You can call me Tran Quoc Cuong, although that was not the first name I received when I was born in Vietnam. My given name at birth was Tran Phuoc Dai. I shared my middle name, which meant “blessing,” with all the males in my family. My personal name, Dai, modified this blessing as “grand.” So, I like to think of myself as a great blessing for my family both at my birth and throughout the remainder of my life. Despite the many challenges I have faced, I have also received many blessings myself for which I can be thankful.
I was born into a large family in 1944, just two years before the start of the First Indochina War between the French and the Viet Minh.[1] My father was a wealthy landlord in the village countryside, perhaps the second or third wealthiest man in our region. He owned many acres of land which he rented out to tenant farmers who yielded for him about 5,000 bushels of rice (gia lua) each year.[2]
He had not been so rich when he first immigrated from a remote village in China, near Trieu Chau city in the Guang Dong province. It was hard to make a living in China because the land was overcrowded. So, my father, who was only a teenager, but the oldest of three boys, immigrated to Vietnam with his uncle and youngest brother to seek a better life for their family. He brought with him just a bag with two T-shirts, a long-sleeved shirt, a couple of shorts, and a pair of pull-up pants. Yet he was determined to make a way for himself in this land of opportunity.
Soon after arriving in Vietnam, my father met and married a woman from Tan Loc village. Sadly, though, both she and their baby died in the course of childbirth and he mourned her loss severely. The village elder took pity on my father and treated him like a son. He saw that even though my father was a poor immigrant, he worked hard and had a good sense for business. This elder was also very wealthy and offered his youngest daughter to be my father’s wife. My father spoke only Chinese at the time, so my mother would teach him Vietnamese during their early years of marriage.
My grandfather, the village elder, also gifted the young couple with a plot of land to start their own business. With three older brothers and three older sisters, my mother was the youngest daughter in her family of seven. The oldest children had already gone off to start their own families, leaving the younger ones to stay at home. Then, as their parents grew older and finally passed away, the youngest were responsible to honor them in death. Also, since their parents grew in wealth, the youngest children received the largest portion of the inheritance. According to one Vietnamese saying, the youngest children benefit from the family’s wealth, but will only receive a curse if the family is poor. So, as the baby of the family and as the favored daughter, my mother received a generous dowry.
My father paired his shrewd business sense with his knowledge of human nature to increase my mother’s inheritance still more. He observed, for example, that many of the spoiled, rich kids would travel to the big city and gamble away their money on blackjack and dice. He could tell that the city boys were cheating them blind, yet the villagers would continue to pawn off their land in order to keep on gambling. The pawn shops gave them a deadline to redeem their debts, while charging them exorbitant interest. So, when their deadlines arrived, many of the gamblers still did not have enough money to redeem their land. In fear of losing everything, they sold the deeds to my father and began paying interest to him instead. Then, as time passed, if they still could not repay their debts, my father would purchase their land at a discount.[3] He became quite prosperous and soon built a large mansion in Tan Loc village for his growing family. Before that time, he and my mother had simply lived on a houseboat along the river.
My mother managed the growing household and also served as the village matriarch. She was beloved by everyone in Tan Loc for her kindness and compassion to all regardless of their station, family, or wealth. She would care for the poor by distributing food from our plentiful kitchen and, during seasons of drought, she invited all the villagers to draw water from our well. In addition, whenever a conflict could not be resolved, the people sought my mother’s wisdom to help them make peace. As one of the only literate adults in the village, she also taught the children in the school.
Our large family filled the expansive house with joy and laughter. I had seven siblings: two older sisters, four older brothers, and one younger brother. Each of us were separated by two years except for my youngest brother who was separated from me by a gap of six years. Chinese people are very superstitious, so my birth as the seventh child and the fifth son in the family promised incredible good fortune. That must have been the reason my parents named me “great blessing” as my birth coincided propitiously with the family’s growing success. Our fields produced abundant crops until we were able to purchase boats and hire more workers to transport the harvested rice to market. Perhaps our family’s good fortune was one reason my father loved me so much.
My father never would return to China, though he dutifully sent back money to support his family until they too became wealthy landowners. My grandfather once visited Vietnam before my birth, but eventually he returned to China. Our family was settled for good in Vietnam, so I never had the joy of meeting my grandparents. I often wonder how widely our family’s path diverged because my father chose to stay in Vietnam. In 1947–1948, right before the Communists took over China, my father’s uncle hung himself. He knew that, as a wealthy landlord, he would be one of the first to be executed by the Communists. By contrast, my father’s other uncle who had immigrated with him to Vietnam, would live a long life and pass away in peace. The villagers loved him so much that they even named a small stream in his honor. Our family’s decision to immigrate to Vietnam instead of remaining in China altered the destiny of countless generations, including mine.
[1] The Viet Minh was a nationalist group formed by the leader Ho Chi Minh to fight for Vietnamese independence.
[2] This amount of rice was enough to feed about 1,000 people.
[3] This seemingly ruthless practice actually began during the French occupation. The French were afraid the Vietnamese might rise up in revolt, so they introduced opium shops, casinos, and brothels to foster addictions until the people forgot about fighting for their country and taking back their land.
