Where Rivers Meet: Mai Elliott’s Voice in a Divided War
Profilers: Rhys Harnett, Ishaan Maker, Sean Patton, Jon Uzan, Ryan Chen
Rhys Harnett:
All right. Hi, Miss Elliot. Thank you so much for being here and taking your time to speak with us. We really appreciate learning from you, hearing more about your work experience. We’ll be asking you questions if anything sparks sparks further discussion. Just feel free to expand in any direction.
So the first question is that Sacred Willows traces 4 generations of your family’s history. How did writing this book shape or change your understanding of your own family’s experience during the Vietnam War?
Mai Elliott:
OK, so when I embarked on researching for my book, you know there were big gaps in my knowledge. The gaps are mainly concerning my relatives who were living in North Vietnam. So during the war against the French against French colonialism, some of my relatives joined the the Ho Chi Minh LED independence movement and fight against the French. So then after the country Vietnam was partitioned into two-part, North and South, with the North under the control of Ho Chi Minh and the Communist Party and the South being a non-communist country. Of course contact was cut off between North and South, so I had no contact with my relatives in the North. I had no idea about what they experienced during the war against the French. And then under communist rule, when the communists transformed North Vietnam into a socialist country. And then during the Vietnam War, I don’t know whether any of them were drafted and sent to the South to fight or how they did during the bombing of the north. So another gap in my knowledge was, you know, my family. Most of my family fled South Vietnam in 1975 at the end of the war, but some of them stayed behind and I had minimal contact with them. So I didn’t know what it was like for them to stay behind. How did they fear as the communists took over and transformed South Vietnam? I knew that some relatives ended up being incarcerated by the communist regime in what they call re-education camps, and I had no idea what it was like for them to be incarcerated, some for many years. So researching for my book, you know, led me to understand more about experiences for those in the North. And the experiences of those who stayed behind in the South after 75.
Sean Patton:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that was very insightful. Thank you, Shane. We can move on to the second question, which is your work with the Rand Corporation involved interviewing Viet Cong prisoners and defectors. What insights did you gain from those conversations about their motivations and morale?
Mai Elliott:
OK, so when I started working for Rand, I knew very little about the the Vietcong insurgency, about communism. So, but I have very strong prejudices because my family was very afraid of a communist to take over. And they view communism as an existential threat. You know, they were afraid that if the communists took over, we would be persecuted if not, if not killed. So I started with this view of the communists as people that could threaten us. I also subscribe to the belief among many middle-class Vietnamese that the peasants in the countryside who were supporting the Viet Cong, not all of them, but those who did or people who just wanted to be left alone to till their plots of land, and that they were uneducated and or easily fell prey to communist propaganda, Viet Cong propaganda. So that was my frame of mind when I began. And then as I talked to them, I understood better the conditions that they were living under in the countryside, what, what, what their grievances were against the South Vietnamese government. And I learned that instead of being just passive. About what was going on, many of them actually took a role, participated in joining the insurgency.
So, you know, I learned that they had real grievances against the government and that communist propaganda promised them what they wanted. And they were looking for several things. They were looking for social justice and equality. They were looking for opportunities for their children. They were upset that the Americans were in South Vietnam. You know, the United States thought it was an ally to the South Vietnamese government, and it was there for noble purposes, you know, helping the South Vietnamese fight a communist takeover. But the many of the peasants didn’t see it that way. They saw the Americans as the new colonialists who had come into. Replaced the French, and they saw the South Vietnamese government as what they call puppets of the Americans, you know, during the American bidding. And then when American troops arrived in large numbers, you know, at the height of the war, there were like 500,000 Americans there. So they viewed the American presence as a foreign occupation. So they wanted to take arms to fight. Foreign invaders. And they were also upset by the partition of Vietnam into two parts, North and South. And they they thought of it, you know, the 17th parallel that divided the two parts of Vietnam as like they call it a gash of shame. So they were motivated by all these things. And as for the Viet Cong I talked to, I interviewed. Put it to me, he thought he was fighting for what he called a just cause. And so that’s what I learned. And they were highly motivated by this just cause. And so I learned that we were facing a very formidable enemy. Let’s put it that way.
