This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
251 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10010
Text copyright © 2019 by Ching Yeung Russell
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. Little Bee Books is a trademark of Little Bee Books, Inc., and associated colophon is a trademark of Little Bee Books, Inc.
Manufactured in the United States of America LAK 0519
First Edition
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-4998-0875-9
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To Blake and Morgan, my grandchildren,
and to all the refugees in the world
In memory of my cousin, Chi-Yen Chan
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
PART ONE: May 10, 1979 Cholon, Vietnam
1 | THE LAST MEAL
2 | MY BABA
3 | MY WISH
4 | DAIGO AND DEE DEE
5 | SURPRISE
6 | READY
7 | THE JADE KWUN YUM PENDANT
8 | DEPARTURE
9 | THE RAID
10 | WANTING TO GO HOME
11 | PATROL BOAT?
12 | THE CABIN
13 | I AM SO SICK
14 | LOOKING FOR LOVED ONES
15 | BREAKFAST
16 | UNITED
17 | DAIGO’S FATE
18 | THEY BREAK THEIR PROMISE
19 | SOUTH CHINA SEA
20 | SEARCHING
21 | A GOOD LUCK SIGN
22 | PIRATES
23 | THE REAL PIRATES
24 | OUR BOAT WILL SINK
25 | SOMEONE SHOUTS FROM ABOVE
26 | MINDING
27 | THE DEAD BODY
28 | SO QUIET, LIKE DEATH
29 | LAND!
30 | PIRATES ONCE AGAIN
31 | OUR SINCERE THANKS
32 | SAILING TO THE LAND
33 | THE OUTRAGE
PART TWO: May 18, 1979 Somewhere in Malaysia
34 | THE MORNING OF THE EIGHTH DAY
35 | THE HORROR
36 | THE RESCUE
37 | MY DECISION
38 | ENDING SEVEN DAYS ON THE WATER
39 | INVESTIGATION
40 | THE EVIDENCE
41 | THE WARNING
42 | THE SALTY RICE
43 | WATER
44 | THE FIRST NIGHT
45 | THE RED CROSS, OUR SAVIOR
46 | GOING TO A REFUGEE CAMP
47 | THE PLACE WE ARE GOING TO SETTLE
48 | HOUSE WITHOUT WALLS
49 | GETTING INFORMATION
50 | THE STINKY LATRINES
51 | THE FRESH, COLD WELL WATER
52 | THE FIRST NIGHT SLEEPING IN OUR HOUSE
53 | THE CRY
54 | THE HERBAL DOCTOR
55 | DEE DEE’S CONDITION
56 | THE NECESSITIES
57 | OUR FIRST COOKED MEAL
58 | LIFE IN THE TEMPORARY CAMP
59 | LEECHES
60 | UNCLE MAKING FRIENDS
62 | DAO AND I MAKING FRIENDS
63 | DEE DEE, NAM, AND THEIR NEW FRIENDS
64 | SHARING OUR DREAM
65 | THE BAD NEWS AND GOOD NEWS
66 | UNCLE’S PLAN
67 | THE ENGLISH LESSON
68 | TO UNCLE’S SURPRISE
69 | THE FIREWOOD
70 | UNCLE’S BREAK
71 | DAO’S SECRET
72 | A SUDDEN STRIKE
73 | DAO
74 | I AM MAD AT MYSELF
75 | NOTHING COMES OUT
76 | THE GRIEF
77 | THREE GROUPS
78 | GOODBYE, DAO
79 | WAITING
80 | BOARDING THE BUS
81 | DEE DEE
82 | THE UNKNOWN
PART THREE: June 11, 1979 South China Sea
83 | TOWARD THE OPEN SEA
84 | WATER
85 | THE NIGHTMARE
86 | INSIDE THE CABIN
87 | DRIFTING
88 | WE SEE LIGHT
89 | TOWING AGAIN
90 | THEIR SPIRITS ARE HIGH
91 | RELAXED
92 | MIDDLE OF NOWHERE
93 | THE BROKEN COMPASS
94 | THE OLD LADY IN BLACK
95 | AUNTIE
96 | UNCLE’S WORDS
97 | A SMALL LEAF
98 | ON THE FIFTH DAY AT SEA
99 | DEE DEE’S QUESTION
100 | ON THE MORNING OF THE SIXTH DAY
101 | THE BURDEN
102 | I AM BEATEN
103 | AT DUSK ON THE SIXTH DAY
104 | EXCEPT FOR ME!
105 | THE RUSSIAN SHIP
106 | I CAN’T BELIEVE IT!
107 | NO LONGER A PILE OF DEAD FISH
108 | HOORAY!
109 | GOODBYE, KINDHEARTED RUSSIAN CAPTAIN
PART FOUR: June 19, 1979 Indonesia
110 | TOWARD INDONESIA
111 | SEPARATING?
112 | THE HOUSING
113 | MY REWARD
114 | THE LAST THING I WANT TO DO
115 | WHERE ARE MY FRIENDS?
