In the Shadows

Oral History Project

In the Shadows

By: Vong Lee

At ease with her right foot up slightly on the couch and one on the ground, a worn down old lady sits slightly shifted to the right. She is fatigued and seems to be bored as her eyes wander through the window at the neighbor kids who are raking the leaves joyfully across the street. Then her head turns and she looks at the picture of her son, who has passed away. A distant look overcomes her face as if she was in pain.

She reaches up and tightens a dark blue and green cloth that is constantly wrapped around her head. Being engulfed in a purple sweater with a white blouse beneath and a wrinkled, colorful faded Hmong dress called a Kapong, she sits shivering. “Woo…it’s cold. I hate the winter season!” she said through a translator (Chao doesn’t speak any English) as she reaches down to tie a ribbon like cloth around her legs for warmth. As she is doing this, a gold necklace with a huge heart pendent and a sparkling red ruby in the center, dangles about from her neck.

As happy and healthy as Chao Lee is, her life isn’t all sunshine. In fact, her life revolves around all her grandchildren who keep her strong and healthy to see another tomorrow. At 89 years of age and now a resident of Wausau, she has gone through much and seen just about everything, the evil and the good. Yet behind the light on the outside, she is within the shadows of her life before coming to America. “My life has always been a struggle since day one,” Chao complains as she reaches down to button her blouse.

She was born on June 15^th, 1923 in the mountainous region of Laos, into a family of farmers. As a girl in the Hmong culture it was her job to cook, clean, work in the garden, and baby-sit younger brothers and sisters, all starting at the age of about nine. Life was very rough and uphill for her, which she disliked at the time. Now she misses those days, mostly her homeland. “When we were young we weren’t like the children here in the U.S. We worked hard all day long so we could eat at night. Young people these days just don’t have the work ethics anymore,” she said with a frown.

At the age of sixteen, Chao was forced to marry her husband, Cheung Ying Yang who was eighteen. It was an arranged marriage, but when they were married she wasn’t the only wife, she was the second. Her life from here had even more obstacles to overcome because she was so young and this whole marriage thing was overwhelming. Her husband loved her, but it wasn’t enough since the love had to be divided amongst two wives. Laughing, she says, “It was like dating a boyfriend that cheated on you while you were in the other room and you couldn’t do anything about it. You just had to suck it up and move on. Also, for us Hmong people, the more wives and kids you had the better off you were. It meant more food at the cost of less labor.” This hurt her very much though, and some of the times her husband disregarded her, leaving her to question if he loved her or not.

When she was about 17, she had her first baby, a son. From here, things got worst. First she had more kids, in which totaled 12. She worked hard and was constantly in the rice field working day to day trying to earn a profit to feed her 12 kids, five daughters and seven sons. “I was constantly working day in and day out to feed my dear kids,” Chao said, scooping horizontally back and forth showing the motion of how rice was collected.

The dark purple walls made the room even darker as the sun began to set. Countless pictures of family members and loved ones hung all around. Her youngest grandchild turns on the movie, “We Were Soldiers”, and from the war cries and gunshots she turns away. Her face flushed and flames of dark hatred in her eyes.

Flashing back, in 1965 as the Vietnam War expanded many Hmong men and boys were drafted into the army to assist the Americans fight against communist North Vietnam. As the war progressed, it became a part of daily life in Vietnam and the bordering countries: Thailand, Laos, Mongolia, etc. “Everyday we could hear the war planes fly over, the gunshots, and bombs exploding all the time. It was terrifying but we had to live with it. I mean what were we to do,” she said. Her family suffered because of the war. They had little food and as parents, were restless through fear of Vietnamese soldiers coming to attack in the dark of night. It was hardest when her two sons were drafted into the army, but luckily they both came back alive and she thanks God for that.

At the end of the war around 1975 after the Americans withdrew, Vietnamese soldiers bombarded over to Laos and started killing Hmong People left and right along with other minorities. This caused thousands of people including Chao and her family to become fugitives. They weren’t safe and had no home anymore. Her husband then, got everyone, extended family included, together and got ready to leave at dusk of that day. Many other Hmong families at the same time left too, and if from the same town they would all meet up and travel together for protection and aid. Some traveled as long as one week and some couple days, but it didn’t matter for the enemy was out there, somewhere. It was all a matter of running for their lives and getting to their destination, Thailand. There, it had refuge for them; Vietnamese soldiers couldn’t attack them there. “I can still remember the jungles we went through. We couldn’t stop for nothing and had to see so many die to the point where we wanted to so badly go back and kill the enemy ourselves!” Chao exclaims with a tint of anger in her voice.

It was at this point and time when her husband left her. He was on guard when they were discovered by a troop of Vietnamese soldiers and as he ran to warn the others he was shot in the leg. Even after being shot he managed to get the stress signal through to the civilians and others, in which they were able to escape. However, before he reached his hideout he was brutally gunned down, while she and their kids watched in horror. They waited until dark to recover his body. She was so devastated that she wasn’t going to go on, but her children forced her to go. She wouldn’t budge and kept saying, “No, no, let me stay…let me stay!”

“My mom was in shock and disbelief. She kept saying that she was going to die with my father and with that wouldn’t continue,” said Nhia Vue Yang, one of her two remaining sons that she lives with. Not too long after the death of her husband they arrived in the refugee camps of Thailand where she spent about the next ten years of her life.

Yet, from that point on it didn’t mark happiness at all. Within those ten years she lost 7 of her 12 children, 4 sons and three daughters due to sicknesses. To add to that she lost many grandchildren too. “The refuges were small and had little to eat. People got selfish and corrupted. Also sanitary conditions were just horrible. Our lifestyle had changed dramatically, but why? We were the same people who used to be friendly and caring.” She then spent those years there trying to relax, but still wept over those who left her.

Her life as she knows it has been all losses. “I never thought that I would see my own children and grandchildren die before I do. No parent does,” her voice begins to fade off as her hands go up to wipe the tears rolling down her check.

Then about ten years later in 1992 Chao, her two sons and their family, after applying to come to the U.S., got accepted and immigrated to the U.S. in hope of a better future. Once in the U.S. things didn’t get any better for her family and her. She didn’t know the language, the people, culture, or anything. It was too hard to do anything. Chao exclaims, “It felt as though I was reborn and this marked the start of a new life in a foreign country.” She to this day has never adjusted to the American way of life because she says it’s too late for her to learn.

Later, in 1995 her youngest son Chue Yang passed away. Then in 1996 her granddaughter at the age of one year died of heart failure and to top all it off her daughter-in-law got remarried taking her favorite grandchildren away from her. They live about four hours away in St. Paul, MN.

From there on she began to see life as pain and darkness. She lives day-to-day inside her home never going out to see anything or anyone. For her, life is full of negatives, but she is making the best of things. All you do is lose, from your home to loved ones to your way of life. She says softly, “It’s been hard but I’ll see them all again one day.” For her it is a “life in the shadows”.