Ishaan Maker:
OK. Thank you for that answer. That was a great response. OK. I’ll, I’ll ask you the third question we have for you now, more about your perspective, having shared what you just shared about like first-hand knowledge of living in Vietnam and experiencing, you know, the war from that perspective versus then moving to America. The question is having lived in Vietnam during the war and then moving to the United States later. How has your perspective on the war changed over time?
Mai Elliott:
OK, so I started out being strongly for the war because, you know, my family welcomed the American arrival, you know, the landing of the Marines in Danang. And we thought, oh, with the United States behind us, we we’re going to win this war. So I started out believing in it. Because again, I was very like my I grew up being very fearful of communist takeover. So, but as the war progressed and I I saw the cost that it was inflicting on Vietnam and the Vietnamese, I realized that, you know, this war was exacting to higher cost and. Eventually I came to the conclusion that, you know, we, the the people like my family who were fearful of a communist takeover, most of us were not paying a price for the fight against communism or the VietCong insurgency. And it was the peasants who were paying, you know, the peasants who had nothing to lose, really, perhaps a lot more to gain than to lose and. They were paying the price because they were living in the countryside. They were getting bombed. They were visiting shell, their homes were being destroyed, they were driven from their land. And so they were the ones who were paying the price. And of course that was not fair. And another thing that really made me wonder about the cost was that.
One time, the former wife of Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn, who was a reporter, came to Vietnam and she needed somebody to translate for her. And me being bilingual, I was recruited and she wanted to write an article about the cost of the war, the human cost. You know, you hear about collateral damage, but. When you see it with your own eyes, you see people wounded with their skin burned by napalm and so on, you you see it differently. So I began to, my views began to change. And eventually I thought, you know, peace, any peace would be better than this war, even if it could mean that the communists would eventually take over. So that’s how my views evolved.
Ishaan Maker:
Well, that’s pretty amazing that I didn’t know, like Ernest Hemingway’s wife, if you were translating for her, that’s pretty cool.
Mai Elliott:
Yeah. Yeah, that’s amazing.
Ishaan Maker:
Thank you.
Mai Elliott:
Yeah. She was a very good reporter, you know.
Ishaan Maker:
Did you actually see what you said then? Like, like people with, like, you know, horrific injuries and stuff?
Mai Elliott:
Yes. So she wanted to visit a hospital and see the war victims. So I, I accompanied her to a hospital, and for the first time in my life, because, you know, I was living in Saigon, which was pretty insulated from the war. You know, occasionally there was terrorist bombing or rockets being lobbed into the city, but I never saw victims first hand. Of course, I saw people without limbs. You know, crawling on the streets of Saigon and begging and I see organs, I mean orphans living in on the street in Saigon. But I never saw the victims who paid with their flesh and blood. So when I went to the hospital, I was amazed when I saw all these victims, you know, being bandaged with bloody bandages and so on. So that’s when it really struck me. What the war was doing to, you know, human beings, Vietnamese. Yeah, it was a shock, really.
Ishaan Maker:
That’s pretty powerful.
Mai Elliott:
Yeah.
Jon Uzan:
OK. So for the next question, many families were deeply divided by the war, often with members supporting different sides. These divisions manifest in your own family, and how did they evolve after the war ended?
