Stephen Magagnini, The Sacramento (Calif.) Bee
Posted 1/28/2002 12:00:00 AM

2001 Distinguished WritingAward for Diversity Writing

Stephen Magagnini ofThe Sacramento (Calif.) Bee

Orphans of history

Part I: Familyreaps bitter harvest in America — Sept. 10, 2000
Part I Sidebar: Activists chart path for a new generation — Sept.10, 2000
Part II: Hmong women building bridges — Sept. 11, 2000
Part III: Hmong teen builds future in two conflicting worlds— Sept. 12, 2000

Pursuit of the past

Hmong refugeemakes bittersweet pilgrimage — December 31,2000

Familyreaps bitter harvest in America

Sept. 10, 2000

First in a three-partseries

At the end of Albion Way,a dead-end street in south Sacramento, Hmong children play America’s game, shootingbaskets on a rickety hoop.

Beyond the hoop outsideher ramshackle apartment, Nou Her has transformed a field into a little sliceof Laos.

On this drizzly morning,Nou Her, 56, comes alive. While a plump, wildly optimistic Hmong boy casts hisfishing rod into a large rain puddle, she pulls weeds from the rows of mustardgreens, onions, beans, cilantro, sugar cane and other crops she has raised sinceshe was a child in the mountains of Laos. Her ailing husband, Yong Chue Thao,carries her hoe and helps as much as he can.

The field is their onlyrefuge, the only place in America they truly feel Hmong.

Her and Thao, 57, have alsolovingly raised 12 children, considered gifts from the heavens in Hmong culture.But it has been an uneven, sometimes disastrous harvest in America’s urban jungle.Three of their sons are in prison for murder.

On Albion Way, a 5,000-year-oldculture is dying.

Decades of tragedy

In Laos, Yong Chue Thaowas a captain, a war hero who saved the lives of seven American pilots shotdown in the jungle.

For nearly 15 years, heand thousands of other Hmong as young as 12 — vastly outnumbered and poorlyequipped — battled the North Vietnamese army to a stalemate in northern Laos.

Three days after he landedin America in 1976, he went to work on an Alabama assembly line, making lawnmowers for $2.75 an hour. He processed chickens in Arkansas, stitched upholsteryin Kansas and cut mushrooms in Utah.

By the time the family movedto Sacramento in 1988, Thao didn’t have much fight left.

Slowed by a stiff back anda queasy stomach, he drives his teenage children to and from school, then retreatsto his apartment, watching TV shows he doesn’t understand and trying to puta smile on decades of tragedy.

Like many Hmong in their40s, 50s and 60s, Thao is a broken man, defeated first by the communists, thenby brutal Thai refugee camp guards, now by the English language.

In Laos, where he fed andprotected his family, his word was law. Here, he has suffered the humiliationof unskilled jobs, welfare checks addressed to his wife and total dependenceon children who have never known him for the man he was in Laos.

But the worst defeat ofall has been at the hands of sons Sou, Lee and Chun — each convicted of a differentgang murder. Sou and Lee claim they’re innocent; Chun says it was an accident.

Together, they representthousands of Hmong American youth alienated from parents and society.

Sacramento’s fastest-growinggangs are Hmong, eclipsing other Asian American street gangs, police say. Hmonggangs have been involved in at least six shootings in the north county in thepast four months. Paul Suwa, a veteran police gang detective, estimates thatmore than a dozen Hmong gangs with a total of at least 270 members are operatinghere.

Hundreds of other youngHmong are ditching school or marking time in Juvenile Hall, the California YouthAuthority or state prisons.

Their older siblings rememberthe rice terraces carved into the mountaintops of Laos, where they grew mentallyand physically tough and learned to honor their parents as part of an intricateculture built on honesty, spirit worship and clan loyalty.

But many younger brothersand sisters, raised in Thai refugee camps and America’s ghettoes, know theirparents only as impoverished strangers from another time and place who can’tdeal with landlords, doctors or school officials without their help.

Until the Thao family andthousands of other Hmong were driven from the mountains of Laos by the Vietnameseand Lao communists in 1975, they lived a tribal existence free of telephones,electricity, plumbing, banks, lawyers or schools.

Their children became adultsas early as 12, expected to work, marry and raise children to help in the fields.Most never learned to read or write; they passed on their wisdom through stories,not books.

The Hmong “are unique evenamong refugee groups,” says University of California, Berkeley, professor RonTakaki. “Their adaptation to America is filled with hazards and barriers andcultural land mines.”

Unlike other refugees, fewHmong ever dreamed of coming to America. Their elders told fantastic tales ofyellow-haired, long-nosed American giants who dined on plump Hmong.

But in coming to the UnitedStates, Thao never imagined his sons would turn violent here. He couldn’t showthem the way — he’d never even seen a pencil before he came to America — buthe tried to teach them respect. On rare occasions, he struck them, as the cultureprescribes. More often, he begged them to stay home. His wife, too, swallowedher pride. In a culture where love is rarely expressed, “I’d tell them I lovedthem as they walked out the door,” says Nou Her.

Detective Suwa and his partner,Sharon McClatchy — who have known the Thao family for years — ache for themand hundreds of other hapless Hmong parents.

“If this town only knew,”Suwa says. “These kids b.s. these parents so bad.”

By the time Thao and hiswife knew the depth of the trouble their sons were in, it was too late — theyoung men were on their way to prison.

The leftover people

Sou Thao is a thoughtful,well-groomed, quiet young man. His shoulder-length black hair flows from a recedinghairline that he says dates back to the time four Vietnamese American kids jumpedhim in the Burbank High School library and yanked out most of his hair.

“They were in a gang; Iwas not,” he says. And so began Sou Thao’s life as “Hitman,” one of the toughest,most respected Hmong gangsters in Northern California. He became an icon forHmong youths who knew no other heroes, including his younger brothers, who followedhim into the gang life.

On April 21, Sou turned28 in California State Prison, Solano. He has just passed the six-year markof 16 years-to-life for the murder of a Hmong youth.

Police investigating themurder found a photo of more than 40 Hmong boys and girls flashing gang signs,and a large poster titled, “‘The Leftover People’ ... We will never die, wejust multiply.”

The Leftover People. That’sexactly how many Hmong, young and old, see themselves: leftovers from the CIA’ssecret war in Laos, a war that robbed them of their homes and their way of life.Leftovers dumped in America’s worst neighborhoods, unable to read street signs,much less their kids’ gang signs.

When the Thao family movedinto their three-bedroom apartment at the end of Albion Way in 1988, they entereda new kind of killing field. Bursts of Uzi fire tore through the neighborhoodas Crips and Bloods engaged in a bloody cycle of retaliation.

Sou and his friends, figuringthey had nothing to lose, bought stolen guns and defended themselves. In America,they had no identity — they felt neither Hmong nor American — so the gangs gavethem new ones: “Too Short,” “Rooster,” “Lonely,” “New Wave.” Sou became “Hitman.”

Now, his identity is InmateNo. J75216. He has had no visitors since his conviction. No one has visitedyounger brothers Lee and Chun, either. All three say they’re ashamed to lettheir parents see them in prison; in Hmong culture, violent criminals are disownedby their clans and families.

Sou says racism shaped hisearly years in America. Like many Hmong families, the Thaos moved around a lot,led by Sou’s grandfather, a fertility expert who treated Hmong across the nation.

“Every time you move, youget picked on,” Sou says.

When he entered BurbankHigh in 1988, he says, the south Sacramento school was polarized by gangs seethingwith racial hatred. Then, there were only a few dozen Hmong students; now thereare more than 500.

