances, I finally got what he meant.

After the breakfast, he patted me on the head and wished me good luck, and then we parted. That was all, without any additional words! In retrospect, when my father was still alive, I had never shared with him how much I owed him for his encouragement on that unforgettable morning. I believed his perspective on education had positively impacted my course of life. It's not that I didn’t have a chance. On the contrary, there were many times when it was only us sitting alone in the room. Nonetheless, I decided not to tell him. It wasn’t my procrastination out of habitual carelessness or laziness, as I wasn’t such a person, but because I believed that there would be other opportunities in the future.

Now, I miss my father dearly, and I feel terribly sad and extremely regretful about it! I am reminded of a Biblical verse advising against presumption about the future, emphasising that life is uncertain and fleeting:

“Whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour that appears for a little time and then vanishes away" (James 4:14)

Back to the time between Jordyn and I. She just returned from Singapore after spending a week with her parents there. Children nowadays are blessed. Every school break is an opportunity to go far and near to explore the world. Compared with her grandfather when he was in primary school, he was sent to Saigon and neighbouring provinces to reward him for his achievement of academic excellence at the end of each school year.

I understand she and I live in different eras. My childhood was a fog of the never-ending war with bomb explosions, gun sounds, and deaths. Her childhood is the peace in the lucky country, with various toys, art galleries, museums, and travelling to open up her mind. Which one do we want our children and grandchildren to live in? Having said that, honestly, I don't have a grain of envy, but on the contrary, I am happy for Jordyn. Maybe, if there was anything, it was just a touch of sour feeling like the poet Vũ Hoàng Chương in his poem Phương Xa:

"Those of us, the reincarnation in the wrong century,

A couple of melancholy people"

Melbourne is in the middle of winter. The weather is rather cold, rainy and windy. Every morning we still go to many places. Today, we are going to the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) to see a new setting for kids to entertain themselves during their school holiday. It is a good thing that NGV does that for our junior citizens several times a year. In the car, Jordyn, with her usual excitement, tells her grandfather some stories about her last trip to Singapore. She says:

"Did you ever go to the zoo at night, Grandpa? While in Singapore, Jordyn went on a tour called Night Safari, sitting on a small train running around its zoo, seeing a lot of animals hiding in the dense forest. There were strange Singaporean animals that Jordyn didn't know their names of. But if they were Australian animals, Jordyn knew."

Singapore Zoo is very famous for its after-dark wildlife exploration program. It is one of the best tourist attractions. As night falls, the slow-moving train takes passengers through the jungles to meet more than nine hundred animals that live in the shadows, from free-roaming Malayan pigs to the lurking kings of the jungle, like lions or tigers. Just like Jordyn, I went on that tour when I happened in Singapore. But I was surprised by her innocent comment about the origin of animals. Frankly, I don't know which animal originated in Singapore or Australia. I ask:

"How did you know the difference?"

"Because Grandpa has taken Jordyn to the Melbourne Zoo and Werribee Open Zoo several times, I recognised those animals."

Her simple explanation was accepted as "reasonable". She was only four years old, but capable of handling my difficult quiz. How clever are children these days! I will have to say a few words of encouragement to lift her spirit. Giving honest praise at the right time always has a positive effect on children (and adults, too!). From the driver's seat, I quickly turn my head around to say:

"That’s quite a good answer, Jordyn. Sometimes we could make errors in telling where those animals were from, but generally, knowledge comes from reading, observation and experience. Do you agree?"

With a big smile, Jordyn replies:

"Yes. I do. Jordyn also saw a cool white statue of a merlion spraying water in the park. I had a photo taken there together with my parents. Is the merlion real, Grandpa?"

The merlion is a mythical animal in the shape of a lion's head and a fish's body, a symbol of Singapore. It reflects the country's history, originating from a fishing village (fish body) and its original name, Singapura, which means "lion city" (lion's head). Jordyn's curiosity evokes an unforgettable memory of my refugee life. A few days after having been included in the Australian Immigration List, around lunchtime on January 12, 1981, I was taken to Singapore from the Galang Refugee Camp in Indonesia by a small passenger boat at the pier of the camp.

