The following is an adapted version of an article written by Barnabás Leimeiszter, originally published in Magyar Krónika.
In the suburbs of Gödöllő lives a former Viet Cong partisan girl, who spent three years in the jungle and then walked the Ho Chi Minh Trail in the middle of the rainy season, suffering from a fever of 40 degrees. As a university scholarship student, she settled and started a family in Hungary, and today she is trying to spread indigenous Hungarian chicken breeds in her homeland, Vietnam. The story of Dong Xuan Do Thi.
The Vietnamese people’s stubborn insistence on independence is nothing new. Historical events such as long battles with China and the successful repulsion of Genghis Khan’s invasion attempts have shaped Vietnamese identity. This millennia-old desire for national independence was also at work when Vietnamese people tried to shake off the colonial yoke in the 20th century; the rejection of the Western powers played a decisive role in the increasingly communist character of their movement.
By becoming a partisan, Dong Xuan Do Thi was, in fact, doing nothing more than continuing the family tradition. She is from an intellectual background: her grandfather was a Mandarin, a member of the bureaucratic elite, and her parents were illegal revolutionaries who fought first against French colonial rule, then against the South Vietnamese leadership, which relied on American military presence. Xuan was born in the jungle shortly before the French gave up the war in Indochina. She spent her childhood in Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, studying in a French school and regularly visiting her parents, who were imprisoned for political reasons. ‘No wonder I didn’t like Americans,’ she says with a smile. At 14, she decided to join the Viet Cong fighters. She received military training and learned to shoot but ultimately did not participate in guerrilla fighting: her parents feared for her and, thanks to their connections in the intellectual circles, managed to find her a relatively secure job in the hinterland.
In the late 1960s the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam was created to promote the international recognition of the Viet Cong, and the composer, who made his name as a composer of patriotic songs and a researcher of folk songs, was appointed Minister of Information and Culture. He employed Xuan as an assistant. The office was based in a self-sufficient camp near Tây Ninh in the jungle on the Cambodian border, and despite the dire circumstances, it had a wide range of duties: as an intelligence and administration centre, it employed actors and musicians, and also ensured that the texts of Viet Cong novelists were sent north—much of Xuan’s work was, in fact, typing them.
‘They were very careful about the safety of the minister and his staff, hence our camp was informed well in advance of the movement of American troops and the approaching B-52 bombers, so I saw little fighting: by the time the Americans had landed, we had long since moved on. But one day, they surprised us, and only luck saved my life,’ Xuan remembers. ‘In addition to secretarial work, we did our share of the work needed to maintain the camp: digging bunkers, cooking in huge bowls, chopping wood, or, as on that day, delivering rice. Just as we were leaving with our team, I was called back to the office to type up a text. Those who went on were bombed a little further on, and most of them were killed.’
Xuan was sent to study in North Vietnam in 1971. The journey took her along the famous Ho Chi Minh Trail, which proved to be the toughest part of her partisan life: she contracted malaria, marched uphill with a fever of 40 degrees for three months, all in the middle of the rainy season. Not to mention the repeated US bombings—Xuan was again lucky, as she was at the front of the several small groups marching after one another, and hers was not directly attacked; however, many of those behind were killed.
The Vietnam War ended with the victory of the communist North in 1975, the year Xuan graduated from high school. She was one of those chosen by the regime to form a new elite thus sent to study at Eastern Bloc universities. Like most of her peers, Xuan longed to go to the Soviet Union, where she thought the universities were of the highest quality, but she had no more choice about where she would study than about what she would major in. After a year of language preparation, 70–80 students left for Budapest. ‘We travelled by train: China, Mongolia, Lake Baikal, Moscow, Budapest. We left on 20 August, the Hungarian national holiday, and arrived in Hungary on 2 September, the Vietnamese Independence Day,’ she says, pointing to the symbolic dates.
‘Before we left, I was disappointed to be sent to Budapest, but later I realized how lucky I was. Hungary was the most liberal state of the socialist bloc’
One of the things the Vietnamese state needed was agricultural engineers, so Xuan went to the University of Agriculture and Life Sciences in Gödöllő and lived the ordinary life of the youth. Or rather, she would have. However, in Vietnam, fearing that many students would remain abroad, they strictly forbade the students to develop close relations with Hungarians; and the more ambitious Vietnamese students were happy to report the others’ budding romances to those back home. Despite the threats, Xuan, like many of her peers, fell in love with a Hungarian boy. Getting to know each other was not the easiest, as they were not allowed to be seen on the street together and had to arrange for other friends to join them on each date. In any case, their Hungarian classmates covered for them as best they could, and the young people married soon after.
‘Unlike the French and the Americans, Hungarians are not racist,’ Xuan stresses when I ask her about the reception of Vietnamese students in Hungary in the 1970s. Whether in cities or small villages, they were spoken to as warmly as possible, and in the more than four decades she spent here, she never felt being looked down upon. Nor, she adds, have the hard-working Vietnamese who now live in Hungary in significant numbers been subjected to atrocities.
Xuan also says that if she hadn’t come here, she might have had a very different career, but also a very different view of the world. ‘Before we left, I was disappointed to be sent to Budapest, but later I realized how lucky I was. Hungary was the most liberal state of the socialist bloc: the way Hofi, for example, made fun of the government was a sharp contrast to what I had experienced before. This relatively permissive atmosphere has also had an effect on us. We began to think more freely than those who were sent to other socialist countries, and this was clearly evident when we met them.‘ Of course, Xuan, as a girl growing up in Saigon, was already used to a more relaxed lifestyle than people in the north of the country. ‘The north is synonymous with the ancient Vietnamese spirit: mountainous, rugged terrain, which means a tough struggle to survive. The determination and iron discipline of the people there were probably essential to winning the war, but the cultural differences between the two parts of the country are still evident today.’
‘I often say: I am at home in two places. Whether the plane lands in Hungary or in Vietnam, I come home.’
Xuan also holds a PhD and has worked as a poultry scientist at the university in Gödöllő, with a long list of scientific publications to her credit. She and her husband have two children, a son and a daughter, who now live in France and Switzerland, respectively, and Xuan often visits them.
She also returns to Vietnam regularly, and not just to visit her elderly mother in Saigon; she also has to carry out official duties. Since 1996 there has been close scientific cooperation between the two countries, and Xuan is a senior researcher at the Association of Hungarian Small Animal Breeders for Gene Conservation, where she is investigating how to translocate indigenous Hungarian chicken breeds to tropical environments. The association has also been present in Szeklerland since 2014 through the Gene Ring gene rescue programme, so Xuan also travels a lot to Transylvania. As it turns out, Transylvanian hens are highly adaptable: they can tolerate temperatures as low as minus 20 degrees Celsius, as well as the heat of Vietnam.
‘Whenever we are in Szeklerland and the Szekler anthem is sung, I sing it with the others. People find it strange, but it’s natural for me,’ Xuan laughs. ‘Emotionally, I am completely attuned to Hungarians, I am with them in their joy and sorrow. I often say: I am at home in two places. Whether the plane lands in Hungary or in Vietnam, I come home.’
Read more from the same site:
Click here to read the original article.