After Sou was jumped atBurbank, he fled to Chico, where his older brother Bee lived, and got a jobas a movie usher.

But he returned to Sacramento18 months later to attend Fremont Continuation School. He worked as a cook atBurger King and ran with MOD (Masters of Destruction), a Hmong gang whose influencehas spread from California to the Carolinas.

Sou soon became a legendin the deadly turf war between south Sacramento-based MOD and archrival AFG(Asian Family Gangsters), a Hmong gang based in North Sacramento.

In the past six years, SoutheastAsian gang-related shootings have erupted at high schools, on freeways and onstreets, says probation officer Todd Winfrey. “It puts a lot of the public atrisk.”

Sou Thao’s fury was fedby the 1993 gangland murder of his best friend, Jimmy Yang, 16.

Police say Sou became akiller on June 17, 1994, after two carloads of Asian Family Gangsters drovearound Susan B. Anthony Elementary School, the heart of MOD territory, and shotat several Tiny Little Rascals, the Cub Scout version of MOD.

Later that night, Sou andother Hmong gangsters ordered some Tiny Little Rascals to get them a “G ride”— a stolen car. Then they drove to North Sacramento to exact their revenge.

Police say that at 2:18a.m. they killed Khao Heu, a one-time Asian Family Gangster, with a shotgunblast to the head.

The key witness againstSou was his little brother Lee. Though he has made his peace with his brother’sbetrayal, Sou says “his story was all lies.’’

Sou, who finished high schoolin prison last year, has come to appreciate education. On the outside, he says,college never crossed his mind. No one suggested it.

Prison never crossed hismind, either. “You’re so angry about everything else you don’t even think aboutthat.”

“We had no mentors,” hesays, no one to help him feel good about being Hmong American. “A mentor that’sinvolved in the community would help a lot, someone who pays attention to ourpersonal problems, school problems.”

His dad, like many Hmongfathers, talked to him only when he got in trouble. His mom urged him to finda wife, hoping that would get him out of the gang life, but he never had a realgirlfriend.

Still, Sou — like his brothers— doesn’t blame his parents for his descent into gang life. “They did theirbest,” he says. “We didn’t listen.”

Fleeing Thailand

Nou Her wears a multicoloredheaddress — a fusion of red, yellow, green and purple — and a face chiseledwith a mother’s pain. When she talks about her imprisoned sons, she cries likea wounded animal.

“The children that camefrom Laos seem to respect me more, while the kids that were born here seem tobe out of control,” she says. “They are more intelligent than I am, they knowthe system better than I do.”

Nou Her thinks she was bornin 1945, in Laos. When she was 11, her father died of a snake bite, and hermother remarried and left Nou Her on her own. At 14, she married Thao.

In the past 18 years, shehas watched Thao deteriorate. A bleeding ulcer has left him able to stomachonly bread and rice, and arthritis has made his body so stiff he can barelybathe himself. He watches CNN or Hmong videos on a couch under a figurine ofChrist — the Thaos, like many Hmong, have become Christians, hoping to changetheir luck.

Thao’s father was famousin Hmong circles for his ability to treat infertility by placing his hands onwomen’s stomachs and readjusting their internal organs. In Laos, the Thaos grewsugar cane, rice, bananas and opium — it is legal there — and raised oxen, cowsand sheep. “Life was good,” Thao says.

But at age 16, just threedays after he married Nou Her, Thao was recruited into the CIA’s secret armyled by the legendary Gen. Vang Pao.

Thao and his 120 men andboys battled the North Vietnamese army at the fabled Plain of Jars, giant stonepillars known as the Hmong Stonehenge. He was wounded in the hand and the head.

Sent home in 1975, he foundthere was nothing to return to. His family already had fled the communists,crossing the Mekong River into Thailand on bamboo rafts.

Thao found them a year later,in Ban Vinai refugee camp.

The Thaos, like the restof the Hmong in the camps, had little choice: They could return to Laos withnothing and risk being executed by the communists, or they could take theirchances in America, a place so alien it might as well have been the moon.

Most came here with no ideahow to turn on a faucet, a thermostat or a stove, no notion of the joy of soakingin a hot bath. Forget about filling out a job application.

And America’s institutionsand agencies were totally unprepared for them, despite official efforts rangingfrom English classes to job training programs.

“I perceive a lack of willingnessby social service providers, cops, teachers — anybody — to even try to understandthese communities,” says police Sgt. Fernando Enriquez, who has held gang preventionworkshops for Hmong parents. “This is a cultural tragedy that we’re seeing unfold.They’re going to go from (being) disenfranchised to cultural extinction.”

Today, most of Thao’s 12children are scattered like mustard seeds. His oldest daughter lives in Minnesotawith her husband’s family. Four others live in Utah, including Pai, once a starstudent. Now 20, she takes a few college classes, works nights sewing air bagsand minds her older brother’s children during the day.

Only three children arestill at home, including youngest son Jer, 16, who already has had scrapes withgangs and the law.

For all his trials, YongChue Thao doesn’t blame the U.S. government. He says the people of Laos lostthe war themselves. “If I could turn back time,” he says, “I would still fight.”He blames his sons’ troubles on the neighborhood, but doesn’t quite know whereelse to go.

“I miss my freedom”

Lee Thao lives a few minutesfrom the untamed beauty of California’s rugged North Coast. But he never getsto see it. He’s doing 25 years at Pelican Bay State Prison, a concrete hellhole400 miles from Sacramento.

Lee, who stands 5-foot-3and weighs maybe 125 pounds, is “walking the line with some of the toughestinmates in the world,” says a corrections officer. In March, 200 rioted.

Early one July morning,Lee, 22, is let out of his A Block cell to meet his first-ever visitor: a reporter.

He says his street namewas “White Boy,” because of his light brown hair and fair complexion. He misseshis mother’s plain, steamed rice and his midnight fishing trips for stripersand sturgeon, sometimes in stolen cars.

“I miss my freedom, really,”he says.

Of the three Thao brothersin prison, Lee was the least violent — and the most tragic.

He was born in Selma, Ala.,and grew up in Merced and Sacramento. He earned a B-plus average at BurbankHigh before he dropped out. “If I’d have stuck to school, I’d have been somebody.”

Lee wanted to play football,but his parents didn’t want him to get hurt. He says organized sports couldhelp save younger brother Jer: “Basketball, anything where he’s not out on thestreet like we were ... “ But few after-school programs actively recruit Hmongyouth.

Soon after Lee moved toSacramento, he started hanging out in Susan B. Anthony Park, where some Hmongyouths administered a two-minute beating, his initiation into the Tiny LittleRascals.

Had his parents been stricter,“that would have made me worse,” he says. “I had that attitude.”

In 1992, he was sent toJuvenile Hall for stealing guns. “It wasn’t no punishment. It was like a camp... you met all your friends.”

At 15, he told SacramentoPolice Detective Jeff Gardner that his brother Sou was involved in a murder.Three months later, he unwittingly implicated himself in the drive-by killingof a 15-year-old member of a rival Lao gang.

Police say Lee and his fellowgangbangers stole a van, then drove alongside the victim’s car and gunned himdown in front of a church on Meadowview Road.

Lee was all the cops had,at first. “I didn’t know I needed a lawyer,” he says. According to court records,Gardner told him, “I don’t want to think that there will be any charges filedagainst you in this shooting.”

But after Lee told policewho was in the stolen van, two of the suspects he named testified against him.Lee claims that although he helped steal the vehicle, he was in Stockton thenight of the shooting.

Now Lee chops vegetablesin the prison mess hall for 30 cents an hour, draws pictures of knights anddragons, and counsels a Hmong gangster from Crescent City as part of PelicanBay’s “Scared Straight” program.

