Where the Wind Leads

by Dr. Vinh Chung

  But Jenny put in only one year at Arkansas before moving to Virginia to live with Grandmother Truong, and a year later she was married to a man from my mother’s hometown of Bac Lieu—a match that was assisted by Grandmother Truong.

  Bruce was next in line, and my father’s expectations for Bruce were especially high because he was the oldest son. Bruce had always been clever and inventive, but he was only one grade behind Jenny, and he faced many of the same academic challenges that she did. In high school Bruce was a C student, but that did not diminish my father’s hope that he would become a doctor. If he just applied himself more, my father told him, he could still make it happen.

  But applying himself was the problem for Bruce. He grew up with a close circle of Vietnamese friends, and they all went off to the University of Arkansas together. There were two things they shared in common: since they all came to America at about the same age, they all had struggled through school, and since school was difficult for them, they all liked to party more than study. Bruce’s grades suffered as a result, and he began to struggle with the demanding premed curriculum. He managed to make it through biology and chemistry, but when it came to organic chemistry, physics, and biochemistry, he hit a wall. He just could not do it, and that was when he knew he would never be a doctor.

  At the end of Bruce’s second year, my father called Bruce home. He was furious with Bruce. He thought his firstborn son had wasted an opportunity that he himself had never had, an opportunity that my father made possible for Bruce through years of backbreaking labor and sacrifice. Bruce told our father that he had tried his best, but the goal of becoming a doctor was just beyond his ability; my father, however, couldn’t hear it—he was just too overwhelmed by disappointment, grief, and a tragic feeling of loss.

  That might sound like one of my father’s overreactions, but it was the reaction of a refugee. When an average American boy goes off to college and parties a little too much his first semester, it might merit a lecture and a stern warning from his parents—but in our family there was no margin for error. The path we walked was narrow, and when Bruce stepped off that path ever so slightly, my father was devastated.

  Bruce didn’t fail college—he only failed to become a doctor, as do thousands of other college students every year who start premed programs and decide later to change majors. But my father’s deepest hopes and dreams were invested in his oldest son, and I think when Bruce dropped out of college, my father felt his own dreams dashed to pieces. He sent Bruce to work at O.K. Foods, which was the worst job any of us could imagine, and Bruce obediently worked there until Chungking Chinese Restaurant opened at the end of the summer.

  Yen was next. She was a good student in high school, and she enrolled at the University of Arkansas in the fall of 1988. Her first year went well, but when she heard my father’s idea of opening a family restaurant, she caught the vision. Yen had experience working in restaurants, and she believed that with her help the restaurant just might become a way for everyone in our family to succeed. She made the decision to postpone her education after her freshman year, and for the next five years she lived at home and worked in the restaurant.

  Nikki never did like school. She was younger when she arrived in America, so she was able to pick up English much more easily than Jenny, Bruce, or Yen. But Nikki didn’t like to read, and she didn’t like to study—it just didn’t interest her. When she graduated from high school, she didn’t bother to apply to any colleges; she just went to work in the restaurant with the rest of us.

  One day Nikki walked into the restaurant with a suitcase. When she set it on the table and opened it, there was a mannequin head inside wearing a wig, and she announced to all of us that she had decided to go to beauty school. We were all shocked at first, but my mother just asked her if she was sure that was really what she wanted to do, and when Nikki said yes, my mother was fine with it. To everyone’s surprise, my father was fine with it too. I’m not sure he ever expected Nikki to become a doctor, and it wasn’t because she lacked intelligence. I think my father knew she just wasn’t interested.

  Then came Thai. Thai was an excellent student and graduated fourth in his high school class of 318. Because of his academic success, he qualified for an Arkansas Top Ten Graduates scholarship, and along with his other grants and loans, it covered his tuition, his books, and even his room and board. Thai even had a little money left over, so he sent it home to my mother and father. When Jenny was in college, she did the same thing: she worked at the university library, and at the end of every week she mailed her paycheck home—every penny. Even as college students, everyone contributed to the family.

  But Thai continued to be accident-prone, and during his junior year of college, he was involved in a serious car accident that knocked him unconscious and put him in the hospital. He suffered no permanent injuries, but his grades suffered for the rest of the year. He still graduated with honors, but admission to medical school was extremely competitive, and his MCAT scores were not quite high enough to get in. He applied three times and was even wait-listed, but after his third rejection he decided not to try again.

  When my father found out, he was crushed—and for the fifth time, because not one of his five older children had succeeded in becoming a doctor. It was hard for Thai to think that he had let my father down because he had come the closest of all of them. I think Thai best illustrates the high expectation of success and zero tolerance for failure that existed in my family. Thai was a boy who arrived in America unable to speak a single word of English, yet he was able to finish fourth in his high school class and graduate with honors from a four-year university. How is it possible that a performance like that could be considered failure? Like his brother Bruce, Thai didn’t fail—he only failed to become a doctor.