116 | DRINKING WATER
117 | AN EPIDEMIC BREAKS OUT
118 | MOURNING AUNTIE
119 | CONCERN
120 | MAKING NEW FRIENDS
121 | WAITING TO BE INTERVIEWED
122 | OUR NAMES ARE CALLED
123 | THE INTERVIEW
124 | UNCLE AND NAM ARE INTERVIEWED
125 | ON OUR OWN
126 | JUST IN CASE
127 | GOODBYE, UNCLE; GOODBYE, NAM
128 | NO ONE THERE
129 | THE NEW CAMP
130 | MR. AND MRS. PHAM
131 | LIKE A VILLAGE
132 | UNITED WITH MY COUSIN
133 | LIVING WITH COUSIN TAM
134 | RESTLESS
135 | ON MY BIRTHDAY
136 | LETTER FROM BABA
137 | MY APPRECIATION
138 | THE LESSONS CONTINUE
139 | UNCLE’S STUDENTS
140 | UNCLE HEALS HIMSELF BY HELPING OTHERS
141 | THE FAREWELL MEAL
142 | TELLING DAO
143 | FAREWELL
144 | THE JOURNEY
145 | I AM NO LONGER AN ORPHAN
EPILOGUE
GLOSSARY
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PROLOGUE
I met Lam and Dee Dee (their fictionalized names), the protagonists in this story, in 1986. I knew they had been boat people from Vietnam. At first, this didn’t excite me. Later, when we grew closer, they talked about what had happened to them while they were on their journey. Theirs was a truly hazardous experience, one that most people could not even imagine. That’s why I decided to work on their story. I interviewed them both many times, asking them why they wanted to leave their hometown and about the circumstances in their country in 1979, when they tried to escape.
The information that follows may aid you in your understanding as you journey through this book.
The North Vietnamese Communists took over Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, on April 30, 1975. The new Communist government mostly targeted ethnic Chinese, also called Hoa, Han, or Chinese Vietnamese, and forced them out of the country. Many of these ethnic Chinese lived in the Cholon district of Saigon. They had their own traditional culture, language, and schools, even though their schools were required
to offer Vietnamese lessons. Although they made up only about 5.5 percent of the population in South Vietnam (more than half of them were Cantonese, and the Teochew, Hakka, Hokkien, and Hainanese made up the rest), since they were favored by the French when they colonized Vietnam, they controlled up to 70 to 80 percent of the commerce. The new government closed down the privately owned businesses in early 1978. They seized their businesses and properties and sent many businessmen to reeducation camps, which were located in the remote countryside. Many of those who were sent there didn’t come back. Some of them died from hard work or snake bites, or they were killed by the land mines. That’s why they wanted to escape.
Some young men, like Daigo, the older brother in this story, fled the country to avoid being drafted to fight against China at the border between China and Vietnam in 1979, in which tens of thousands of young people died on both sides. Even though the war officially ended in March of 1979, a couple of months before Lam and Dee Dee escaped, some feared that the war would erupt again and that they would be conscripted to fight.
Some people who left Vietnam were seeking political asylum. Those who had fought for the South Vietnamese against the Vietcong (North Vietnam Communists) or who had aided the Americans during the war were considered to be enemies of the country and were sent to reeducation camps or prosecuted.
Some people fled their country because they didn’t want to live under communist rule and wanted to seek a better life for themselves and their children. That’s why more than one million Vietnamese and ethnic Chinese left Vietnam. Most of them fled by boat.
According to my sources, people over sixteen had to pay eight taels—more than ten ounces—of gold for a seat on a boat to escape. For children under sixteen, the price was six taels. The gold was reportedly shared between the new government and the people who organized the escapes. After giving the government their share, they would use part of the gold to buy a boat and hire a crew to operate it for the voyage. Therefore, these escapes were open. But sometimes these escapes were arranged on the black market, and only the organizers were paid. In that case, the authorities would try to impede these escapes. That’s why people were very careful.
Most of the boat people didn’t make it. Many of them died at sea from starvation, dehydration, or drowning, or they were killed by pirates. Even if they were lucky and made it to one of the Southeast Asian countries, many were turned back toward the sea. Some said initially Singapore was the first country to prevent the boat people from entering its coastlines because of their limited land. Singapore provided the refugees with water, food, and fuel before turning them away. (Later, however, they couldn’t prevent others from landing. Between 1975 and 1979, nearly five thousand refugees came to Singapore, most of whom were picked up by commercial ships.) However, after Singapore first turned away the boat people, other countries soon began to refuse them sanctuary.
Since the coastline of Malaysia is long, many refugees landed there easily when they first spotted land. The Malaysian government let them stay temporarily and waited for other countries to accept them. But the progress was too slow. They could not adequately provide for the great number of refugees who arrived in this burgeoning armada. That’s why they had to tow the latecomers, with water and food provided, back to sea, hoping they would land elsewhere.