Mai Elliott:
OK, I mentioned earlier that during the war against the French, some members of my family joined the the, the, the Viet Minh or the movement led by Ho Chi Minh to fight the French and win back independence. So the closest person to me was my, I mean in this story was my older sister Kang. Her husband and she left Hanoi in 1946 and moved into the mountainside, I mean into the mountain base of Ho Chi Minh to join the fight against the French. So I have also had cousins and so on who joined the Viet Minh. So that was a division in my family. I didn’t see my sister for, you know, decades because again, after the French left and the country was partitioned, there was no very little contact between my sister and her family and my family. The only contact we had was through my brother who was studying in France. And so once in a while my parents would write to my sister and my brother who would send the letter to Hanoi. Or my mother would send supplies to my sister because my sister was living in poverty and in privation. But that was the only contact we had. And so when I went back to research my family history after the war, I had no idea how my relatives would receive me, especially my sister and her family, whom I hadn’t seen for decades. But you know, amazingly enough, you know, they put the war behind them and they, you know, welcomed me back into the family and it was like this division that separation had never happened. But again, we have to bear in mind that at that time communism had fallen and.
So Vietnam was embarking on a policy of opening up the country in order to attract foreign investments because the economy was hitting rock bottom. So the regime was more open and. My relatives were less fearful about meeting with me because I was married to an American and had studied in the United States and was living in the United States. But the society was becoming less oppressive, more open, so my family was not afraid to have contact with me, so. You know, things were opening up. So they just welcomed me back. And now I go back and it’s like the war, the division, those things have never happened. And you know, we have joyful reunions. They take me to visit the tombs of my ancestors, you know, ancestral village. And you know, so it, like I said, it’s like the war never happened, the division never happened.
Jon Uzan:
Do you think writing the Sacred Willow helped you come to terms with those divisions in any way? Yes, I think it kind of put a closure on it because it helps because they put the war behind them and move on. If you go back to Vietnam now, you will hardly encounter anybody who want to, who would talk about the war. Even when I went back to interview my relatives, I really had to press them to talk about it because, you know, they didn’t want to relive painful, painful experiences and really they just want to move on. And so reliving their experience with them also helped me understand what they had gone through, the sacrifices they had made. And they also learn my point of view and there’s a reconciliation and a closure.
Ishaan Maker:
OK. So for the next question, I wanted to ask you about the Western perspective on the war versus the broad perspective you’ve given because you obviously have a Vietnamese perspective and then an American perspective. So I guess a much more balanced view than most. But other people, especially in the West, are like deeply influenced by media and just what they hear, you know, by the media. You’ve actually had a first-hand experience in Vietnam, which, you know, changes everything. So I wanted to ask you, like, based on your personal account of the war’s impact, what do you think is misunderstood by the West or overlooked by the West in narratives about?
Mai Elliott:
The Vietnam War, Yeah, I think that you put your finger on it right away because that’s a lack of a Vietnamese perspective. In a lot of the literature about Vietnam, you know, in movies and so on, you see how Vietnamese are usually portrayed as supporting actors in an American experience, right? We kind of, we like Vietcong shadowy figures in black pajamas or. Yeah, people who put American prisoners in cages, you know, or peasants who get bombed and driven out of their homes. And so Vietnamese are usually viewed as supporting actors and not as active participants in their own history. And that’s the what I I said in my introduction to my book is that I wanted to present Vietnamese as the key actors in their own history as they see themselves. So when I wrote my book, the Vietnamese perspective was especially really, really lacking. But since then there have been, you know, more books and documentaries that do include the Vietnamese perspectives. But I think there’s still misunderstanding about what the Vietnamese went through. I think mainly if Westerners think about the Vietnam War, they think of the the peasants in the countryside, but they lack an understanding of the people like the middle class who actually provided the leadership for, you know, the fight against the French and then, you know, the Vietnam War, the insurgency. So I think that the perspective is not complete, even though more and more voices thankfully are being heard. So I hope this will continue.
Ishaan Maker:
Yeah, I think like in all, even in class we’ve watched, we watched Apocalypse Now and I’ve watched in Full Metal Jacket. I love to watch all these movies of war and Vietnam War in general and. It’s always like they like hundreds of like Vietnamese people are dying, but like those are those deaths are like 10 minutes of screen time or whatever. But like, I just think like, oh, so I don’t know, they never show the Vietnamese even dying like in a painful way or something like the bullet just kills them and they just die. It’s. It’s so I think the focus is most like mostly on American like heroism in these movies, not on history. And I think like it’d be really cool, you know, like a like a movie about the North, North Vietnamese or not showing them as bad people or whatever. Because I think really at the end of the day, you realize that it just like war becomes hell for everyone. Like everyone just wants the war to kind of stop once you’re actually in it. Yeah. Only once you’re removed from the war, I guess you can have like a perspective. Oh, this is good and this is bad. But otherwise the people were just trying to survive in there.