Prison didn’t dash Lee’sdreams. He never had any. “We wouldn’t think past our next good time about theconsequences. We really messed it up for ourselves and our family. We just lostthem ... We didn’t see the sacrifices they made to get here.”

A warning shot

Chun Thao, at 21 the youngestof three Sacramento Hmong brothers in prison for murder, represents a sliverof hope for his shattered family on Albion Way.

Unlike his brothers, whowill spend the first decade of the 21st century locked up in state prison, Chunis scheduled to return home by 2002.

More boarding school thanprison, the California Youth Authority’s facility in Paso Robles has given Chuna real shot at redemption. He roams the well-manicured grounds with relativefreedom.

It’s five years since heshot and killed “Little T,” a 14-year-old Lao boy whose gang crashed a southSacramento birthday party. Chun claims he only fired a warning shot to defendthe children at the party, that he didn’t intend to hit anyone.

Though he says he’s sorryand talks of becoming a role model for Hmong youth, prison officials wonderwhether Chun has really changed. A CYA spokeswoman describes Chun’s frozen demeanorat parole hearings as “flat.”

By the time Chun was a sixth-graderat Susan B. Anthony, he’d joined his older brother Lee’s gang, the Tiny LittleRascals. They’d skip school, steal cars, rob houses, buy guns and terrorizethe neighborhood.

“The teachers would wantto talk to my parents. I told them my parents didn’t speak English.”

He says his father and olderbrother Billy would whip him with a belt, then lecture him about how he couldbecome anything if he’d finish school. But, he says, “I was a little hard ass.When they beat me, it just made me madder. I was angry at them for being right.”

His parents blame the neighborhood,but Chun says he would have joined a gang no matter where he grew up. His gangsterbrothers tried to keep him off the streets, but they were the only ones he lookedup to.

Strange as it seems, Chunsays, “I’m kind of happy being locked up instead of being out there. I wouldhave done something worse, or I would have been killed.”

He calls his mom every month,and writes to his sister May. She and her husband, both ex-gangsters, now havean infant son.

Getting married is the onlyway your “homies” will let you leave the gang life, Chun says. When a 15-year-oldfriend tried to quit the gang, “they beat him up bad.”

In April, Chun got his highschool diploma, and plans to go to college when he gets out. He’s read “Howto get a Job,” and his favorite, “Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul.”

“The message,” he says,“is that everybody goes through bad times.”

“Where’s Waldo?”

Hmong parents and theirchildren are lost in America, even to each other. Often they literally don’tspeak the same language.

The Thaos’ youngest son,Jer, 16, teeters on the brink of disaster. But he doesn’t speak or understandHmong well enough to share his deepest thoughts and fears with his parents.

“Where’s Aunt Thao?” heasks in halting Hmong about a relative who used to live with them.

His mother responds in Hmong,which Jer can’t decipher.

“My mom doesn’t get whatI’m saying,” he says in frustration. “I can’t explain ... “

Mother and son, however,understand a bribe. His mom paid him $90 to cut off his Mohawk and pony tail;now he wears a flat-top fade and a new leather jacket.

On this gray weekday morning,Jer is hanging around the house in his baggy green bell bottoms, doing nothingmuch. He doesn’t emerge from his bedroom until 11 a.m., claiming a stomachache.

Asked the last time he wentto school, Jer looks at his watch. “I forgot,” he says.

Jer Thao has become the“Where’s Waldo?” of the Sacramento City Unified School District. He hasn’t beento school for more than a month, and nobody knows where he is.

District officials say he’sat Goethe Middle School, but he hasn’t been there since May 1999. Officialsat Burbank High School, where he enrolled in September, say he’s supposed tobe at Thurgood Marshall Continuation School. But the principal there has norecord of him.

“This is the biggest mysteryin the world, Jer Thao,” says Burbank Principal Kathleen Whalen. “He was introuble from the git-go, smoking on school grounds ... Of course he’s failing.”

The school scheduled a behaviorhearing in December, but Jer’s parents didn’t show up. They couldn’t read theletter notifying them about the hearing. And Jer didn’t tell them.

“Jer’s doing everythinghe can for a family reunion (in prison),” says Bob Sandoval, Burbank’s viceprincipal of discipline.

Sandoval says Burbank’s507 Hmong students include several dozen Jers, kids who drift in and out ofschool. In a classic Catch-22, those caught cutting class are suspended forfive days.

When Jer finally shows upat Thurgood Marshall, he’s bullied by several other students. “They’re mad-dogginghim, challenging him to fight,” says Suwa, the detective. He guesses that Jer’stormentors might be retaliating because their friends were killed by his brothers.

Fighting isn’t Jer’s style.If he’s not shooting baskets on the rusting hoop overlooking his mother’s garden,you can usually find him at a friend’s house, watching videos or playing videogames.

“School?” he yawns. “It’snot all that hard ... I’m just lazy and don’t do my work.”

Harvest of hope

It’s a sunny Saturday afternoon.Nou Her and her youngest daughters, May and Mai, are watching May’s 8-month-oldson KayBe play with a toy on the living room floor.

May, 19, has a full-timejob with the U.S. Census Bureau; her husband stays home with KayBe.

Mai, 14, a quiet girl withchestnut hair, is doing well at Burbank High and has found her passion: theviolin.

Nou Her wanders out to hergarden to fill a few bags with mustard greens, then returns to cradle KayBe.For one afternoon, she is all hope and smiles. There will be new crops to harvest,new generations to nurture.

Copyright 2000 © The SacramentoBee

Activistschart path for a new generation

Sept. 10, 2000

The six little girls gigglewhen Xeng Xiong writes a Hmong phrase on the blackboard, then translates itinto English: “You are very beautiful.”

For Xiong, 30, witnessingHmong children say and write “You are very beautiful” (cawhjong gaow heng) intheir native language is indeed a thing of beauty.

While the younger kids learnHmong language, values and folk tales, Pahua Lor, a student at the Universityof California, Davis, helps the teenagers with their homework and teaches themabout affirmative action,equal rights and other American ideas.

They belong to a grass-rootsprogram aptly named HOPES (Hmong Organization for Parents, Educators and. HOPESdoesn’t get a dime of public or foundation money — it’s driven by an all-volunteercorps of community activists.

They’re just part of a newwave of Hmong freedom fighters, ages 18-35, who are going to war against thedemons of illiteracy, truancy, delinquency and poverty that are tearing apartHmong society. Born in Laos but schooled in America, they are challenging police,school administrators and city officials to wake up before Hmong culture iswiped out here.

The freedom fighters arespread out around the community. Some are college students. Others are teachers.Still others are social workers.

Tsia Xiong, HOPES’ founder,is among those leading the charge. Xiong, like teacher Xeng Xiong (no relation)is that rarest of birds: a 30-year-old Hmong bachelor. His life is a whirlwindof probation hearings, mentoring programs, a summer day camp, parenting workshopsand visits to troubled families.

Last year, when he was givena community service award, Xiong was in no mood to celebrate.

There’s no after-schoolprogram to keep our kids in school. No Hmong teachers at Grant High (one hassince been hired). Less than 10 percent of the Hmong in the Sacramento CityUnified School District are reading at grade level. Our Juvenile Hall numberskeep increasing,” he tells the stunned crowd. “We need to solve these problemsor the Hmong community in Sacramento will cease to exist.”

He’s angry that city officialshaven’t hired a Hmong community liaison to bridge the language and culture barrier— a job he and others have been doing for free.

Copyright 2000 © The SacramentoBee

Hmongwomen building bridges

Sept. 11, 2000

Second in a three-partseries

In the back room of a southSacramento welfare office, a quiet revolution is under way.

