When asked “What does it mean to be Vietnamese?“, the talented chef Peter Cuong Franklin answered:
“Being Vietnamese means appreciating our heritage and culture. It’s a modern identity that is respectful, proud, open-minded and connected to Vietnam and kindred spirits from around the world. My experience living abroad for many years in America, London, Hong Kong, and now back in Saigon, helps me appreciate our Vietnamese way of life all the more.”
I now wholeheartedly agree with his sentiments, but unlike him, as of six months ago, I was still utterly confused about my identity after the years I spent in America and the UK. In 2019, for my Medium blog post, I wrote:
“There are Vietnamese kids out there who study abroad like me, shuttling between Vietnam and America trying to make sense of themselves. And I will tell them the truth: it is okay to be confused for now. It is okay to be lost for the moment. It is okay to not be sure whether you are more Vietnamese or more American, for your identity is not one, but diverse and multiple.
I will continue writing to let people know that they are not alone, that someone else has also felt the same feelings of uncertainty and insecurity about their identity. I hope to help many others fall into security slowly, then all at once, one story at a time. Then I might be able to reconcile the duality of my identity, and so will all the kids out there who are caught between two worlds.”
Late last March, Covid-19 turned everyone’s world upside down, and as I was scrambling to pack up my belongings to return to Vietnam from the UK, the uncertainty of the future, along with the uncertainty of my personal identity that had been lurking in the back of my mind forever, honestly terrified me. I had been away and detached from the Vietnamese way of life for so long, and the prospects of living in Vietnam indefinitely to weather out the global pandemic truly intimidated me.
Having lived in Vietnam continuously for six months now, I can now confidently, proudly, and unabashedly scream at the top of my lungs how tremendously proud I am to be Vietnamese. Since Vietnam has been handling the pandemic so well, we have been able to carry on with our lives relatively normally to eat, drink, converse, and embrace, all activities which facilitate the deepest human desire to connect with one another.
This time period also marks a remarkable milestone in my life where I’m able to listen to the voice within to connect with my Vietnamese roots and identity, which I unfortunately and unintentionally neglected all those years abroad. Being able to reconnect with old friends and make new ones amidst the mind-numbingly good food scene, intoxicating coffee culture, bustling contemporary art scene, fast-growing economy, as well as rediscovering Vietnam’s ~4000-year history through many media such as literature, music, and architecture, I’m so incredibly grateful.
To describe the state of being I’m in, I think no one puts it more aptly than the highly influential Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, “I have already arrived, I am already home. I have stopped wandering.”
