The Other Side of the Sun

The True Story of One Refugee's Journey

Thien Tang

• Publisher: Pottersfield Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781988286358
• eBook ISBN: 9781988286365
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Biographies
• Index: Politics & International Relations

As one of the boat people refugees, Thien escaped war-torn Vietnam on a harrowing journey that landed him in a Malaysian refugee camp. Thien Tang had an ordinary childhood living in South Vietnam until it became a Communist state. His father feared persecution of his family and sent his fourteen-year-old son into hiding for over a year. Upon his return, Thien attended a local high school and found a classmate sweetheart. Life once again was good. But it wasn't meant to last. Thien was forced to go back into hiding again with no hope of return. Like thousands of others, he fled Vietnam on a crowded boat in search of a new life. But first he had to cross the treacherous South China Sea to reach Malaysia.

Thien's ship was attacked by pirates and shot at by police. On land, he and his fellow refuges were jailed, starved, and beaten, but survival only brought on tougher challenges. The soldiers forced them at gunpoint back into their damaged boat to be towed to sea. He sought asylum in the United States but found the refuge he was seeking in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, where he lives today.

1

the papaya

February 1977

I was a fifteen-year old boy and I’d already lived two lives: long ago as a son of a wealthy Chinese businessman, and recently disguised as an orphan.

But that was the past. I had returned to the town of my birth and childhood. Chinese New Year was only seven days away, and this year I was home to celebrate it – so I was whistling a happy tune while staring at homework.

The bright three o’clock sunlight of a rural tropical town in South Vietnam – Cat Tho in the Mekong Delta – shone through my bedroom windows and lit up the market packed with traders and produce below. My eyes wandered there while I fought the urge to venture out into that dazzling sea of colours: green watermelons, red dragon fruit, white daikon, golden papayas, purple eggplants, and yellow mai blossoms. In Vietnam, the mai tree – our apricot – symbolizes the New Year, when it briefly and spectacularly blooms. In an age-old tradition, my eldest sister Ngo would bring one home during this season to decorate our living room, and in so doing fill my childhood memories with joy, beauty, and radiance.

As a younger boy, I would revel in that market, slipping through gaps in the crowd, taking care not to overturn bamboo racks, paper boxes, cages, baskets, and the riotous menagerie they contained – clucking chickens, crowing roosters, quacking ducks, silver barbs wriggling as the birds flapped their wings. Dungeness crabs in ancient armour, blowing foamy bubbles and flailing their claws. Eels longer than the circumference of their holding barrels, ceaselessley turning and turning. I would lose myself in the comforting mass of human bodies towering above me, visibility zero on all sides. For this was the best part: being lost, caught up in the season’s madness, assaulted by the gabble of animals and the shouts of traders. It was better than being found.

Chinese New Year and its seven-day celebration had always been a magical time for me. Every year of my childhood, the festival had brought spectacular lion dances, thrilling sea-monster movies, delicious feasts, and princely sums of lucky money stuffed in red envelopes.

That had been some time ago, when life was black and white and a festival of any sort was magical. When South Vietnam became a Communist state over a year earlier, Father surrendered his considerable wealth to the new regime and sent me into hiding, finally calling me home this summer. I returned to many changes: our house felt empty without my two older brothers, Phat and Hu, who had fled to Saigon to hide among its millions of residents, and Father’s store had been closed and its warehouse emptied. Now our daily meals came from Mother and my four sisters operating a sugarcane-juice stall in our front yard. The day I came home, Father was waiting with a plan for me. I would attend the local school, help him farm the plot of land he had just purchased outside the town, and help Mother raise a brood of one hundred chicks in the store’s empty warehouse. It sounded exciting, a welcome change in my life.

§

That fall, September 1976, I’d started tenth grade in the town’s only high school. I was one of three newcomers and the only Chinese among its five hundred-plus students.

At our first recess, a local classmate clobbered the other two new students and chased them out of town. When class resumed, I sat alone in an entire row of empty seats, absorbing smirks from the aggressor, Hai, and cold stares from my other classmates.

Teacher Ha was in his first year of teaching, a soft-spoken, frail, and short man in his mid-twenties.

“Our band will compete in the provincial New Year festival this year,” he said. “Let’s welcome our new member. Thien, you’re able to join, right?”

I nodded, flushing. “Yes, sir!”

Obviously, he hadn’t clued in that my stay in this school would be woefully too short for any festivities. By day’s end, Hai and his gang would surely have sent me packing with a bloody nose. I couldn’t expect a rookie teacher of Ha’s stature to frighten the muscular bully into making peace.

I spotted them at my first afternoon band practice and felt a noose tighten around my neck. I was barely able to muster enough breath to sing. The battle line was drawn during break. Hai and other band members congregated near the blackboard, laughing, teasing one another, and glancing at me with disdain; there I was, sitting by myself in the seat nearest to the exit, on pins and needles. I grabbed Teacher Ha’s guitar and strummed a few tunes while awaiting the inevitable. Then I heard voices. I looked up. Hai and his gang stood a couple of feet away, singing to my music. I managed to keep calm and continued playing.

Teacher Ha returned, grimacing. “You guys must stay away from the old music, at least under my watch. You know it’s forbidden in our new society. Don’t bring disaster on your family, school, and me, especially.”

Hai laughed. “Don’t worry, Teacher Ha. Nothing will leave this room. But we’ll stop.”

On my walk home, they followed me. I braced myself.

“You know a lot of our favourite songs,” Hai said when they caught up with me. “You can’t be that Chinese.”

“I guess not. My brothers used to play them in the clubs.”

“Wow, you’ve got cool brothers! Do you want to stay after band tomorrow and play our kind of music?”

“Okay.”

Sometime later, Teacher Ha said to me, “Thien, you’ve been here for more than a month now. How do you like your new school?”

“I love it, sir! Thank you for putting me in the school band. I’ve made many friends.”

He nodded. “Ah! To know is to love. I knew I could...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Thanks
• contents
• Author's Note
• prologue
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• 7
• 8
• 9
• 10
• 11
• 12
• 13
• 14
• epilogue
• words of thanks