A dozen Hmong women sitaround a table, eating strawberries and trying to solve the mounting problemsfacing Hmong families in America.

Tonight, they are learninghow to say “I love you” to their children. While many American parents say “Ilove you” as often as “Good morning,” few Hmong are comfortable with the expression— as if to say it would somehow devalue it.

Slowly, the crushing burdenof Hmong womanhood unfolds. Debbie is missing tonight; no longer able to copewith her 10 children or the shame of her rumored affair, she has tried to hangherself. Meanwhile, three of Nue’s four teenage sons are AWOL, and after 19years, her arranged marriage is crumbling.

Though nearly every womanin the group is in the throes of a personal crisis, an aura of strength andoptimism fills the room.

That confidence is embodiedin May Ying Ly, the cherub-faced founder of Hmong Women’s Heritage Association,which earlier this year received a $400,000 grant from The California Endowmentto help troubled families — and to help Hmong elders bridge the generation gap.

Ly’s sister-in-law Nue embodiesthe angst of Hmong women. At 31, Nue has six teenagers (including the threewho are AWOL). “She takes care of everything, the dinner, the homework, thehousecleaning, the parent-teacher meetings,” Ly says. “Her husband never changeda diaper.”

Some Hmong men considerLy and her confederates heretics intent on dismantling male-dominated Hmongsociety. But the organization is fast becoming one of the most influential Hmonggroups in California.

“Some of the women say lifein America is scarier than running from the war in Laos,” says Ly, 32. ManyHmong women, including several in Ly’s family, “are looking at their situationand they’re taking off — or trying to,” she says. “They’re willing to give upeverything, including their kids, to do what it takes to be happy.”

Hmong men won’t publiclycriticize the group’s Hmong-style feminism, but Ly suggests they’re feelinga loss of control.

“There’s more rights inthis country and women take advantage of it,” she says. “Hmong men are actuallyvery nervous — they blame Hmong Women (Ly’s association) because there is thisproblem and we want some voice ... We have to combine what’s positive from theold culture with what’s good in this country.”

Ly’s life is a high-wireact between old and new. Her two daughters have American names — Mercedes andCandace; she named her son, now 9, Ntuj Tshiab (pronounced Tdoo Che), whichmeans “New World” in Hmong. “So he’ll always remember that he has to make adifference in the world,” she says.

One weekend, Ly and herchildren pick strawberries on her mother’s farm in Merced. The next, Ly andMercedes, 11, fly to Las Vegas for a Backstreet Boys concert. Ly has held dinnershonoring Hmong clan leaders — even though they are always men — and criticizedthe old Hmong guard for living in the past.

She peppers her Englishwith “yada yada yadas,” yet she’s fluent enough in Hmong to be author Ann Fadiman’sinterpreter for “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down,” a nonfiction bookabout a sick Hmong child caught between cultures.

Up at 6:30 a.m. on a typicalweekday, Ly makes rice, eggs and maple sausage for her family, then changesinto SuperHmong.

From 9 to noon she teachessurvival skills to Hmong women who know a thing or two about the subject. One56-year-old grandmother says proudly, “I delivered all 12 of my babies by myselfand never let their heads touch the ground.”

Then Ly bounces from crisisto crisis.

She rushes to UC Davis MedicalCenter to visit a pregnant 15-year-old in intensive care with pneumonia anda bladder infection. “The family was really traditional. They tied strings aroundtheir wrists for good luck and called in a midwife to massage away the sickness,”she says later. The hospital “gave her some antibiotics and she’s doing fine.”

After that, she’s on thetrail of her nephews, Nue’s sons, only one of whom showed up at school.

Two of them, enticed byLy’s promise of “delicious, delicious food” and a $5-a-day stipend, turn upat her evening survival skills for teens class. They and eight other youthslearn how to find and keep a job, set goals, solve legal problems and deal calmlywith the turmoil raging in their often crowded, chaotic homes.

The most anguished partof Ly’s day is yet to come. That night and the next, Ly and her husband hostemergency meetings of clan leaders.

Their objective: to saveher sister-in-law’s marriage.

Fed up with a spouse whoshoots pool five nights a week while she scrambles after her sons, Nue is nearlyat the end of her rope.

“I don’t know what to do,”she says. The vice principal at Burbank High School told her to stick arounda couple of days a week, as some other Hmong mothers do, to make sure her sonsget to class. “I can’t do that,” says Nue, who works for a children’s advocacygroup. “If I don’t go to my job, they don’t have food on the table.”

She visited a Hmong fortuneteller, who tried to sell her a $400 elixir guaranteed to keep her sons outof trouble. “She said if I put it on my lips and talk to my kids, they willlisten.”

Instead, Nue bought a $25bottle of “magic” water. She poured it into five cups for her sons and husband.“They said, ‘What’s this for?’ I said, ‘Just drink it.’ “

The water didn’t do thetrick, so Nue has been salting away money from her job to start a new life.

“There’s nothing good inmy marriage,” she says. “He doesn’t talk to me, and he’s not a good father tomy children ... If I don’t get out, I’ll sink and drown.”

The clan leaders order herhusband, Joua, to start acting like one — less pool, more parenting. He sayshe’ll try harder. “I’m short-tempered,” he admits, but says Nue’s acid tongueis partly to blame. “I do 60 percent right, but that’s still not good enoughfor her.”

A way out

Like many Hmong women herage, Nue played by the rules in Laos, only to find the game of life turned upsidedown in America.

When she was 6, her familylanded in Santa Barbara. She’ll never forget the humiliation of her first dayof kindergarten: She was sent home because she wasn’t wearing underpants beneathher skirt. “We don’t wear underwear in Laos,” she says.

Then her family moved inwith a stepbrother in Orem, Utah. When she was 13, one of her stepbrother’ssoccer buddies, Joua, paid her stepsister a $20 bribe to get Nue out of thehouse for what Nue thought was a baby-sitting mission.

Instead, Joua and four malemembers of his clan grabbed her and put her in a van. Then Joua held her hand,announced he loved her and said he was going to marry her.

Nue knew girls were kidnappedinto marriage in Laos, but couldn’t believe this was happening to her in Utah.He was 22; she was a sixth-grader.

She cried, screamed andbegged them to let her go. But Joua’s mind was made up.

Joua didn’t touch her, buthe spent three days in the same room with her, making sure she didn’t jump outthe window. According to Hmong custom, if a girl spends three days in a man’shome, even if there’s no physical contact, she must marry him as long as hecan pay the “bride price” set by her parents.

When Joua brought Nue backhome, Nue’s mother wept, then told her, “Just go and learn what you have todo to be a good wife, mother and daughter-in-law.”

Joua bought Nue for $1,500.

“Why do you want to sellyour daughter like an animal?” Nue says. “Every time you have a fight with yourhusband or your in-laws ... they remind you how much they paid for you.”

Wife-napping is slowly fadingaway in America. If a Hmong girl marries before her 18th birthday these days,it’s usually because she’s madly in love, pregnant or desperate to get out fromunder her mountain of chores.

But most clans still supportarranged marriages, and most husbands are still expected to pay a bride priceranging from $6,000 to upwards of $10,000. Looks are less important than a woman’sclan reputation, capacity for hard work and education — though some traditionalistsaccuse college-educated women of using their careers as a cover for extramaritalaffairs.

“My uncle married a womanwith a master’s degree in social work; her bride price was $25,000,” Ly says.

The bride price serves asan insurance policy against bad wives and husbands. If a woman dishonors herhusband, some clans give him a refund. And if your clan helps you pay the brideprice, you’d better not do anything to shame them or you can forget about theirhelp in the future.

