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| A mai flower, the national flower of Vietnam: 'I was a migrating plant of the first generation.' |
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| Photo by Le Van Tai. |
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| A modern Vietnamese folk poem says of Australia 'Here, where we've come, in the land of others, all things are strange. Hearing Pauline Hanson sing, I feel sleepy; seeing a racist banner fluttering, I feel scared.' |
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| Drawing by Le Van Tai, Melbourne, Australia. |
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Vietnamese translation
Listen to Le Van Tai, interviewed by Claudia Taranto,
on Verbatim, ABC Radio National's social history program,
Saturday 8 March, 2003.
Like a young plant, I stand upright, two legs like trunks clinging to the breast of mother earth.
My tranquil heart feels a trunk, branches with leaf-buds and new roots reaching out to link to the sources of nurture. And my soul dreams, branching far away to a hundred rivers, facing the spacious forest, mountains and hills that stretch endlessly, to play a concert of green happiness in far places, joyfully singing together with the clouds, winds and sun. I am like them: a migrated plant, once uprooted, thrown out of my original country - and now, in a new land, with my sap flowing once more, my roots taken care of, a vital greenness and freshness is growing again.
Like many human fates, fragments of plants - mai, orchid, daisy, bamboo - drifting lives. I was a migrating plant of the first generation. I had seen men tortured and thrown about a hundred times, their roots shaken, uprooted, and growing again. They were thrown out of the country garden, but again they would seed and spring up. Then again, again, they were shifted to other places - places where the weather was not good, the land was not right and people were not in harmony. The suffering continued for each branch and root, never ending. The past is still not forgotten: a time of suffering, drying out on a barbed-wire fence; a time of suffering, wilting in an old forest; a time of suffering, going far away from my motherland.
Between 1984 and 1998 I had to uproot myself over and over again - from Footscray East to Footscray West, down the south, up to the north, from the outer suburbs to the centre. The wandering kept me busy, looking for new places where my plant could put down roots, build up the soil, grow branches . . . never stop. But the climate in this country is still foreign to me. A modern Vietnamese folk poem says of Australia: "Here, where we've come, in the land of others, all things are strange. Hearing Pauline Hanson sing, I feel sleepy; seeing a racist banner fluttering, I feel scared."
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| 'I didn't have the good fortune to establish myself firmly, as the second generation did: a generation with the yellow skin of bamboo was born and grew up in the nursery, where all year around it is peaceful and shady. ' |
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| Photo by Le Van Tai. |
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I wondered if I would ever find the ideal fertile land that would welcome my migrant plant with open hands and let me put down roots. The land was quiet and did not respond, and the decayed wood inside me has no guarantee of life or death.
For the first few years of resettlement, I didn't have the good fortune to establish myself firmly, as the second generation did: a generation with the yellow skin of bamboo was born and grew up in the nursery, where all year around it is peaceful and shady. They have never seen wars, hurricanes of fire, upheavals of earth and sky. From the first they knew they would grow up like a mountain forest with a thousand dense canopies - with bodies and spirits made in Australia.
And me? Outwardly, my plant looks very skinny and its leaves are sparse, but I still have the heart of a land-lover gathered into my roots. If you come to visit Melbourne's West, somewhere in the multi-flowered garden, under the bottom of a tiny bonsai, you will find a sign with the legend: "Uprooted Plant, Made in Vietnam". It is me.
(Please note: this is one of a series of nineteen stories by poet and painter, Le Van Tai, about his journey from his past in Vietnam to his present and future in Footscray. Please click on 'Related stories' at the top left hand side of this page to go to Tai's other stories.)
Copyright Imagine The Future Inc. and Australian Film Commission, 2002.
Text by Le Van Tai for ITF.
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