 |
 |
 |
| Jublee Camp, Hong Kong, the site of Tai's 'second birth'. |
|
|
| Photo by Le Van Tai, 1981. |
|
 |
|
| 'My number was LM 1556/20 - 4132, meaning that I was the twentieth person on the 1556th boat to cross the sea to Hong Kong.' |
|
|
| Photo by Le Van Tai, 1981. |
|
|
|
Vietnamese translation
Listen to Le Van Tai, interviewed by Claudia Taranto,
on Verbatim, ABC Radio National's social history program,
Saturday 8 March, 2003. Most people have only one birth and one death: one birth-time in childhood, one time of death in old age when the body returns to the earth and the spirit goes far away on a new journey.
Refugees' experiences of living and dying are different. Their lives have much more birth time and dying time than others'. They live and die like an uprooted plant, putting down roots, then being uprooted again and again in strange new lands. In this never-ending cycle of life and death, they know well how to live and die, struggling between the two to express their hunger for life.
I was thirty-eight when I escaped from a dying place, from Vietnam, to a living place, Hong Kong, the freedom shore. The day I landed, 28 October 1981, for me was a second birth. It was as if the plant of my lifeblood had once again connected and found its roots in the garden of humankind, and there on the branches sprang a green bud. From now on, I had a life of flowers and fruits and a new, brighter future. Looking back on my past, I knew I had been a plant that was missing and losing out. A growing plant, but not a vital plant; growing flowers and fruits, but not the vital flowers and fruits. So today I would like to say thanks to Mother Earth's and Hong Kong's people, who have looked after me and helped me grow up from those baby-born times.
The Hong Kong refugee camp had given me an ID card. My number was LM 1556/20 - 4132, meaning that I was the twentieth person on the 1556th boat to cross the sea to Hong Kong. The twentieth son born, not in a cradle with silver or gold decorations and wind chimes hanging, but in a temporary detention camp, awaiting investigation and transfer to another camp where I could live and work freely, or for permission to emigrate to another country.
Let me say more about my Jublee cradle. Originally Jublee was a prison where the ordinary criminals of Hong Kong were held. The inner building had bluestone walls covered with moss, and the doors and windows were reinforced with steel frames. The high outer walls on either side of the gates were topped with sharp barbs. All year round, it was a still, gloomy place.
I was growing up easily there with forty fellow-refugees. We all lived together in one room, twenty square metres in area, with a bare wooden floor and three tiers of steel bunk beds. We rarely went out of the room, except when the Hong Kong police called us for investigation or when we had an appointment for an interview with the United Nations representative.
Sometimes in the afternoons we would queue up outdoors, following the order of our boat numbers, waiting for the roll-call. That was a good time. We had a bask in the sun, turning our skin pink. Once, taking a quick look at the sky outside the prison area, I wished I could become a seagull freely flying under that tropical sky, with its deep oriental blue.
Although my second time of being born and growing up was in Jublee camp, where I had no freedom, I did not despair. In my mind, I still had faith that in the future, my life-plant would grow and green up strongly, whichever land I was in.
(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.
|