Even in California, thepressure to go through with an arranged marriage can be enormous.

Nue didn’t call the copswhen she was kidnapped because, tired of picking up aluminum cans for pocketchange, she saw marriage as a way out of her poverty-stricken family.

It took her about a monthto fall in love with her husband. “He treated me right,” she says. They hadsix children in rapid succession.

In Laos, each child meantanother pair of hands to harvest crops, feed pigs, cook and clean. There wasno birth control; even in America, many Hmong know little more than what theirchildren learn in sex education. In Sacramento, there are Hmong families withas many as 14 children.

“I love you”

About eight months afterNue’s youngest child was born, she says her husband beat her up over $20 — headmits striking her but says it was over $40 — that had fallen out of his pocket.

“The minute I walked inhe called me a thief,” Nue says. “He slapped me, then he kicked me and I felldown. The next thing I remember I was in the hospital” with a ruptured spleen.

Much of her love died thatday.

Joua begged forgivenessand paid Nue’s mom a $1,000 fine. A Hmong who beats his wife can be fined $5,000by her clan, which is refundable if he treats her lovingly for three years.

Joua, 41, is not one tohide the truth. “I blacked out, maybe,” he says, between games of eight ballat the Jointed Cue, a billiard parlor on Fruitridge Road that became his nighttimesanctuary starting in 1986. “I got mad, stupid, whatever.”

Joua twirls on a counterstool, his trademark toothpick clenched in his left cheek. A fellow pool playeraddresses him as “master.” Here, he is a man to be respected.

Pool hall manager CarlosMuÐoz says Joua used to hang out there all the time. “They only have one car.She’d want to go and he wouldn’t give her the keys.”

But since the clan’s interventiontwo weeks earlier, Joua has cut back his pool habit to Tuesday nights, and thenonly with the permission of “the boss,” Nue snarls playfully, as she leans overthe rail and blasts the eight ball at the corner pocket.

Instead, Joua takes hiskids to play soccer or basketball and tries to help them with their homework.There are no more nightly shouting matches.

“I’m trying to change alot,” Joua says. “I don’t want her to go; I’m really worried about it.”

On Mother’s Day he tookNue out on the town and bought her a $300 Hmong outfit, imported from China,at the Hmong store on Stockton Boulevard. Back home, while the family watcheda video of Hmong New Year’s in Sacramento, two of Nue’s children brought hera teddy bear and some flowers and told her they loved her.

Then Joua told her, “I loveyou, too.”

“I only hear that once ayear,” Nue says. “It’s very hard for us to say that word. It made me feel special.”

Joua’s new role model ishis brother-in-law Pheng Ly, May Ying Ly’s husband, who cooks and washes dishes.

Pheng and May Ying met inMerced. She was a nerdy high school junior; he was a community college student,“this cute guy in a red shirt who had already put a diamond engagement ringon my best friend’s finger.”

When Pheng’s engagementfell through, May Ying consoled him. They married during her sophomore yearat California State University, Sacramento. She went on to become a supervisorat the county welfare office, where she saw dozens of Hmong families caughtbetween their desire to get off welfare and their dependence on Medi-Cal healthinsurance.

Ly says she owes much ofher success to her late father, Cha Ly Xiong, one of the first Hmong schoolteachers in Laos.

On April 23, 1976, he broughthis family from Thailand’s Ban Vinai refugee camp — where Ly remembers watchingmany people sicken and die — to Honolulu.

Her father, who spoke English,had no trouble finding jobs as a social worker or interpreter in Hawaii, OrangeCounty and Merced, where he was killed in a car accident when Ly was 16.

She says the only reasonshe hasn’t been flayed for her feminism is because her father was a war herowhose memory still commands respect from the old “generals” who were leadersin Laos.

Close-knit clans

Ly has reached out to membersof the old guard, offering them a place in her center where they can talk freeof distractions. She has challenged many of the old ways, yet she’s a firm believerin the close-knit clan and its moral authority. “We don’t have a word for cousins— it’s brother or sister,” she says, and clan elders are called “uncle.”

But some clan leaders stillhave multiple wives, which Ly says undermines sexual equality. Gen. Vang Pao,the legendary Hmong leader who led the CIA’s secret war in Laos from 1960 to1975, took eight wives from the largest of the 18 Hmong clans. (In keeping withAmerican law, he has since divorced all but one.)

In Laos, there were reasonsfor polygamy: When a man was killed in the war, his brother was duty-bound tomarry his widow and raise his children.

But in Sacramento and Stockton,there are still Hmong men in their 20s and 30s with two or even three wives,much to Ly’s chagrin. Some Hmong husbands threaten to get a second wife, anda few have actually recruited second wives in Laos.

Although early teen marriagesand multiple wives aren’t legal here, some Hmong couples avoid scrutiny by notregistering with the courts.

Marriage remains the mostsacred event in a Hmong’s life. In Laos, divorce was rare. So was theft or spousalabuse because anyone who reflected badly on the clan quickly became an outcast.

But what worked for generationsin Laos often breaks down in America. “This country is so big, people can hidetheir mistakes,” Nue says. “There isn’t that group pressure.”

Many older Hmong think the“Land of the Free” is too free. They complain they can’t force their childrento go to school, or do their homework, or even come home at night. And manyHmong men feel that women, too, are abusing their freedom of choice.

Here, women realize theyare free to sleep with and marry whom they choose. They are free to pursue jobsor an education. They are free to demand equal rights and to get out of a bador loveless marriage.

The balance of power hasshifted dramatically as young Hmong women do better in school — partly becausetheir parents are stricter with them — and often are more likely to get andhold a job than their male counterparts.

“The women are very quick— they’ve learned a lot about this country,” Ly says. “They take their kidsto Cub Scouts, learn cooking, go to church. The Hmong men are the slowest tochange and they’re the ones who distrust the system the most.”

Power struggles betweenHmong men and women sometimes turn fatal. One of Ly’s shell-shocked clientsis Mai Thao, who was widowed in November when, after years of frustration andfinancial problems in America, her husband killed their five youngest children,then himself.

Ly has heard that some menblame the association for fomenting marital strife. But she and her memberssay the best way to save Hmong marriages is to break with the destructive patternsof the past.

For instance, associationpresident Sia Thao makes her son and two daughters split the chores: “Nobodyis going to be anybody’s maid for life.”

She says Hmong mothers arethe glue that holds families together. But when it comes to raising childrenin America, she admits she doesn’t know where to start, except to say, “I loveyou.”

Because Hmong parents rarelyshow their love, many Hmong children feel unloved and unwanted, Thao says. Tellthem every morning that you love them,” Thao advises the women around the table.“It really works.”

A Hmong maverick

One recent Friday night,Ly and her husband unwind over a round of golf in Land Park. “Pheng’s reallygood,” she says. “It’s too humiliating to keep score.”

Ly returns home to a hystericalphone call from another relative whose husband has just tossed out all her clothesand told her to leave.

It’s time to get out ofthe marriage, Ly tells her.

“She got married at 14,and her husband had an affair that lasted five years. When she found out, shewas a veggie ... The clan leaders lectured (him) for 2 1/2 days that he hadshamed the family, yada yada yada, and told him if he left, he would be disownedby the clan.”

Ly had already spent twosleepless nights at their house, making sure they didn’t shoot each other. Sheeven tried to slap some sense into the husband.

