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• I'm a Rebel

  2008-11-17 1:16AM / 標準BLOG / 會員可以看
  29個評論

  Ok this blog might get a little long...or emotional...or weird...just warning in advance since I dunno how it's gonna come out.
  
  I just finished watching "The Rebel" (Dong Mau Anh Hung), starring Johnny (still feels weird for me to call him that) Tri Nguyen, and AnD's Dustin Tri Nguyen.  If anyone remembers Cradle to the Grave, or The protector starring Tony Jaa Johnny was in both of those movies.  Dustin's on AnD so you can look him up here heh.  I'm not really a fan of Johnny's acting, but since this was supposedly like the biggest movie Vietnam ever made I really wanted to see it.  I'm still not much of a fan of Johnny's acting even after watching the movie, but he did a lot better than I expected...anyway that's not the point.  The point is the movie affected me a lot.  Luckily Sam fell asleep during the movie so he didn't catch me crying the 2-3 times I cried throughout the movie.
  
  The reason why I think it affected me so much?  The movie takes place in the 1920's while France still controlled Vietnam.  If you dunno Vietnam history other than the Vietnam War then uh I'm not gonna explain it but suffice to say France was a bastard and took over the country for a long time.  My grandfather was apart of the French Indo-China Navy back when he lived there...meaning he worked for the French, not that there was much choice as you can kinda tell through the movie.  I only have one picture of the time my grandfather lived in Vietnam and it's with him and his family...all 12-20 of them sitting outside a hut in a rundown village, he's wearing a navy suit.  So I'm guessing that was probably around the last time he saw most of his family ever again.
  
  
  Woot pic of my grandpa...no idea what age though.
  
  He left vietnam and worked as a cook on some ships for the Navy.  Eventually escaping away to America.  He came to America in and around 1910.  Back then when you came to Ellis Island the people running the immigration lines were bastards and treated non white or non english speaking people at least like animals.  You go through a lot of grueling, demeaning, degrading things before you even get up to the point where they want to know your name.  When you give them your name they don't even listen and just write down whatever they want.  I'm sure many people have similar pasts, least ones who came to here back in the day.  Hence why my name is Vancho and doesn't sound Vietnamese at all.  I still to this day don't even know what my real name should be.  I know my Grandpa's name was Hoang Van something but I don't know what the last part was.  Anyway that's just besides the point.  My grandpa was a great man (a little prideful? heh).  He's one of the only people I've ever looked up to and wanted to be more like in my life.  When I fail at anything he's the one I think of before anyone and feel ashamed for him to be related to me.  He's the one I always pray to and hope I can make him proud one day.  And I never even really knew him...weird isn't it?  He died before I was even 1 year old.  He had my dad when he was at least in his 60's (since no one knew how old he was they just guessed based on how old he looked in his first picture when he came to America) so by the time I was born he was over 80 or 90 something.  Before he died he gave me a stuffed dog as a gift, story goes he died two weeks later.  When I was little I used to say his soul went into the dog.  So I've kept that dog with me everywhere I go ever since, and call it grandpa.  When I was younger I'd have full on conversations with it as if my grandpa was really in it.  I still do once in a while...especially a few months ago when, anyway yeah once in a while I still do.  Here's a pic of the dog...
  
  
  Woot my "grandpa" as he appears now.  He's getting old =*(.
  
  Anyway reasons I look up to my grandpa.  He had to go through a lot of stuff to get to America.  Had to join an army he was most likely against, had to play nice and then run away.  No one really knows the details behind it, supposedly he didn't talk about it much to my dad, and since I never got to know him I never got to ask any of these questions myself.  Once he was in America he had to fit in, which is always hard.  But after a while he did fine.  He spoke 7 languages fluently supposedly, including Vietnamese, French, Italian, English, Cantonese, Mandarin, and Japanese.  My dad used to say it didn't matter where they went my grandpa would just talk to people in whatever language was theirs.  When my dad was young the area they lived in was majorily latino/black and almost no asian's whatsoever.  My grandpa smuggled in lots of Viet's from Vietnam and brought them over here got them jobs and out of the wars.  I'm sure some conservatives will hate him for that but whatever to me he's a hero to all those families for doing that.  We went back to NY a few years ago and the area of Queens (I'm pretty sure it was Queens at least) my dad grew up in is almost completely Viet/Asian in general now.  My dad was sad at first because all the old homes had been torn down and were built into apartments/condos.  But as we got to the block my dad's old house was on it was the first block that didn't have apartments and only the old houses that had been there since at least the 50's.  We found the house my dad grew up in, so he was happy about that.  Anyway more info about my gp.  He was friends with this one cop who worked in China Town, I met this guy and he added some more stories about how everyone loved my Grandpa and how he was always a gentle, quiet, really hard to anger man yet he had a lot of respect from people and was rarely if ever looked down upon for it.  I guess my dad inherited his personality from him, and I got it from my dad.
  
  Uh so not long after my grandpa came to America WWII came around and America had their concentration camps, even though my grandpa was viet he got sent to those too.  I'm not sure what happened with that...my dad won't ever tell me the details. During the vietnam war they tried to send my dad over to vietnam to go fight for the US because of the draft, they didn't care that he was viet they just wanted him to go over and fight against our family (least that's how I see it).  We're from the north too, so he would more than likely had to have ended up going against someone related to us in one way or another whether its direct or friend of a friend of a family member or whatever.  My dad got out of it luckily, but not easily.  Uh bla bla bla, the war ended and as far as I know so did all my family ties in Vietnam, not knowing my own name makes it kind of hard to figure out who we're related to.  When my Grandpa died other than my dad I pretty much lost all my viet relatives.  So it's kind of funny that I relate so much more with my viet side than anything else.
  
  Anyway been wanting to write about him for a while, the movie just brought back a lot of memories, ideals and pain about things so I wanted to get it out while I still felt it.
  
  And so to finish it off...uh go watch The Rebel.