EX-VIETNAMESE ORPHANS SEEK HERITAGE.Byline: Richard Herzfelder Associated Press Associated Press: see news agency. Associated Press (AP) Cooperative news agency, the oldest and largest in the U.S. and long the largest in the world. They left Vietnam when their minds were too young to grasp memories. Growing up, they had to take images of their native land second-hand - from Hollywood, from old photographs, from adults' stories. That, at least, is something 14 former Vietnamese orphans on a tour of their homeland won't have to worry about any more. ``Being here gives you something concrete to put in your head instead of all the other ideas you had in your head about it,'' said Lisa Winter, who left at the age of 3 for a childhood in Walker, Minn. Winter, now 24, was one of thousands of Vietnamese orphans adopted by Americans after they were flown out of Vietnam at the end of the war in 1975. Twenty-one years later, Winter has joined a group of former orphans on a tour of Ho Chi Minh City Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, city (1997 pop. 5,250,000), on the right bank of the Saigon River, a tributary of the Dong Nai, Vietnam. , the Mekong Delta
The Mekong Delta (Vietnamese: đồng bằng sông Cửu Long and central Vietnam - their first glimpse First Glimpse is a monthly consumer electronics magazine published by Sandhills Publishing Company in Lincoln, Nebraska, USA. The magazine was known as CE Lifestyles before a name change in early 2006. of the country since infancy. ``It's good to go in a group, because you know what they're feeling about the whole spectrum of what's going on What's Going On is a record by American soul singer Marvin Gaye. Released on May 21, 1971 (see 1971 in music), What's Going On reflected the beginning of a new trend in soul music. here, and you feel the same things,'' said Winter, who is halfway through the tour. In Ho Chi Minh City the returnees, many accompanied by adoptive parents adoptive parents Social medicine Persons who lawfully adopt children, who are generally married couples but may be single persons, including homosexuals; most APs are married , siblings or friends, visited orphanages, nurseries and sites critical to the adoption process such as the Air France Air France in full Compagnie Internationale Air France French passenger and cargo airline with more than 200 destinations in some 80 countries. It introduced supersonic Concorde service in 1976, but financial loss led the company to cease its Concorde office and the former U.S. Embassy. ``Maybe one day I can do something to give back to the orphanages that have given so much to us,'' 21-year-old James Wynn told a group of Vietnamese nuns who still work at the Viet Hoa orphanage. The grown orphans shared old photographs with former protectors and brought small gifts like bottles of soap bubbles, plastic stickers, balls and American football cards for a new generation of children who crowd Vietnam's orphanages. For Loan Shillinger, the most emotional moment came on a visit to the site where a U.S. Air Force jet crashed during ``Operation Babylift'' on April 4, 1975, killing 135 people, including 76 orphans. ``I protected myself. My boyfriend calls me ``Big Bad Loan'' - she never gets hurt. Suddenly it was a reality, the reality of being back. All the defenses came down,'' said Shillinger, 24, who suffered cuts, burns and a broken arm in the crash. Many of the former orphans were shocked by their first contact with a Third World Asian city - the chaotic, ever-honking traffic; the crowded, shabby housing; the aggressive beggars and persistent street vendors all blanketed by truck fumes fumes odorous gases and other volatile materials; inhalation of irritating fumes causes coughing and, if sufficiently severe, irreversible pulmonary edema. and the rotten-socks smell of ripe durian durian, the highly esteemed, edible fruit of Durio zibethinus. The edible portions are the seeds found inside the large spiny fruits, which may weigh several pounds. fruit. ``They honk and it's not polite, it's `I'm coming through,' '' Winter said. ``At home there are stop signs, and people stop.'' The group drew fascinated comment and questions from Vietnamese who wanted to know where they were from, if they spoke Vietnamese and if they knew who their parents were. For most of the orphans, the answer to all the questions was no. The evacuation was chaotic and few records remain. But like others, Winter imagines what might have been. ``I guess it would be like this. Chickens and ducks hanging in the window,'' Winter said. She added: ``I couldn't do it now. I couldn't stand out there and chase people around and say, `Buy this T-shirt.' '' Wynn knows he's a stranger to Vietnam because ``I think in a Western way,'' but he was happy to find himself in a city where millions of men share his short, slim, energetic physique physique /phy·sique/ (fi-zek´) the body organization, development, and structure. phy·sique n. The body considered with reference to its proportions, muscular development, and appearance. . ``It makes me feel like a grown man,'' said Wynn, a student at Texas A&M University. ``Here I'm the right height. In the States, everybody thinks I'm 16.'' Appearance was important in a different way for Shillinger and Peik Larsen, whose fathers were African-American soldiers. Aware of Vietnamese prejudice against black Amerasians, they worried about those left behind. ``I would just like to see even one, although they must be a very small percentage of the population,'' said Larsen of Cambridge, Mass. ``I've accepted that it would've been very hard if I stayed behind,'' said Shillinger, who was raised in an all-white community in California's Marin County. ``Being accepted by the Afro-American community was more important.'' Still, she said, visiting Vietnam helped close a circle that had felt incomplete. ``I left a little girl there,'' Shillinger said after laying a wristband wristband An identifying bracelet attached to a Pt's wrist at the time of admission to a health care facility, which may be the only identifier used during a person's stay in a hospital imprinted with the names of orphanages at the Air Force crash site. ``I'm somebody else.'' CAPTION(S): Photo PHOTO Loan Shillinger of San Francisco San Francisco (săn frănsĭs`kō), city (1990 pop. 723,959), coextensive with San Francisco co., W Calif., on the tip of a peninsula between the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay, which are connected by the strait known as the Golden shows her former ide ntification bracelet to nuns in while on a trip in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Associated Press |
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