Va
T. Xiong experienced the horrors of the war and came to this country in 1979.
I am going to talk about how we moved to different places and
the suffocation of my people in Laos and Thailand.
We moved because of the Vietnamese soldiers living in North Vietnam.
They started the war with our country.
They fought and fought until January 1975.
We all ran to Thailand and we were very poor.
There were dead and sick people from that move and our soldiers were
killed by the Vietnamese. We walked
to Hang Her and they killed a lot of us and forced us to go back. We were living
there until 1978 and then we moved back. The
Vietnamese poisoned our people by dropping poison from airplanes.
They put poison in our water and made us drink and in our food and we ate
it. The kids and the elders starved
and some died. Some people had headaches and fevers and they died
also. We moved to Ban Napho and we
stayed and then the Vietnamese attacked. We
secretly escaped at night to Thailand. We
did not have any boats to ride so we took bamboo to make rafts to ride across
the river. Half of the people
drowned and died in the river. We
crossed the river in January of 1979. Then
we arrived in Thailand but a lot of our people were gone.
They had starved, gotten sick, and some died of fever.
Many of our people were killed by the soldiers that followed.
It was very sad. We
did not know how to speak Thai and they took our money and beat us a lot. There
were people who were very poor. My
husband and I did not have any money because the Thais took it all.
We lived there for ten days and we did not have any food or any water.
They did not give us anything and we were very poor.
Some people had relatives who sent money, food and water to them.
We did not have any relatives and our money was all gone.
We lived there for only ten days and we went to Ban Vinai.
We lived in Ban Vinai and we looked for work to do and tried to find food
to eat. We lived there until
November 23 than we got ready to move to America.
We landed at Seattle, WA on December 10, 1979.
We lived for four years studying and working and than on August 23, 1984,
we moved to Wausau. We lived here,
worked, and studied for one year. My
husband worked and I worked. He
worked for eight years at a company in the wood section and retired.
I work at the Senior Aid Program and I watch the elders and I have worked
for ten years. Now I’m still
working. We’re old and we get SSI,
but we still think that we should help the people.
I’m still working, but my husband is retired and is at home babysitting
our grandchildren. We have four
daughter-in-laws and one son-in-law and we have lots of grandchildren.
Our sons and daughters are all working. We still want to go back to our
country. If we go, the kids
probably won’t be able to make a living.
If the Vietnamese go back to their own country, we’ll probably go, but
if they don’t go, we’ll have to wait longer and see what happens.
We don’t want to go yet because we think this country is good and our
children are doing well in school and working.
Some are buying houses and we bought a house also.
If we are living like we are these days, we probably won’t go back.
If the Vietnamese go back to their country and our relatives and friends
go back to live in our homeland, we’ll probably go.
If they don’t go, we’ll probably not go either.
We will wait to see what happens in the future and I want the kids to
keep on trying to learn more and learn what ever is possible.
If one day we go back to our homeland, they will be able to make a
living. If we go now I think
that our kids won’t be able to make a living like we did back then.
We didn’t have machines and we used our strength and energy to work the
fields and sewing. The people in this country go to school and work for good
wages, and that’s good. If
you want to learn something, make a goal and try to learn it, so that one day
when we go back to Laos and Thailand you’ll be able to make a living and keep
your reputation. This is all I’m
going to say and in Laos back then they were always shooting shotguns and bombs
were always going off. My
grandfather was killed by Vietnamese soldiers and now we don’t have a
grandfather. There’s only my
husband and myself. My mother
died from disease, but grandpa was killed by soldiers.
When we think about these things, we don’t want to go back, but if Vang
Pao went back and other people went, we would go also.
I think it would still be a little longer if the Vietnamese are still
around. We don’t want to go.
Since we came to this country, we don’t know what is happening to our
homeland and I’ve been here for 20 years and I don’t know what is happening
over there. The only way to know is
to go back and live there, but we think it’s still the same like the old days.
Can you tell us about your favorite Hmong custom or tradition?
The Hmongs like to wear our traditional clothes and I like to sing.
The old folks don’t know how to dance.
Whenever we have a party, we don’t need to pay, we just all come, but
the ones that we need to pay for is when people want special ones.
If it’s the ones where we all participate, we don’t have to pay at
all. Whoever wants to come can just
come. The Hmong like it like that.