“He said ‘It’s none of yourbusiness.’ I said, ‘If your wife blows your brains out and her brains out, too,your kids become my kids.’ “

Then Ly confronted the husband’smistress. “She said, I’m not a b---- who sleeps with other people’s husbands.’I said, ‘Hel-lo ... ‘ “

Saturday, after honing hermedical interpreting skills at a workshop in Oakland, Ly takes her daughterMercedes shopping for the latest teen foot fashion — black platform heels. Thenthe family dines out at a Vietnamese-Chinese restaurant.

After spending Sunday morningat her Mormon church, Ly plays her favorite song, “I Walk By Faith,” on thepiano. She and her daughter have been taking lessons, free of charge, from SisterCatherine Coleman, a member of Ly’s church.

“I just play for myselfwhen I feel really down,” Ly says. It’s not easy being a mom, a wife, a mentor,a marital counselor and a Hmong maverick. “I’m just afraid I might be doingtoo much.”

Pheng Ly, a taciturn fellow,jokes that he’s the man behind Hmong Women. A modern Hmong man, he takes pridein his wife’s activism. “I love it,” he says. “I tell her, ‘You do it, thenI’ll back you up.’ “

As May Ying has evolved,so too has Pheng. “He said, ‘I thought I was marrying somebody who was justgoing to be my wife and cook for me and my children — instead, you are everything!’“ she says. “Having the respect of my husband is fuel for what I do.”

Copyright 2000 © The SacramentoBee

Hmongteen builds future in two conflicting worlds

Sept. 12, 2000

Third in a three-partseries

Julie Chang showed off hermoves at her first-ever teen dance, causing her first-ever breakup — all onthe same wild night.

“This was the first timeI went to a party in my whole life,” says Chang, 16, her fingers combing ravenlocks that flow past her waist. “It was so fun.”

She boogied to “Larger ThanLife” by the Backstreet Boys that fateful May night, then was confronted byher jealous boyfriend, who didn’t know how to fast dance.

“He said it’s over. Hisfriend was saying that I was dancing with other guys — those were my girlfriends!I was so mad, too. I didn’t cry — I’m not the one who broke up, I didn’t doanything wrong ... I was saying forget it, he’s too old anyway. He’s 21.”

Her words pour out likea mountain stream in May. It’s all part of Julie Chang’s grand American adventure.She’s 4-foot-11 without her high-heeled Soda shoes, but larger than life — adiminutive dynamo who honors her ancient culture while embracing the raft ofopportunities that have come her way in Sacramento.

Things other American teenstake for granted are landmarks in Julie’s life: She recently saw her first movieand dined at her first all-you-can-eat buffet.

The future of the Hmongwill fall on the shoulders of hundreds of young people like her who straddletwo worlds often at odds.

Balancing those worlds willchallenge Julie in ways she can’t imagine.

It’s 5:30 a.m. in her family’smildewed Meadowview apartment. The aroma of fried hot dogs, green beans andfresh-steamed rice wafts from the kitchen. Even her father’s prize fightingcock is asleep, but Julie has already showered, dressed and made breakfast forher family — 14 in all, including nine younger brothers and a baby sister.

For her grandmother, afflictedwith dizzy spells and high blood pressure, she has prepared a medicinal chickensoup. “It’s part of my job,” she says. “I’m proud of it.”

She was up past midnightstudying for a history test, but there’s not a crease on her eager face, nota shadow under her mahogany eyes. She hems her black bell bottoms while a paradeof bleary-eyed brothers emerges from the bedroom.

One by one, they hop ontogiant 50-gallon water jars — left over from Y2K, when many Hmong thought theworld would end — surrounding a small oval kitchen table, and devour breakfast.

Also in the kitchen aretwo 40-pound bags of rice, a neatly stacked pile of clean dishes Julie washedthe night before, and a list of 50 phone numbers — all for members of the Changclan.

Soon, the three-bedroomhouse returns to its normal chaos: children bouncing on the sofa and chasingone another around the living room, babies bawling, the phone ringing.

Gliding through this kineticsea is Julie Chang, Burbank High sophomore, big sister, chief cook and wok washer,laundress, textile artist, tutor, interpreter and the shining hope of the Changfamily.

“Sometimes I have so muchto do, I don’t have time to go to sleep,” says Julie, who shares a bedroom withher five oldest brothers. “Last night, I slept on the sofa.”

At 7:20 a.m., Julie’s mombegins ferrying children to school in her red pickup. She drops Julie and herbrother Meng, 15, at Luther Burbank High School.

More than 500 Hmong attendBurbank, making them the school’s largest ethnic group. They shine on the chessteam, the volleyball team, in student government and the math/science engineeringacademy. Burbank has its share of ethnic tension, but most Hmong mix easilywith other kids.

Miraculously, Julie is managinga 3.5 GPA. She’s also president of an Asian American girls club, a regular atthe Friday afternoon Hmong forum and the star of Xavier Young’s “All Hmong,All The Time” language class.

A few months ago her father,who earns $900 a month washing rental cars at Sacramento International Airport,paid her the ultimate compliment: He bought her a computer.

The computer, now squeezedinto her bedroom, “is helping a lot,” Julie says. But she still has to waitfor her brothers to fall asleep before she can concentrate. “They’re so annoying,talking talking talking ...

“I love my life and I’mvery happy, but I wish I was a boy,” she confides. “Girls do so much more work.I’ve been cooking since I was a little girl in the refugee camp.”

Culture shock

Until she came to Sacramentosix years ago, Julie had never been beyond the barbed wire of the Thai refugeecamp where she was born.

From the time she was 6,she and her mom embroidered Hmong story cloths known as pa ndao that tell theHmong odyssey through pictures. Julie stitched stories of a war she’d neverseen in a country she’d never visited, then sold them in the camp.

Her family was among thelast wave of Hmong refugees to leave the camps. Her grandparents held out hopeof returning to Laos to the last.

In 1994, armed only withher ABCs and 1-2-3’s, she was thrust into the fifth grade at Freeport ElementarySchool. Her initial excitement turned to sorrow when the other Hmong girls inher class tired of translating for her. “I understood what they were talkingabout, but I couldn’t say it back.”

Her parents were struggling,too. They felt abandoned by her aunt, who had sponsored them in Sacramento,then moved to Minnesota. “My parents said, ‘Why is she going over there? Wecame over here because of her.’”

Julie’s a fast learner.She taught herself to read and write Hmong in two months and she’s steadilymastering English. When her grandmother had surgery to remove a fist-sized growthon her back, Julie went to the hospital — a place she’d never been before —to translate.

“I cannot really translatefrom English to Hmong,” she says. “There’s no word for ‘complicated’ in Hmong.”

And that, in a word, describesthe Hmong predicament: America is a land of many belief systems, cultures andlifestyles, confusing newcomers who have lived by the same rules for centuries.

As the eldest daughter ina Hmong family, Julie rarely has time for fun.

“Fun?” she does a doubletake. “I never have time to go play my sport, volleyball.” In six years here,she has seen one movie, “Godzilla,” and then only on a field trip. She doeswatch Hmong videos and catches snatches of “Friends” on TV.

The other night, she awokeat 4 a.m. to finish “Sweet Valley High,” the latest in her diet of teen romancenovels.

Even then, the house isn’talways peaceful. Sometimes Julie can hear her 75-year-old grandmother, recentlywidowed, crying in the next room or listening to sad Hmong songs. SometimesJulie reads while brushing her teeth.

Julie’s brains, looks andwork ethic have already generated several marriage proposals, including onefrom the guy who broke up with her at the dance.

“He still calls me everyday,” she says. “He says he’s sorry, he wants another chance because it’s hardto find a girl like me.”

He comes over Saturday nightsand talks of love, “but I’m not taking it seriously,” she says. “I don’t havetime to date. Education is more important.”