After an uneventful journey of an hour, the boat entered the bay in Singapore. There, I saw many merchant ships, big and small alike, were in and out of the port. Their loud sirens gave me some excitement like a traveller, out of town for a long time, who was about to return home. I remembered the classic Tang Dynasty poem, Coming Home, by He Zhizhang. The poem explores the themes of aging, change, and the bittersweet nature of returning to one's roots after a long absence:

“I left home young, now old, I return.

My accent unchanged, my hair grown thin.

Children see me but do not recognise me,

Smiling they ask, ‘Sir, where have you come from?”

But oh this was my first time to this place. What I was talking about?

From a distance, at the head of the estuary adjacent to the sea, I saw the huge statue of a merlion spewing water as if to welcome me, a person who was on the last leg of his refugee journey to a third country for resettlement. My emotions were strangely mixed. On one hand, I felt so happy that I began to reintegrate with the civilised world. On the other hand I was worried about the challenges I would be facing in Australia when I had almost zero English skills.

After the boat docked, we were taken to a refugee camp that was originally a former military camp located on the outskirts of the city. The Singaporean government kindly permitted the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) to use as a temporary shelter for Vietnamese boat people rescued at sea by passing-by ships after having received the guarantee of resettlement within six months from the ships’ owning countries, and refugees in transit waiting for a flight to resettle elsewhere from the Galang camp in Indonesia.

There, by chance I met again a military lieutenant named Thuan, a neighbor a few houses away from my house in Go Cong. He escaped Vietnam alone, was picked up by a French ship, and currently worked as a volunteer on the Camp Management Board. The night I first arrived, he recognised my name when he was reading the list of refugees who were about to leave the camp. He hurried down to the house I was sharing with other refugees looking for me. We shook hands tightly, and our tears rolled down our cheeks. The reunion had never been anticipated.

Uong Ho, at the age of nine during the Northern Song Dynasty, identified four rare moments of ultimate happiness in human life: a wedding night, passing the imperial exams, encountering a friend in an alien place, and rain after a long drought.

I know some readers who detest that there would be many more rare moments of ultimate happiness in human life. Probably. But I am happy with those four. For a short passage of time, I had been blessed with two. Firstly, my name appeared in the resettlement list, which was a much bigger prize than passing the imperial exams. For refugees who were waiting to be resettled in the camp, there were two significant milestones: being on the resettlement list and going to a third country for resettlement. Which one would affect them psychologically the most? I would have thought the former would give them peace of mind about the certainty of resettlement would come. Secondly, my neighbour and I, after our dangerous sea journeys in leaky boats, but luckily survived, met again in this refugee camp without losing a limp.

When I wrote “sharing the house with other refugees", I didn’t reflect the reality for the sake of dignity and equality. Because the house was very small but shared by a large number of occupants, there were some unwritten rules to manage the overcrowding situation. The boat people who were picked up at sea slept on beds with mattresses. For refugees in transit like us, we slept flat on the floor. I only stayed here for two nights and then went to Australia, so it wouldn’t matter much. In the Galang refugee camp, I heard many horrible stories from other people. During their escape attempts, they were detained by the Vietnamese border police, forcing them to sit on the ground, day and night. If they cried, not only did the police not show compassion, but enthusiastically beat them ruthlessly. There was a hidden reason: sleeping flat on the ground would bring a sense of balance more than lying on a soft mattress like on a rocking boat. Was I writing like the poor comforting themselves that “the rich also cry”?

That evening, Brother Thuan took me to visit the house where he lived. He had his private quarter. He opened a small carton box at the foot of his bed to show me the items he had “collected” from charities when they visited the camp. They were dresses and shoes! Everything was so beautiful and luxurious! He said proudly:

"After resettling in France, my first job is to send them to Vietnam for my wife and children. I’m sure that they will love them. Do you still remember my children?"