Mai Elliott:
Yeah, yeah, you’re right. Because after the war, then we began to hear more voices from North Vietnam and how they view their fight, you knowAnd you know, the most famous book that came out that really opened everybody’s eyes was their novel by Bao Ning, you know, Sorrow of War.
Ishaan Maker:
Yeah. So we studied that in class, The Sorrow of War by Bao Ning. And that’s and yeah, we read it in class. So that’s one of the main texts we actually study. And that’s a great perspective. But actually it makes me a bit sad cause even that perspective, like it doesn’t show the Vietnamese as kind of like, you know, heroes. The sad reality is like, no matter which side you’re on, it just becomes like war is hell or that’s kind of the main message.
Mai Elliott:
Yeah, well, Baoning was actually, his book was enlightening to a lot of people because in the North, the literature was forced to portray the soldiers as heroes, you know, they they
Ishaan Maker:
Exactly!
Mai Elliott:
They accepted their sacrifices and never complained because they were motivated by, you know, these noble purposes and so on. But Bao Ning painted a picture very different of soldiers with doubts and you know, they didn’t want to go down to the South and fight and die. And when I talked to one of my cousins who were actually sent to the South, not to the South, but he sent to the. Near the partition line, the DMZ to fight during the war. His perspective was, you know, he was in this foxhole, basically this trench being bombarded daily, you know, he didn’t have enough food, his teeth was falling out, you know, so. And so he said all he wanted to do was to have one day without bombs and shells falling around him, so. Yeah. So that’s perspective is finally, at least in the North, coming out across the world. And I don’t know whether you’ve watched a documentary by Ken Burns, the Vietnam War. And I must commend him and his crew for including a lot of North Vietnamese and South Vietnamese people in this documentary. So you get the perspective for South Vietnamese fighters and the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters about what they went through during the war. It’s pretty graphic. Yeah, yeah, that’s amazing. Yeah. So I wish you would catch it if it is shown again.
Ishaan Maker:
Ohh I mean, I’ll definitely watch the documentary.
Mai Elliott:
Yeah, but again, it’s really, it’s mainly a lot of, it’s still mainly cued to the American experience, but at least Vietnamese voices were included.
Sean Patton:
Speaking of Bao Nin and the story of war, in our class,We have read multiple memoirs on the impact of different roles in Vietnam during and after the war, obviously depicts the impact on males, specifically soldiers. But we wante d to hear a different perspective, which brings me to the next question, which is how did the war shape the role of women in Vietnamese society, both during the conflict and its aftermath?
Mai Elliott:
Yeah. OK, so let me just backtrack a little to our history and culture and tradition, which is that Vietnamese women were never in the old days, were never as oppressed as the Chinese women, for example. They were, their feet were never bound and they were great at business, commerce. And in our history there were very famous women who fought the Chinese, you know, the Chung sisters. In Chuao in the 3rd century AD, and so they led armies and fought against the Chinese. So, so there’s in Vietnam we have the saying if the enemy appears at your doorstep, women should will fight or should fight. So during the war. Because the men were, you know, gone. Most of them were drafted sentences. There was a lack of manpower, to put it simply. So women were mobilized to fill those roles. And you know, you’ve seen videos of pictures of women carrying rifles and shooting at American planes. But during the fight against the French or during the Vietnam War, women who participated usually played supporting roles, you know, they were medics. They were people who acted as liaison agents, communication. They carry supplies to the battlefield. They carried the wounded back, tended to them. And during the Vietnam War, women play a crucial role in keeping the Ho Chi Minh Trail open. You know, they drove trucks, they transported supplies to soldiers in the South. And you know, in the documentary by Ken Burns, they talked quite a bit about the role of the women in keeping the Ho Chi Minh Trail open and supplies flowing. And in the South, you know, there are famous women who joined the insurgency and fought. And two prominent leaders, you know, (names inaudible) but again, they play supporting roles. You know, they the prominent women were there to mainly draw more support from women because as the Vietnamese say and the Chinese say the same thing, women hold up half the sky, you know, and they are big resources, big resource for society. But you know, after the war. You know, it’s still a man’s role in Vietnam. The great big leaders are all the important leaders are still men. They’re women in, you know, in leadership role, but they’re not in important positions. So it’s. So they still have a long way to go in achieving, you know, equality in terms of leadership in society. But the some of the biggest business person in Vietnam are women, continuing the tradition of women dominating or taking, playing a big part in the economy.
