Reliving School Days in Vietnam

By Darragh Johnson

WASHINGTON — Remember when, KieuThu Nguyen is saying, scooping green papaya salad with chili beef jerky onto her lunch plate, we used to buy this on the sidewalk, in front of our school? Her face is pure reverie. She is 50 years old. This memory, dredged up in a Vietnamese restaurant in Falls Church, Va., is more than 32 years old.

It reminds her of the days when, as she puts it, she and her classmates shared “a lot of big dreams.” When they all expected “to become someone.” When she and the others imagined that the success they had achieved by getting into and graduating or nearing graduation from Vietnam’s vaunted Trung Vuong school — the Radcliffe of Vietnamese high schools — was only the start.

They never imagined that, for many of them in Vietnam, especially as the fall of Saigon neared, the scholastic success would be the pinnacle. Remember? She is now asking of TrucMai Nguyen and PhuongNga Nguyen, her two friends and fellow alumnae. For months, the three women and others have been planning the fall weekend’s grand reunion for Trung Vuong alumnae — an event that allows these “sisters” to relive shared experiences. That holds an even deeper appeal because 2007 marks the 90th anniversary of the school’s founding.

Nearly 800 have descended on Washington, the host city this time, with a few dozen even coming from Vietnam, and still others traveling from across the country and from Europe, Canada and Australia. Ranging in age from their early 50s to their 70s, they are, for three days, sharing dinner, brunch, dances and songs, with a tour of the changing fall foliage along Skyline Drive.

All are part of a Vietnamese elite, both educational and otherwise. Once upon a time, when the girls were small and nearing sixth grade, they had to pass rigorous tests and compete with thousands to gain admittance. Many of their families relocated from other parts of Vietnam to live near the school — that’s the kind of reputation Trung Vuong enjoyed.

At least one of KieuThu’s classmates was descended from Vietnamese royalty. Another was the daughter of the military’s top official. Built by the French, the school — which started in Hanoi but moved to Saigon in the 1950s — was once used as a government building, complete with high walls and a huge wooden front gate. It was permeated by a strict air of discipline, and the walls seemed designed to keep out the prying eyes of boys, so that it could seem like a convent.

As the North Vietnamese marched south, taking control of much of the country, many of the girls watched all of that, as well as their lives, collapse. Many found themselves trying to escape and start over again elsewhere.

Things were worse for those who didn’t get out immediately. And though many have since rebuilt beautifully here — and though some now wear Chanel and St. John Knits and diamonds the size of miniature grape tomatoes, and their homes are expansive and sunny, with altars bearing fresh fruit to the Buddha and flowering gardens in front and back — their faces turn once again girlish and giggly when they recall the green papaya with chili beef jerky they would buy on the sidewalk in front of the school, back when they wore school uniforms and vied to become the teacher’s pet.

This is what they’ll talk about at the reunion, KieuThu is saying. Both the small memories and gigantic hopes. They are products, after all, of a school named for the country’s first two female kings who had led the Vietnamese, about A.D. 40, to a successful overthrow of Chinese invaders. “Both of them became kings,” TrucMai says, sitting, at this point in the day’s conversation and memories, on the sectional of her Falls Church home, overlooking the gardens where, later in the afternoon, she and KieuThu and PhuongNga will pick green Chinese apples from a tree. “They are not queens,” KieuThu clarifies. “They are kings.” Such lessons of perseverance, of doing what women weren’t expected to do, of enduring an occupying force and finagling a way to overcome it were lessons that would, for these three friends from Trung Vuong, become inspirational.

Originally published by Washington Post.

(c) 2007 Cincinnati Post. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.