I smiled in agreement. Oh, what a loving and caring heart of a husband and father!

In Vietnam, the motherland of sweet starfruits, whoever receives what he has accumulated will certainly be happy as if they won the lottery first prize.

The next morning, he took me into the city by bus. We walked along to the famous Orchard Road, full of hotels and shopping malls. I was overwhelmed by the magnificence and wealth of this country. After many years of living in the communist darkness, I finally stepped out and started living in the sun. Before entering a luxurious department store, he surprisingly said in a serious voice:

"I know you are a decent person, and what I am going to say is unnecessary, but I have to say it because I have seen many refugees putting themselves in trouble. Going inside, seeing many beautiful and expensive goods for the first time, one may not resist their temptation to steal. When caught, their resettlement journey will come to a dead-end. Do you understand the risk? "

I stared at him. I heard a sharp pain in my heart! I was hesitant to tell him what was in my head. When I was in Galang, I also knew that some refugees were caught by the Indonesian police because they used make-shift boats to sea to catch fish and sell them for money. I didn’t understand why they did that. Was their greed or ignorance?

Staying silent for a while, and then perhaps afraid that I would be offended, he further explained:

"Being an ex-soldier and working in the Camp Management Board, I know. The security guards in the store saw poor refugees, behaving not like others, so they became suspicious and watched us."

I nodded and said a little bitterly:

‘Brother Thuan, please don't worry. I want to settle in Australia as soon as possible to rebuild my life. I had wasted six years of my youth in a terrible system. Who would be crazy enough to risk their lives at sea to come here to be caught for petty theft?’

There is no sin in being poor; only the greed to drive people to stealing is a sin. I feel sorry for my compatriots, having been born and lived in a continuous war full of deaths and deprivation. When peace returns, they are corrupted by the new regime rules by starvation and oppression. The measure of human value of that society is the intransigence and illicit wealth. Who is guilty? In Les Misérables, Victor Hugo writes about the life of Jean Valjean, who was sentenced to nineteen years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister's starving children. The novel revolves around themes of redemption, social injustice, and revolution, as Valjean tries to live an upright but impossible life in nineteenth-century France.

Brother Thuan laughed loudly and patted me on the shoulder. We then walked like two brave men entering the store.

Going back to the present, Jordyn and I are in the car. Thinking for a while, I decide that even though Jordyn is young, “Honesty is the best policy” is the way I should adhere to. I cheerfully reply to her question:

‘The merlion is an imaginary animal with a lion's head and a fish body. It is the symbol of Singapore, just like the kangaroos to Australia, but they are real. Did Jordyn like to watch the lion dance during the Vietnamese New Year? The lion is also not real. In the past, when Grandpa arrived in Singapore by boat for the first time, I was able to see the Merlion statue far away from the sea. Nowadays, the city is encroaching on the sea; people no longer see the statue from the sea.’

I talk too much. I wonder whether she understands the complexities of life. I remember my father again and the conversation between father and son on the morning I took the exam to enter the sixth grade. My father said very little, but he hoped I understood a lot. This time, I talk a lot, hoping she understands a little.

‘Is that true, Grandma?’, Jordyn asked from behind. Usually, she speaks very softly, but this time his voice was raised, indicating that she had been excited by my answer.

‘True!’, I respond emphatically.

True to her question and also true for my conception of the root cause of social sin.

---

In 1982, Van Pho arrived in Australia as a Vietnamese refugee and went on to build a distinguished career as a senior executive leading strategic transformations for multinational and Australian corporations. Beyond his professional life, he has long been active in community service, including serving as General Secretary for the Vietnamese community in Victoria and as a member of the Senior Victorian Advisory Committee. His first English-language book, A Bridge Too Far, is available on Amazon, alongside many of his short stories shared in both Vietnamese and English.

Connect with Van on LinkedIn.