  I come from a family of failures. While working in Virginia and raising a family, Jenny managed to go back to college and finish an associate degree in business. While working full-time at the restaurant, all Bruce did was take courses in his spare time until he had an undergraduate degree in cytotechnology and a master’s degree in science management. Yen spent years juggling work and part-time classes but stopped with only a four-year degree in nuclear medicine technology. Poor Nikki worked at the restaurant until it closed, then worked part-time and put herself through college to only get a bachelor’s degree in elementary education. And Thai was a failure too; he graduated with honors in biology and was willing to settle for a master’s in information systems.

  My five older siblings have five undergraduate degrees and two master’s degrees among them. That’s the kind of failure that most parents dream of for their children. If you ask my father today if he is disappointed in any of his children in any way, he will tell you, “Absolutely not!” and he means it. He is extremely proud of everything his children have accomplished, from Jenny right on down to Du. All he ever wanted was the very best for each of us, but when we were growing up, his passion for us to succeed was compounded by his fear that we might fail, and that placed a burden on us that was sometimes difficult to bear.

  When Thai decided not to apply for medical school again, my father turned to me. I was next in line to become a doctor, and I was still on track to fulfill his wishes. I had the grades, I had the determination, and I had a plan for my future: I would enroll at the University of Arkansas just as my brothers and sisters had, I would do whatever people do to become a doctor, and then I would return to Fort Smith to live out my life as a very big fish in a very small pond. It sounded good to me, and I couldn’t imagine how a plan like that could possibly be improved.

  I had a plan, but I had no vision. I didn’t even know what vision was—but I was about to meet a girl who had enough vision for both of us.

  Thirty-Nine

  AIMING FOR THE STARS

  LEISLE CHUNG WAS BORN ON A SMALL FARM IN Seongnam, South Korea, in 1975. The farm belonged to her grandfather. Her father, Han, had been born and raised there along with his older brother, Ka
e Hoon, and five other siblings. Farming is a hard way of life even in good times, but in 1975, the people of South Korea were still struggling to recover from the devastation of the Korean War. Entire cities had been burned to the ground during that conflict, and almost three times more civilians died than soldiers. Leisle’s grandparents had been left dirt-poor, and Leisle’s father used to go to school with nothing to eat all day. Children from more fortunate families brought rice to eat, and if their family was especially prosperous, they even had an egg, while Leisle’s father could only sip his water and watch them eat.

  It cost money to go to school in Korea, just as it did in Vietnam, and when Han reached high school age, his father called him in one day and told him, “I can’t afford to send you to school anymore. You need to come home and work the farm so we can send your older brother to school.” As in most traditional Asian families, the priority went to the oldest son; everything the family did would be dedicated to making sure the oldest son became educated and successful, and then that son was expected to help the rest of the family.

  Han’s older brother was very intelligent and did well in school. He was even accepted to Seoul National University, the most prestigious college in all of Korea. But to continue funding Kae Hoon’s education, the family had to sell off parcels of the farm until there was barely enough land left to work. For Han it was like standing on an ice floe that was melting all around him and wishing he knew how to swim.

  What made it even more difficult for Han was that he was very intelligent too. He dreamed of all the places he wanted to go and the things he hoped to accomplish, but he was a common laborer trapped on a small farm with no education, money, or opportunity; and as he watched his older brother succeed, he saw his own future slipping away. But Han was a good son who remained loyal to the family and sacrificed his own future to help ensure his brother’s success, and after graduating from Seoul National University, Han’s brother pursued that success by moving to the United States.

  One day Han met a beautiful young woman named Sunny, and before long they fell in love and married. Following Asian tradition, Sunny moved in with her husband’s family, and it was painful and embarrassing for Han to see his young bride forced to share in his family’s poverty. Leisle was born the following year, and it was even more painful for Han when he saw that his wife had to walk to the river each day to wash the baby’s diapers just as poor Korean women had done for thousands of years.

  Han decided he was tired of waiting for his chance at success. Sunny agreed to remain in Korea with baby Leisle while her husband went ahead to the United States, and when he had found a decent job and had saved enough money, he would send for his wife and daughter to join him.

  Han’s previous work experience had been mostly in farming, so when he came to America, he first moved to Iowa to try working as a farmhand; but the long Iowa winter was more brutal than anything he had ever experienced in South Korea, and he decided not to stay. Just nine months after he arrived in the United States, Han was living in Denver with a steady job and a place to live, and he immediately sent for his wife and daughter. Little Leisle was almost a year and a half old by that time and didn’t even recognize her father at first; she was old enough to talk by then and she kept calling her father “Mister.”