When you have a feast you pay nothing, you just invite everybody and eat.
The Hmongs didn’t have Easter and Christmas when we lived in Laos and
Thailand. The ones that believed in
Jesus went to church and had Christmas and Easter. We didn’t have a lot of things.
The people who don’t go to church don’t know about Christmas and they
only know about the Hmong New Year and they mostly know about feasts.
We only have those. We know
that in a certain month we plant our seeds and in November the crops would be
harvested. After harvesting in November, we have the New Year in
December and one or two months later we’ll have to do the whole process over
and we don’t know if there’s anything happening.
We have fall, and spring in Laos, but we did not know about it and we
just knew that was the month for this and that month is for that.
Over here there is four seasons. Over
there, there is only spring, fall and summer.
We do not have winter when it snows.
Now in Laos and Thailand it would be bright and sunny and very warm and
there would not be any rain. Here
it’s snowing but in Thailand and Laos it would be dry and summer.
Later on in the year when it’s summer here, it would be winter over
there. When it’s night over there
it would be morning and it’s just the opposite.
Can you tell us about when you got married?
Marriage is the same. When
we lived over there the 18 year olds would get married also.
In the old days you had to be 18 years old to get married.
When we moved to Ban Vinai a lot of people were living together and there
were some that married young. Before
the war we had to be 18 years old. When
we lived together the guy comes and engages her in her house and after a year
the wedding will be held for the people who do big weddings.
If the people who do a small one, the engagement lasts three days and
then they have the wedding and the party. So
it depends if the parents are holding it or the son-in-law for us.
It wasn’t that difficult. When
we did that we didn’t have to tell how many people could come.
When we had it we just announce to the village that we were having a
wedding and to bring their kids and the elders.
We didn’t care how many people. When
the daughter and son-in-law are going, they have to wear our traditional clothes
in order to leave.
Can you tell us about your children?
When we lived in Laos there were no hospitals, so we never got
check-ups. When ladies have kids
they had them in their own homes and when someone got hurt, we just give them
medicine. When we don’t do
traditional things we pray to God. When
the people who don’t believe in God, just do all these traditional things to
help them out.
If you had the chance to go to back to the same life before the war in
your country, would you go back?
I really want my old life back but if it’s like the old days where we go
and work in the fields with no doctors or hospitals, we don’t want to go.
Do you have a message for young people today about being Hmong?
I don’t have anything to say, but you kids just keep up the good work
of going to school and you’ll have a good life when you are 18 years old.
Do you have any other stories you would like to share or something?
The owl is staying and then the owl just hoots and it eats.
Then it’s afraid and then it flies and flew over monkey. Then the
monkey gets scared and it falls off the tree and rolls and hit a tree that has
seeds. The seeds roll and get
into the owls eyes and the owl cries out “I can’t see!”
The owl was scared and it swung so much that he fell and hit a tree
trunk. It made the nest fall and the baby owls were in it.
It made the baby owls crippled. The
owl was not happy, so she talked to a monk.
The owl said to the monk “Monk, why, the tree trunk made all my
children crippled.” The monk went
to ask the trunk and the trunk said “ I live here and I don’t know.
The ants were going to eat me, so I accidentally hit the baby birds and
that made the baby birds crippled.” Then
the monk went to ask the ants. The
ants said, “It was the owls fault, it was going to eat me and I accidentally
ate the tree trunk.” Then he went
to ask the owl and the owl said, “I don’t know, I was here and then the
seeds came down and fell into my eyes and then I couldn’t see.
That’s why I accidentally almost ate the ants.”
Then he went to ask the tree. “I
don’t know. I was living here and
then something came and hit me, so I accidentally got some seeds into the owls
eyes.” He went to ask the seeds
and the seeds said, “ I don’t know, something came rolling down the hill and
I was scared, so I accidentally dropped some seeds.” Then the hill said, “ I
was here and the owl hooted and I was scared, so I ran into the tree.” The monk went to ask the owl, “Why were you hooting.”
“I was living and than I was very lonely, so that’s why I hooted,” said
the owl. The monk hit the owls head
and then it became so big and than turned the head.
The owl went to ask the spider to make the head smaller.
So now the owls can turn their head any way they want.
Now the baby owls are all crippled and have broken legs.
Whenever they walk they walk like cripples because the tree hit the
birds.
Oral
History Project 