Sean Patton:
That’s a very different perspective than what we’ve read. We’ve also read another
Mai Elliott:
What have you, what have you read?
Sean Patton:
Oh yeah, we read another novel called When Heaven and Earth Change Places by Le Ly Hayslip, which dives into her life as a citizen woman in Vietnam who is interrogated and then later marries an American soldier.
Mai Elliott:
Yeah, so she was, she was also a liaison agent in the countryside. And yeah, there were women fighters among the Viet Cong, but you know, they were not in leadership position. That’s what I’m, it’s not that women didn’t participate, but they participated in support in supporting roles. And in South Vietnam, there were women who, you know, opposed the South Vietnamese government and suffered greatly for their. Protest and opposition. They were arrested, tortured and killed. And when the Buddhists felt that they were being oppressed, there were women who protested and burned themselves in protest. So you know, they were very courageous and they took part. But what my main point is that it was always in a supporting role. Well, there was, you know, the Foreign Minister, Madam Winti Bing, and I mentioned Winti Tuck and Winti Bing, who were very prominent leaders. But again, they were not in key leadership roles.
Sean Patton:
Thank you for sharing that.
Mai Elliott:
Sure.
Rhys Harnett:
OK, now for our next question. So in our class, we’ve been talking a lot about how the war is remembered differently depending on who you are. So if you’re Vietnamese or American, whether you lived through it or learned about it later from relatives. And in your book, The Sacred Willow, it really brings that idea to life by showing how you experience war from different sides. Yeah. So the question I want to ask is in the years since The Sacred Willow was published. How have readers, both Vietnamese and American, responded to it? Have you noticed any differences from each sides?
Mai Elliott:
Yeah, well… my book is, well, when I wrote it, I tried to be objective and I pointed out the good side and the bad side of both sides in the war, the mistakes, the achievements. So among the South Vietnamese refugees in the United States, for example. At the beginning my book was not well received because many people thought, including some of my relatives, that I was pro-communist. So they rejected my book and my interpretation of the events and. And in Vietnam, the Vietnamese government, my book is not allowed to circulate in there, though there are illegal copies that circulate. And recently I translated it and it still hasn’t been, it hasn’t received permission to get published in Vietnam. Again, because I’ve pointed out, you know, the bad things that the communists did as well as the good things. And the two biggest things that the communist regime object to is the fact that I talk about the land reform and how the land reform persecuted people. And I talk about the re-education after the war, how people were unjustly imprisoned and put in re-education camps. So I decry the lack of reconciliation after the war because of that. So the communist regime didn’t like and doesn’t like my book either. So, but occasionally I would read about people in Vietnam who stumbled upon my book and loved it because it provided different perspectives. In Vietnam right now, the government control the historical narrative. And so people don’t have a complete perspective or balanced perspective about the war. And recently I talked to a class at Dartmouth and there was a Vietnamese student from Hanoi and she said she wished that people in Vietnam, especially the young, would be able to learn, you know, a more complete history of Vietnam.