  Once the family was reunited, they began to move from place to place in search of higher-paying jobs and better opportunities. Atlanta was their next stop, followed by Russellville, Arkansas, and they finally settled in the small town of Lincoln, Arkansas, about forty miles north of Fort Smith and only a few miles from the Oklahoma border. Lincoln was a tiny rural town of just fourteen hundred people, and the average income at the time was close to the poverty line. The ethnic makeup of the town could be described in one word: white. There were almost no blacks, the only Hispanics were the migrant Mexican workers who passed through town, and it was highly doubtful that anyone in Lincoln had ever met an Asian. That might not sound like a land of golden opportunity for a Korean family, but the town had one thing going for it: Lincoln had the cheapest land in all of Arkansas. Han and Sunny would be able to afford fifty acres of land, so they decided to settle, and Lincoln became their home.

  In some ways the story of Leisle’s family sounds a lot like my own: poor Asian family leaves their homeland and travels to America in search of opportunity. But there is one major difference in our stories, and its significance cannot be overstated: Leisle’s parents were immigrants while mine were refugees. Han and Sunny left Korea because they chose to; we left Vietnam because we had no choice. They chose America; America chose us. They hoped for a better life; we just hoped someone would take us in. Those seemingly minor details account for an enormous difference in the mind-set of an immigrant and a refugee: an immigrant is motivated by the desire for success while a refugee is often driven by the fear of failure.

  In Korea there had been no outlet for Han’s ambition, but in America he saw endless possibilities. He arrived with just two hundred dollars in his pocket, but he took every odd job he could find, even working as a janitor in a French restaurant, until he had saved enough money to buy a farm. When he first arrived, he didn’t know a word of English, so he taught himself by attending church services and going to public parks, where he could strike up conversations and learn. He was a voracious reader, and he was constantly studying and taking correspondence courses to expand his horizons. He was always experimenting with side businesses just to see what might catch on. He raised deer and planted an herbal garden; he started an Asian pear farm to see if he could sell pear cider and vinegar; he eventually developed a successful business, selling herbal remedies and alternative medicines. When a business failed, as most of them did, he was disappointed but never allowed himself to get discouraged because he believed that in a land of possibilities there was no such thing as a roadblock—only detours. Han and Sunny believed they could accomplish anything they set their minds to in America, and to me the most important thing they ever accomplished was passing that attitude on to their daughter.

  Leisle grew up surrounded by her father’s books, and in the margins she found notations scribbled in Korean and words and phrases circled and underlined to be looked up later. Her father didn’t read books; he devoured them, and Leisle learned to do the same. There was a small public library in Lincoln, and anyone checking out a book there was likely to find the name Leisle Chung written on the back because she read every age-appropriate book on the library’s shelves.

  Han and Sunny instilled in their daughter the belief that she could do anything. Han told Leisle that Koreans were naturally intelligent, and Sunny told her daughter that Koreans were simply superior people—but at the same time they taught her Christian humility, which allowed their daughter to be confident without becoming arrogant. It’s an attitude that ought to be instilled in every child: “I am a naturally intelligent person. I was born to be a superior student. Anything is possible for me if I work hard enough.”

  But Han and Sunny gave their daughter more than confidence; they also gave her discipline. School and study came before everything else, and nothing less than an A was acceptable. When Leisle was only in eighth grade, she took a yearlong high school course in geometry, and she finished one semester with a B—quite an achievement for a girl two years younger than everyone else in her class. But her parents said, “You obviously don’t understand the subject matter. You have to take the class again.” And she did. In ninth grade her parents made her repeat the entire year of geometry to prove that she was capable of getting an A. She wasn’t proving it to her parents; they already knew. She was proving it to herself.

  Han and Sunny also gave their daughter vision; they constantly challenged her to aim for the stars regardless of the outcome. In middle school Leisle ran for student council secretary and won. When she told her mother the good news, her mother asked, “Why didn’t you run for president?”

  “A popular boy was running for president,” she said. “I wouldn�
�t have won.”

  Sunny shook her head. “I would rather you go for the best and lose than try for second best and win.”

  It’s no surprise that in high school, Leisle was the president of every club she was in. Going for the best was her only option; it was the only thing her parents allowed her to do—and Leisle soon discovered that when she went for the best, she usually succeeded.

  I marvel sometimes at the power of the attitude that Leisle’s parents instilled in her. I came to America as a refugee from a despised country, so I constantly felt that I was weak, inferior, and second-class. Leisle’s parents taught her to be proud of her Korean heritage, so she constantly felt that she was strong, superior, and always top of the class.

  Han and Sunny were wise enough to recognize that they were only two voices in a town of fourteen hundred, and they knew it would be difficult to keep their daughter shooting for the stars if no one around her was doing the same. They wanted to expose their daughter to a community that valued achievement as much as they did. There was a Korean church in Springdale about forty-five minutes away, and they met on Saturdays because that was the only time the church building was available. There Leisle found an entire culture of adults who shared not only her parents’ Christian faith but their attitude toward achievement. She couldn’t help noticing that when their children went away to college, they always seemed to go to schools such as Duke, Stanford, and Georgetown. Three of Leisle’s cousins went to Harvard; one of them went on to Harvard Law School, one to Harvard Medical School, and one to Harvard Business School. Leisle grew up thinking that’s just what Asians did.