When I finally felt grateful for history

30/04/2025

Two more days till 30 April, the day Việt Nam reunited 50 years ago. I had never fully grasped how special this day is. Saigon fell in 1975, almost ending thousand bloody years. No longer sufferings from American occupation. No more North South separation, no more Vietnamese killed Vietnamese…

Before moving on, to those who still call Vietnam War: In Vietnam, we call it RESISTANCE WAR AGAINST AMERICA.

On learning history at school, all I learnt only revolved around how we as a small country never surrendered. I “must” take pride in a past that I was not directly living in. I had to recite dates of important events and names of some revolutionary figures without knowing them personally. I never wondered who they were as human beings? Who are they? Who were there to capture such moments of those figures, for example, someone who used their body as a gun platform in the battlefield? I never questioned how or why such a person dared to do that. We often praised a few same names through different periods of time. How about normal people? How did everyone else experience war? On a physical, emotional level, apart from showing their patriotism? How could I not have questions about the human side of the people in the past?

In secondary-high school, I had to act as if I was a hardworking student in history so that I wouldn't be randomly summoned to the oral assessment at the start of every class. Such a brutal way of education! We all had to value what the heroes had sacrificed for national peace by learning by heart the dates and some factual takeaways teachers told us to copy to our notebook. Out of all my classmates over 12 years, only one friend truly loves history. I am so proud she made her dream come true to be a tour guide to tell stories of Vietnam to foreigners!

Traveling the world, learning and working with international people who are full of inquiries about Vietnam, I realized I can't be proud of what I don't know. While I am so proud of our culture, people, nature, and many traditions, what do I know about our history?

The most significant motivation for me to unlearn and relearn history was when I became a research assistant for my professor in spring 2023. The first theme is to look at how the Vietnamese government managed the ranking and listing of historical relics in Chinatown, Ho Chi Minh city. What are classified as relics? Why? How have they been preserved and newly discovered? Who is doing that?... The next research topic in 2024 was studying the street renaming motive and narrative in Chinatown, Ho Chi Minh city dating back from Chinese settlements to contemporary time. What’s the relationship between the Vietnamese government and the Chinese community? Who had the power of street naming over colonialization periods of the French, America till post independence?...

I realized all random dates I remember from school did not make any sense at all to respond to these research questions. I had no overall understanding of how we came to be as a nation. My knowings appeared miserably fragmented. I had no idea how the Chinese arrived in Vietnam for different purposes apart from more than 1000 years trying to take over us. I did not know why certain streets were named in certain ways for the authoritative intention. I did not know how we even began to name streets or recognize certain places as relics or heritage.

I read academic journals and articles, bought sort of documentary books about Saigon-Cholon, talked to friends who might know about Chợ Lớn. In July 2023, I travelled to HCMC to interview some government officers and visited District 5, 6 and 1, War Remnants Museum and Cu Chi Tunnel. I viewed the city and the urbanization process so freshly! My professor’s passion about history and urban planning deeply moved me to be curious. I lived there for 6 months in 2019 but I barely knew a thing of the past! I started reading historical fictions about Vietnam and found myself way more connected to the past through the fictional characters. Strangely, I read such genre about World War II before but not about Vietnam: I recommend The Book Thief (Markus Zusak) and All the Light We Cannot See (Antony Doer). The only exception, when I was 15 year old, was reading "Tuổi thơ dữ dội" (Phùng Quán). Every Vietnamese must read it!

My favorite book is The Mountains Sing (Nguyen Phan Que Mai). It was a long process for the author to interview many people impacted by the war during the 1930s-1970s, so as to build characters that could represent the large across generations. She also highlighted Vietnamese idioms throughout the book. Very simple English to read while it was difficult for me to read the hard core book Cảm Tình Viên - The Sympathizer (Viet Thanh Nguyen). Other books are On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (Ocean Vuong), The Things They Carried (Tim O'Brien), The Quiet American (Graham Greene) to empathize with different viewpoints.

I watched some documentaries about dust children and prostitutes in Saigon. War is not only about death or victories. What is still alive is trauma, the pain, the silence, the memories. It came with orphan, third culture children, “boat people” or fleeing people, tons of terms being coined about people suffering from war like refugees, migrants, immigrants, asylum seekers,...whatever. Honestly, language sometimes just made things more complicated and increased the gaps among human beings. We want to celebrate diversity rather than increasing the “differences”.

As I moved to Sweden, I read another WWII book called Salt to the Sea (Ruta Sepetys), and couldn't continue The Tattooist of Auschwitz (Heather Morris). Taking a break from reading traumatized stories, I shift to learning by talking to my European friends. I am still so new to international history.

There are other great historical fictions I read about the Cultural Revolution in China and the Conflict in Afghanistan but all is blurry now. Reading is to expand, forget and relearn again when it's time. Slowly, I need to collect knowledge of Vietnam to find my own truth. Therefore, all together, my everyday life, my work, my travel, my conversations with others has become my pilgrimage to my roots.

For now, I also want to relearn Vietnamese fairy tales since they reflect the nuance of our spiritual connection with nature and life of the early days.

Today, in Trondheim, Norway, I watched The Sympathizer with Jenny, my dear Norwegian friend. Didn’t know the book was turned into a Miniseries! Jenny studied History Education, Political Science and she joined the Development Studies course in Hoi An with me in Autumn 2018. She became interested in Vietnam for that rich experience to a new world of humanity. I am so grateful to visit her here in this dream place I feel dear to my heart. With the positive energy of Trondheim city, with Jenny's presence, her memories of Vietnam, and her eagerness to know more about us, I want to write down this moment of living.

The Sympathizer squeezed my heart and kept it beat as well. Really, after 3 years of historical pilgrimage, I am feeling so grateful to be Vietnamese. Since everything is so hard to access in Europe, and it takes so much for me to be here, I become more appreciative of the rusticity and the authenticity of my homeland. I wish my generation, and the younger Vietnamese, to be more awake to what it has taken for us to be alive. I wish to speak with my grandparents about their lifetime, the only thing I regret in my life. I was too young to ask them questions and be kind to them. I wish whoever has family members involved in the war, take care of them and try to learn from them, the heroes that live.

If I don't know my own past, I am unable to appreciate my present; neither to be in the present nor to listen to my future. I am glad I am working on it slowly. And it is never late to begin. And it is okay not to know things, or perceive things not fully. There is no absolute truth. But we have to make efforts to find out, to the very best. For our existence is a result of a long past. In the Biography Course at The International Youth Initiative Program, in Sweden, I learnt that human beings have a very very long past.

We cannot trace back to the time from our first origin but we can at least look into our own past, and reflect on our biography, all relationships, events, crisis, struggles that shape us. Such reflection will bring light to our strength, our own unique experience, our worth and navigate our place in the world. As such, relationships and meetings in life are part and parcel of our existence. We cannot live being completely detached from others. I highly encourage everyone to find untold stories of others as well as find your own inner journey within what already happened. Finding inner and outer awareness goes hand in hand. Essentially, we are all humans that share universal values and our living experiences are infinite. So to look at history is perhaps to look at the living experience of various everyday individuals, including our ancestors, how I, you, we were born, not only names that the nation recognized.

Again, we have to make efforts to find out the source of our being, to the very best. For our being is not for granted but a gift! Happy Vietnamese National Reunification Day! - I say this for the first time after many holidays of 30 April - 1 May. Also check out: - Have a Sip Podcast, the episode about the latest film Địa Đạo - Documentary Vietnam: 50 Years of Forgetting; - The Body Keeps The Scores (Bessel.) to learn different types of trauma, including Post war one. Anything else? Please share!!!