Among the South Vietnamese refugees, I think there’s now an evolution. I think the young generation is not as critical of my book, actually has become more open because they want to learn about their family history, about what because their parents don’t talk about it. So they want to kind of understand the historical background of their family and. So I’ve had more favorable reactions from Vietnamese and Vietnamese Americans that I encountered. Among the Americans, who have reacted, mostly they expressed appreciation of the fact that they learn about the Vietnamese perspective on, you know, both sides of the war. So some of them, a couple of people have objected to the fact that I portrayed the Vietnam War as the Civil War, because they think it’s a colonialist war with an imperialist war with, you know, the Americans fighting the Vietnamese. But in fact it is a civil war, especially at the end after the Americans were gone. It was certainly a civil war. But even during the French War or the Vietnamese War, the Vietnamese were fighting because they were arrayed on different sides. You know, so, so that was the objection I have seen. The other one is complain about a sea of names that foreign names that they can’t remember. So other than that it’s it’s been, you know, mostly favorable and I think as the years go by, I think it will receive. Better reception, especially among Vietnamese Americans, the young ones anyway.
Rhys Harnett:
That’s very interesting how it’s kind of censored. The book’s been censored in Vietnam and it’s not allowed to be published. So do you think it not being allowed to be published in Vietnam causes major differences between American views versus Vietnam views? And can they read it now? Was that in the past or are they still unable to publish it there?
Mai Elliott:
No, it’s still, land reform is still very sensitive. You know, if you read my chapter about it, you can see why it is sensitive because a lot of people were persecuted, killed unjustly. So it’s still a sore point. Couple years ago I met the son of a very prominent Vietnam leader who was a poet and. He actually wrote a book about his own family being persecuted during the land reform and he was also in opposition to the current government and he was put in jail. But the American government got him out and he’s now living in the US. So land reform is still a very sensitive topic and re-education is a very sensitive topic. Both among, well, among the North, I mean among the communist regime. And it is still a very, how shall I say, painful subject for many of the South Vietnamese refugees in the United States because their relatives or even some themselves ended up in re-education camps and they haven’t forgotten that. You know, my own brother, my own older brother was incarcerated for five years, even though he hadn’t done anything. He ran the factory. So he’s still sore about it. He’s still upset, angry about it. And as a matter of fact, he won’t go back to Vietnam because he still hold grudges over that. And I don’t blame him, you know?
Rhys Harnett:
Thank you for that response. We’re now going to move to our last question.
Jon Uzan:
So looking back, what do you think young people today, both in Vietnam and the US, should take away from the American war in Vietnam?
Mai Elliott:
Yeah, well, I think that first of all, I would urge everybody to look at the war from all sides and understand the motivations. On all sides, the causes that people thought they were fighting for and then form their own opinion because as you can see, it’s a very complicated story. And the other thing I would say is that, especially for Americans, is to take away from the war in Vietnam. The lesson that it is very difficult to impose your will on another society, you know, in the case of the United States, in Vietnam, the Americans thought they were fighting, helping the South Vietnamese, you know, as one of them put it in my book, you know, we’re giving them clean water and electricity and healthcare, you know, we’re the good guys, but. The Vietnamese peasants, Vietnamese, many of them didn’t see it that way. You know, they didn’t want a society imposed on them on American terms. Of course they wanted all those things, but they didn’t want to have to accept it on American terms. And and and they fought because they felt that, you know, the Americans, I think they were there in in good faith. But the fact was they were bombing and shelling. Killing a lot of Vietnamese, displacing them from their lands, turning them into refugees, you know, making their children orphans or their relatives orphans. So I think that that’s the lesson is you cannot impose your will and make people behave in the way that you want. Because they want to make their own choices. So I think the United States learned that lesson though in Vietnam. Then there was a time when the Vietnam syndrome was talked about, which means that Americans became very reluctant to intervene in another country. And but you know, when Reagan, I think, invaded Granada. It was like everybody said, oh, he broke the Vietnam syndrome. But you know, sorry to say, we didn’t really, America didn’t really understand this because remember Afghanistan, we went anyway, Iraq and the pain, the lesson was brought home once again. You cannot go into another foreign country and think you can impose your will on another society. So I think that for Americans, that would be the main lesson.