Her mother, Cheng Thao,begs Julie, “Don’t get married early. You’re the only one who can help me.”It’s Julie who helps her mom shop, Julie who helps her grandmother cash herSSI (Supplemental Security Income) check, Julie who explains the notes fromschool, Julie who plans her siblings’ birthday parties.

But Julie and her mom bothknow that when a traditional Hmong girl marries is often beyond her control.

Orphans reborn

Cheng Thao, 33, met herhusband in the refugee camp in 1983. She was brushing her teeth when he claimedher. He softened her up with love talk, and three weeks later, they married.

She still waits for himto come home at 11:30 p.m. after eight hours of washing cars.

At 34, Chang Lor is a handsome,practical man in a black Nike cap. His family adores him. “My dad caught a sturgeonin the river,” brags son Meng. “He can wash 30 cars in an hour.”

Chang’s a firm believerin shamanism, but he allows his sons to hedge their spiritual bets: They goto Christian Sunday school.

Still, he values his Hmongheritage enough to set aside $15 a week for flute lessons for his eldest sons,Meng and Tou.

Meng finds it boring, butTou, 13, enjoys feeling the music vibrate through him. He takes his flute offthe wall and plays one of the 11 tunes he’s mastered, a song about orphans beingreborn. It’s a fitting metaphor for the Hmong, orphans of history being rebornin America.

Chang also has enrolledMeng and Tou in Hmong 2000, a paramilitary youth group that meets Tuesday andThursday nights. He sent Julie, too, but she quit to concentrate on school.

Chang’s father, Choua NengChang, was a soldier for 20 years and mayor of a mountaintop county of 20,000.He was renowned as a mediator, investigator and judge.

After Laos fell to the communistsin 1975, Choua Neng Chang moved his family into the highlands and fought withthe Hmong guerrillas.

In April 1981, the Changsand about 1,000 other Hmong lashed bamboo trees into rafts and fled across theMekong River into Thailand. About half drowned in the crossing.

Julie’s dad studied Englishfor two years in Sacramento but still finds the language frustrating. He dreamsof buying a home and seeing his children through college. He expects Julie tolead the way.

Hmong girls doing well

Like Julie, half of theHmong girls at Burbank have B averages or better, compared with 40 percent ofthe boys, says Principal Kathleen Whelan. Only 25 girls — 10 percent — haveless than C averages, compared with 23 percent of the boys.

The disparity can be tracedto the culture — while boys are often allowed to go out and play with theirfriends and roam the streets, Hmong parents keep a much tighter rein on theirdaughters, says Mai Xi Lee, a Hmong counselor at Burbank. “For a lot of girls,school is their only outlet.”

Still, the girls’ successis remarkable given their responsibilities at home, Lee says.

Julie’s brother Meng, whoalso maintains a B-plus average, does vacuum, wash some dishes and make a fewmeals. But little is expected of their younger brothers.

Lee calls Julie “your typicalHmong girl but more so. Not only is she an obedient daughter who knows her dutiesquite well, she also knows American culture well enough to do well in schoolso she can be successful at whatever she wants to do.”

Julie handles her many roleswith grace and pride, partly because she was raised in an all-Hmong environmentthat offered no choice, and because her parents are wise enough to nourish herdreams.

But some of Julie’s Hmongpeers at Burbank, especially those born in America, find it harder to balanceboth worlds.

“I’m going through the struggleright now,” says Mary Xiong, a freckle-faced senior who won a scholarship toSt. Mary’s College in Moraga. She says that when she becomes the Hmong Oprah,her first talk show topic will be “Double Lives of Hmong Youth.”

Sometimes her parents supporther desire to pursue a career. “Then, they’ll give me lectures: ‘You’re gettingold; You’ll be 18 soon; When are you going to marry your boyfriend?’”

Traditional Hmong girlsaren’t allowed to date, partly because some Hmong parents believe their daughterswill be kidnapped into marriage or their suitors will spike their drinks witha magic potion to turn them into love slaves.

If a Hmong boy breaks upwith a Hmong girl after several months, he may have to pay her parents a fine,even if there was no physical contact.

Mary, yearbook editor andpresident of the Hmong club, says at 13 she was ready to marry her first crush,but thankfully he backed off. She says her aunt wasn’t so lucky: “She got marriedlast summer at 18 ... Now she’s pregnant and divorced.”

Mary swears she won’t getmarried until she’s 30 or 40. Julie says she wants to wait at least until shehas finished college. But despite the pitfalls of early marriage, counselorLee estimates as many as 60 Hmong girls at Burbank — more than one in five —are already married. Some became wives at 14.

Julie’s dreams

At the Friday afternoonHmong Forum led by Hmong teacher Xavier Young, Julie and other students openup about how hard it is to reconcile their modern American dreams with the expectationsof their old world parents.

“The only time I can talkto my dad is when we’re eating dinner,” says one girl. “I’d like to talk tohim about education, but I’m just embarrassed.”

Yee Xiong, 17, lost twoolder brothers in the secret war in Laos. But when he asks about the war, “Mydad just walks away or turns the TV louder ... it’s just too painful to talkabout.”

Young, one of nearly 40Hmong teachers who have been hired by the Sacramento City Unified School Districtin recent years, appreciates how hard it is for Hmong kids and parents to knowone another.

“A lot of our students arehitting the same wall over and over again,” he says, “but at the same time,a lot of these students are going to come back and lead us whether they likeit or not.”

He’s counting on Julie tobecome one of those leaders.

After a long day of Frenchadjectives, Bolshevik history, probability, anatomy and Hmong language, Juliepresides over a meeting of the all-girl She Club.

Today the club, which dealswith everything from leadership skills to breast cancer, is preparing a danceperformance.

Julie shows a sextet ofAsian American girls how to gracefully twirl their hands and move their feetto a haunting Hmong love song. The song is about the first stages of a breakup(moral: You’ll feel the heartache later).

At 5 p.m., her mother drivesher home, where anarchy reigns. Meng has pulled out a hunk of frozen mysterymeat from the freezer. He’s hacking it up for dinner, stopping now and thento attend to a crying baby. The other kids draw with colored markers, watchTV or chase one another around the house.

Julie takes over, cookinga dinner that’s not unlike the breakfast she made 14 hours earlier.

It’s not until Saturdayafternoon that she’s able to steal a few moments for herself in the cool confinesof the library a few blocks from her home. She asks the librarians to help herresearch how to become a registered nurse, a teacher, a scientist.

Tears shine in Julie’s eyeswhen she thinks of Laos, the country that has shaped so much of her life, eventhough she has never even been there. “We don’t have a country of our own,”she laments.

But she’s making Americaher own and says she’s impatient to join the new wave of Hmong leaders. “I feellike I want to be in college, right there, right now,” she says. “It seems soincredible to make my dreams come true.”

But Julie’s blueprint forlife in America was about to change dramatically.

“It’s too late”

After Julie came home fromsummer school at the end of July, her cousin showed up to fix her computer.He brought with him Kou Vue, a 17-year-old boy Julie met about a year ago ata meeting of Hmong 2000, the paramilitary youth group.

The computer fixed, thethree of them got into Kou’s car. But Kou dropped off Julie’s cousin first,then told Julie he planned to marry her.

She was shocked: “We neverwent out; he just came to visit me. We never actually talked about love.”

What happened next was evenmore of a shock.

Kou, a junior at FlorinHigh, took Julie to his home, where all his relatives were waiting for her.As they walked through the front door, a shaman swirled a live chicken overtheir heads — a traditional Hmong ceremony marking the start of the marriage.

The next day, Julie’s mothercalled and offered to take her home.

