By Julie N. Huynh

September, 2000

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Like America's Christmas, Vietnam celebrates the Mid-Autumn Festival (also known as Tet Trung Thu) as their significant holiday. It is held on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month (which is September 12th this year). This is the time of the year where Vietnamese families plan special activities for their children. Vietnamese parents use Tet Trung Thu as an opportunity to show their love and appreciation for their children, and other loved ones. Like some other Vietnamese-American teenagers who are currently living in America, I still have the opportunity to celebrate this wonderful holiday with my family. My parents, fleeing a communist Vietnam for freedom, holds dear to this wonderful Vietnamese tradition.

Each year, we gather some close family friends together for an evening party to celebrate this holiday. Vietnamese foods are made including Moon Cakes, games are played, the traditional lion dance is performed (a dance where people dress up as lions), children enjoy lantern parades and mid-autumn songs. By the end of the night everyone is full with delicious foods and wonderful, delightful memories. All of this enjoyment can't help but make me think of all the other children back in my home country. Other children back in Vietnam, another homeland I've never known, are currently suffering from starvation and missing the one and only meaning in life: FREEDOM.

I would have to admit that I am one of the few fortunate Vietnamese-American teenagers here in America. Thanks to both my parents' hard work, I have been able to live a wonderful fourteen years here in this free country. I would never say that my family is rich, but we are successful enough to be able to enroll me in many extra-curricular activities. Occasionally when I look back at my life, I feel so terrible because I know at that very moment, millions of other teenagers back in Vietnam are suffering from physical and emotional pain. Statistics show that more than one third of all Vietnamese little girls and boys, age five and under, have stunted growth because of malnutrition. Instead of getting an education like I am, they have to help their family raise money by selling sandwiches, gum, and cigarettes, or by asking for money from tourists.

Ever since the war, in 1975, many families including my parents' had to escape from the cruel rulings of the Vietnamese Communist Party. Since then, everyone's life has been affected in a great way. Even though I was born and raised in America my whole life, I have always been very well informed by my dad about the on-going suffering in Vietnam. It is sad to say, Vietnam is now one of the poorest countries in the world. The large majority of the Vietnamese citizens are currently struggling to work and get money to feed their family. However, it is very difficult for them to do so. After reading the next few paragraphs, you will understand what life is like for an average citizen in Vietnam, and clearly see what I mean.

The average minimum wage in Vietnam is about $40 a month (US currency) - a rate that cannot even cover the food cost for an individual, which runs at about $63 dollars a month. Workers are being paid less and less everyday. For example, female workers at Keyhinge Toys Co. in Da Nang were paid as little as 6 cents an hour for a 70 hour work week ($4.20 a week), producing McDonalds Happy Meal toys. At a Nike factory near Ho Chi Minh City, workers were forced to work 65 hours a week for just $10. To my understanding, here in America, we make and spend $10 like it is nothing. Many times in my life, I have taken for granted what I have. When I think about it, the money that I spend on just my clothes itself, could feed a whole neighborhood of people in Vietnam. The money that my mother and I use to buy a Mocha Java Frosty (a coffee drink), is what one individual makes in an entire week!

Getting an education is also hard for children and teenagers to do. The majority of people who are guaranteed an education are those who have relatives working for the communist government. Otherwise, most people have to work during the day to help provide money for their parents. Others who don't have jobs pick garbage at the dumpsters. The thought of little children and people my age doing that astonishes me a great deal. To me, getting an education and finishing school is a first priority. In Vietnam, money for tuition is very hard to earn, so most people just end up working and don't go to school.

Often times people take advantage of a lot of things they have because it will always be there, for example, education. Many people in America drop out of high school, either because of personal situations or because they don't feel the need to learn. If you gave the children and teenagers in Vietnam the choice to go to school or work, I can guarantee you that 99% of those people will choose school instead of work.

My parents have always told me to support and protect this country like it is my own, but also to never forget my homeland, Vietnam. I am extremely thankful for being able to grow up in America and to be able to have all the freedom that America offers. But after writing and re-thinking all of the things I had stated above, it is hard for me to celebrate the traditional Tet Trung Thu, as I have done years before. Knowing that my relatives and millions of other people back in Vietnam are living under conditions that are horribly indescribable and with Vietnamese Communist rulings that you could almost call slavery, it is hard to live such a wonderful life here in America where everything needed is accessible. I wish I could share part of my wonderful life here with others in Vietnam, especially sharing with them the most precious thing that many of us in America take for granted: FREEDOM.

E-mail: JewelzH413@hotmail.com