Refugees were housed in camps in Hong Kong, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Some refugees had to stay in these camps for more than ten years. According to published reports, over twenty-one years, more than 840,000 refugees landed in the countries of Southeast Asia. More than 755,000 of these were resettled in the West, and more than 81,000 were eventually repatriated back to Vietnam under an agreement with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Neither Lam nor Dee Dee knew the places where they settled down temporarily in Malaysia. When they lived in the camps, they witnessed people dying from snake bites, from diarrhea due to unsanitary conditions, or from drowning while fishing on rafts that they made.
In addition to hearing their story, I also visited a refugee camp in Hong Kong in 1992. (There refugees could learn English or simple skills inside the camp and some even had permission to go outside the camp to work.) Despite the fact that some refugees who had fled Vietnam up to a decade before were still there and were facing being sent back to Vietnam under a plan by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, they told me their stories about how they got out of Vietnam and how horrible their journey was at sea. House Without Walls is a story based on Lam and Dee Dee’s accounts, other first-person narratives I heard during my visit to the Hong Kong refugee camp, and my own creativity. In writing this story, I have gained tremendous respect for all people throughout the world who risk their lives for freedom and a better life.
In House Without Walls, I strove to portray the perilous journey that some of these refugees faced when they fled their homeland. There are many more cruel details of the escapes. Because this book is for young readers, I edited out some of the more shocking details of cruelty I heard about, but I certainly did not shy away from some of the grittier aspects of the refugee experience. I also emphasized that no matter what life throws at them, children are children—they will still find a way to play, to laugh, and to find joy despite gruesome circumstances—despite living in a “house without walls.”
PART ONE
May 10, 1979
Cholon, Vietnam
1 | THE LAST MEAL
An hour before dawn,
Ah Mah and my ma want us to have a full stomach
before we leave home.
They stayed up all night, fixing my favorite wontons
and Daigo and Dee Dee’s beloved Singapore fried noodles.
Daigo and Dee Dee eat little.
I don’t feel like eating, either,
but I toy the food with a spoon.
My favorite wontons are left
uneaten.
I am sad to leave my family.
I am sad to leave my home.
I am uncertain of this dangerous gamble.
We could drown in the ocean,
capsized by the high waves and strong winds.
We could be robbed by pirates,
raped by them,
or sold to other places as prostitutes.
We could die from starvation or dehydration
in the wide-open sea.
Our lives will be in nature’s hands.
But I am willing to take those risks.
For I know
Kwun Yum will
bless Dee Dee,
Daigo, and
me.
2 | MY BABA
I have fear and hatred in my heart
as the plainclothes police
from the new government
come to our house
unexpectedly,
anytime,
day or night,
just to interrogate Ma or Ah Mah,
to ask where Baba is.
Baba escaped arrest two years ago.
We owned a small family-run grocery.
We feared the new government
would eventually send him,
like other business owners,
to a reeducation camp
where he might die from a snake bite
or hard, risky work, like
clearing the jungle, digging wells,
or sweeping land mines without proper equipment.
That’s why my baba risked his life,
though reluctant to separate from his whole family,
to become one of the boat people of 1976.
Now he is settled in San Francisco, in America.
3 | MY WISH
I wish that
I could follow in Baba’s footsteps.
When the police come,
they don’t want to leave.
They stall, staying
as long as they please.
We are powerless, just watching
them search our
house and
try to take my ma’s gold jewelry.
They watch our
every move,
like ghost shadows
we can’t get rid of.
They prick up their ears,
eavesdropping on our conversations.
We can’t even talk!
I wish that
I could run far,
far away
to be united with Baba
where
nobody would keep a hateful eye
on us or follow us;
where
nobody would enter our home
like it was a public building.
4 | DAIGO AND DEE DEE
Daigo is fifteen.
He has to go away
to avoid being drafted
to fight with China at the border.
Dee Dee is seven.
He will go with Daigo,
to make a better life for himself, Ma says.
Ah Mah secretly arranged their escape
just as the war erupted
a few months ago.
I envy them
because they are boys.
They will carry on our family name.
Not me.
Not a girl.
5 | SURPRISE
But then, surprisingly, Ma and Ah Mah
say they want me to go with my brothers.
That way, I can cook for them
and take care of them
until they get married.
Then their wives will cook for them
and take care of them,
like my ma does;
like Ah Mah does.
I am overjoyed.
As long as I can get away from the police,
I don’t mind
even if we might not
be reunited with Baba,
as my family is hoping for,
but end up somewhere else in the world.
So Ma and Ah Mah collect eighteen taels of pure gold
for the three of us to get on a boat.
It is the usual price for a child under sixteen:
six taels for a child,
eight taels for an adult.
6 | READY
Ah Mah looks at the clock on the wall,
afraid that the police will come in.
She hurries us to get ready.
We are not allowed to carry anything by hand.
It would arouse the suspicion of the police