The Sorrow And Happiness Of The Boat People

Every year, on 17 February, the Vietnamese media at home and abroad remember the outbreak of the Si-no-Vietnamese border war in 1979, but most have for-gotten the victims of that conflict. Among them were more than a million Hoa, Vietnamese of Chinese descent - ordinary people, historically scattered from the bor-der provinces and settled in the Northern cities of Hanoi, Hai Phong, Nam Đinh, and Quang Ninh, - chased out of Vietnam by Le Duan's vengeful government. The um-bilical cord slashed, we were ripped from our country of birth, where lay the graves of our parents and grandpar-ents, cast to the fate of refugees.
The war lasted less than four weeks and ended more than 45 years ago. The two countries normalised diplo-matic relations in 1992 when General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Jiang Zemin characterised the relationship as: "Friendly neighbours - with compre-hensive cooperation and long-term stability - looking to the future." But the consequences of strife remain; the pain, misery, humiliation and disgrace scarred in the hearts and minds of the Hoa diaspora scattered around the world. We may forgive; we cannot forget.
As pressure mounted on Hoa to leave Vietnam, the Chinese government cordially invited us to "return to the homeland". Political tensions between the two na-tions had been building for years and this represented a propaganda opportunity for Beijing. Some Hoa believed their honeyed words and crossed the border - only to find themselves banished to the wild hills. Regardless of their previous occupations, engineers, doctors and teachers were handed a hoe and a green uniform, and sent to work as unskilled agricultural labourers on re-mote farms.
After more than 40 years of this life, many still could not obtain Chinese citizenship. While in Vietnam people had called them "Chinese", now in China they were "Vietnamese", stateless and dispossessed. Distrust-ful of Beijing's motives, most Hoa left by sea - their fate cast on the waves on rickety old boats and a good deal of luck - my family among them. Exiled by our own gov-ernment, we were not chased by the Vietnamese navy, as were the boat people of South Vietnam, nor did we share their terrible ordeals at the hands of pirates. None-theless, many Hoa boats - unfit for purpose before they left - were thrown around like rag dolls in typhoons, splintering into matchsticks and sinking to the sea floor with crew and company. Many innocents, perhaps half the number who set sail, were lost this way but - after a run-in with the Chinese navy, shipwreck and being ma-rooned on the south China coast - my family was lucky enough to make it to Hong Kong on 31 July 1979.
Since then we have been the recipients of much help and best wishes, willingly given by the people and gov-ernment of the UK, whom I would like to thank for their generosity. Our English teachers and friends supported us with compassionate hearts in the first few years of our refugee life and are, of course, deserving of our grati-tude.
Lam Hoang Manh