And for Vietnamese, I would say, you know, learn about your history and make up your mind because it’s extremely complicated. Anything else? Is that your last question?
Ishaan Maker:
I have just one question based on what you just said. So I’ve noticed in general that the Vietnamese. People are much more like, I don’t know, able to move on and like they’re much more forgiving of. I don’t think it bothers them when they like come to, I guess America or when Americans go back to Vietnam, they don’t hold anything really against America. So whereas like other countries, like I guess Middle Eastern countries, you know, it’s like inspired a lot of terrorism and like just a whole different situation, so. How? Like, how is that or why is that? Is it like a cultural thing? Or how has it been easy for the Vietnamese to forgive, like America for whatever’s happened?
Mai Elliott:
Yeah, well, of course I generalize. When I go back to Vietnam, I don’t meet people who resent the Americans, let’s put it that way. And I don’t go there to do a public opinion survey. But one thing is that if you look at Vietnamese history, we were just, we were always fighting the Chinese, the French, the Americans, when we thought they were there to and they were there to tell us what to do, you know, run the country. So the Americans were just another wave of invaders that we had to fight. What was I going to say? My, I lost my chain of thought. So also another fact is that Vietnam is now a very young society. A lot of people were born after the war or they were very low when the war ended. They had no experience of the war. You know, they live for the present. They want to enjoy life. They want to take advantage of the new opportunities to improve their life. They recently, I think a couple of years ago, and I don’t know what it’s like now, but I think that in like 2017 or 18, somebody did an opinion survey. And again, I don’t know how extensive the sample was. It turned out that Vietnamese have the highest favorable opinion of the United States among all the countries in the world, like 80% approval.
Ishaan Maker:
Wow.
Mai Elliott:
Yeah, but now, I don’t know, you know, I don’t know. It’s been like several years, so I don’t know how people feel. But when I go back to Vietnam, I see that they’re young. They just embrace, you know, American popular culture. But of course it’s filtered through Korea, you know, the K pop groups and the music, the videos, Vietnamese language, you know, filled with American terms. You know, people just embracing American pop culture and you know, and also the situation in Asia has changed because now Vietnam fear China. So the United States appears like a quasi-ally. Vietnam is very careful not to ally with the United States because. It feels shiny, China, but you know, it’s friendly with the United States and I think that that’s because the situation in Asia has changed. And so I don’t know the Middle East to compare, but that’s what I see in the situation in Vietnam right now. It’s just that the, you know, which is ironical because when the United States intervene in Vietnam. It thought Vietnam was a proxy for the Chinese communists. You know, the Chinese communists were using Vietnam to expand in Asia, and now Vietnam is like it always has been a country that is fearful of Chinese domination. So I think you have to look at it in terms of the history of Vietnam toward China. Being dominated by China for centuries and the situation, the strategic situation in Asia right now, which explains Vietnam’s position vis-a-vis the United States. So like I said, I don’t know the Middle East in order to compare, but those are the factors that explain why Vietnamese and Vietnam are now toward the United States.
Ishaan Maker:
OK. Thank you for your, thank you for that answer. I think those are all of our questions. If anyone else has anything to say or like they’d like to add again, but thank you so much for your time and thank you so much for talking with us and sharing your experiences. It’s been amazing to hear from you and I know. Professor has told us like what an important person you are like and to get to talk to you and for you to like tell us directly about Vietnam, it’s like it’s a big honor. So thank you.
Mai Elliott:
Well, thank you. Your questions are very good and I’m, I’m very pleased because you’re interested and that’s what encourages me, you know, as a writer, if you have interested audience. That’s what you want. So thank you for giving me this opportunity to talk to you.
Rhys Harnett:
Thank you.
Sean Patton:
Thank you so much.
Mai Elliott:
Thank you. Take care now.
Profilers:
You too. Bye…