“No,” said Julie. “It’stoo late.” In Hmong culture, she knows, leaving once you’ve been claimed bya boy can ruin your reputation for life.

“He’s a nice guy, you’llhave a nice future,” her mother responded.

Julie felt scared, confusedand excited all at once. She likes Kou, and says she went with him of her ownfree will. Yet she knows little about him except that he gets good grades andeverybody thinks he’s nice. And, she says, he has promised to support her dreamof going to college.

A bride price was set —$6,400 — and the wedding took place Aug. 4 at her parents’ home.

“I feel so bad for myself,”Julie said during her third day in Kou’s house — the day the Hmong believe abride’s fate is sealed. “I shouldn’t have come with him that day. Before this,I told the whole world I didn’t want to get married.”

But, like a million Hmonggirls before her, she’s resigned to her fate: “Everyone regrets it after weget married,” she says. “But I think he loves me, so I will stay with him.”

Copyright 2000 © The SacramentoBee

Pursuitof the past

Hmong refugee makes bittersweetpilgrimage

Dec. 31, 2000

VIENTIANE, Laos — Conflictingimages burn through T.T. Vang’s brain as he flies over the mountains of hisnative Laos.

He sees the land where hewas born and raised, the land where his father bled to death, unable to gethelp while his village was under communist siege.

He sees himself riding horses“like a little Mongol, a little cowboy,” carefree and wild. He sees a handmadebomb wrapped in barbed wire explode in his face, leaving him deaf for a year.He sees his nephew blown in half by a communist rocket barely two yards away.

“From the sky, my countrylooks beautiful, but 25 years ago it was destroyed by something terrible,” hesays.

Tsong Tong Vang, T.T. forshort, is one of an estimated 10,000 American Hmong who returned home this yearflush with hard-earned dollars and visions of a prewar Shangri-La.

He’s carrying a dozen envelopescontaining $5,000 from friends in Sacramento, to dispense to their relativesin Laos who make as little as $50 a year.

Like most Hmong refugees,severed from their roots and relatives when the communist Pathet Lao took overin 1975, Vang has unfinished business in Laos. Eight years ago, he was deniedpermission to visit his father’s grave and his birthplace, a village that grazesthe sky.

This time, he hopes to makeit home.

In Sacramento, Vang is aman accustomed to success: travel agent by day, security guard by night, chairmanof his Hmong Catholic Church and host of a daily radio show, “Hmong New Life,”whose callers reveal how life in America has changed them.

He also is a husband andfather of nine bilingual children — two sons and seven daughters.

Vang looks older than his46 years, his face creased with laugh lines that overlay wrinkles of hardshipand tragedy. He fled Laos in September 1975. His memory is still seared by imagesof a hellish eight-day trek across leech-infested mountains and jungles intoThailand.

As his plane descends towardthe capital of Vientiane, Vang gazes down on the murky, mercurial Mekong River— where thousands of Hmong drowned trying to escape to Thailand — and wonderswhether he will be treated like a spy.

He knows his clan name,Vang, is the most distrusted name of all. The legendary Gen. Vang Pao led theCIA’s secret Hmong army against the communists from 1961 to 1975. He remainson the Lao government’s “Most Wanted” list for heading the Hmong resistancefrom his Southern California headquarters.

T.T. Vang knows his namecould get him kicked out of the country. That’s what happened to Nhia Chou Vang,a West Sacramento security guard who saved for years to visit his sister in1999, only to be booted out the day after his arrival by Lao police for servingin Vang Pao’s army 25 years ago.

The name Vang might alsoget you killed. That’s presumably what happened to Michael Vang of Fresno, whomysteriously vanished while crossing the Mekong into Laos in February 1999.His disappearance triggered congressional investigations, stalled the appointmentof a new U.S. ambassador to Vientiane, and delayed most-favored-nation statusfor Laos.

This year has been particularlytense for any visitors to Laos. Bombs have gone off at a restaurant, a hotel,and at the Vientiane airport.

***

As soon as his feet touchLao soil, T.T. Vang wonders whether he’s finally welcome. He muses about runningfor office in Laos someday, and certainly looks the part in his white dressshirt, pleated French pants, smooth leather jacket and tasseled loafers. Hisfine reddish-blond hair — a trait of a full-blooded Hmong — is perfectly coifed.

“I could become a congressman,but I’d have to move back to Laos and be reborn again,” he says, adding thathe’s been reborn three times already: first, as a Catholic student in the ancientroyal capital of Luang Prabang; then, as a medic and translator in Thailandafter the war; and again, as a U.S. citizen.

Vang’s pro-Lao reverie isshattered by customs officials, who detain him and about 20 other Hmong andMien Americans for an hour, rummaging through every piece of their luggage.

While white Americans breezethrough unquestioned, Vang must fork over $100 to Lao customs officers for hisstill camera and video camera. He angrily blames the discrimination on jealousyand suspicion.

He acknowledges, howeverthat plenty of Hmong in America do support the Hmong resistance in Laos. InMarch, Thai border agents arrested two gun-toting Hmong brothers from Sacramentowho were trying to cross the Mekong into Laos.

In Vientiane, a city ofsome 540,000 with Internet cafes alongside ancient temples, Vang pays $6.50to broadcast on Hmong radio. He lets relatives in the north know of his impendingarrival.

Then, he visits an old Hmongfriend, whose husband was killed in 1975 when his shovel hit a cluster bombthe size of a tennis ball. It was one of thousands of UXOs (unexploded ordnance)dropped by U.S. planes on Laos.

That bomb made his frienda widow and a hard-core communist. Dozens of Lao still lose limbs and livesto the UXOs every year.

A talkative, worldly man,Vang seems no more than three degrees of separation from any Hmong in the UnitedStates or in Laos. Hmong communists, royalists, rebels, shamans, priests — Vangknows them all, including some who have given up on America and moved back toSoutheast Asia.

Vang’s first cousin fledMerced with several other Hmong families for Hmong villages in Thailand becausethey were having trouble with their teenagers and thought America would be destroyedin Y2K. They believe the Hmong messiah will lead them to Laos, Vang says.

So far, few American Hmonghave returned to Laos permanently. Among those are outcasts, outlaws or lothariossearching for second wives or mistresses, said one United Nations observer.

Even law-abiding AmericanHmong in Laos keep low profiles to minimize “the death threats (from anti-communistHmong in the U.S.) that surface any time someone has anything to do with Laos,”said the observer.

But some younger Hmong Americansenjoy being in the spotlight in Laos. At his hotel, Vang meets the Twin Stars,a touring Hmong soccer team from Minneapolis-St. Paul.

Soccer has long been thenational sport, and in the morning market in Vientiane, Vang sees a Hmong boycrying and begging his mother for a soccer ball. Vang buys him the ball for$6 — more than a week’s pay in Laos, one of the poorest places on the planet.

The largest unit of currency,the 5,000-kip note, is worth 60 cents, and the government’s stated goal is toraise per-capita income to $400 a year.

The typical Hmong familymakes only about $50 a year if they’re farmers, maybe $120 if their wives anddaughters make pa ndao, the colorful needlework for which the Hmong are famous.

***

Travel in Laos is diceyat best. Lao Aviation, the only airline, doesn’t meet international safety standards.Accidents are so frequent that its motto is “Every Passenger Insured.”

Driving can be dangerous,too. The Japanese government, for instance, won’t let its employees make theseven-hour drive north from Vientiane to the old capital of Luang Prabang forfear they’ll be kidnapped or robbed.

Vang chooses to fly to LuangPrabang, tucked between two rivers and the mountains of north-central Laos.Except for some clouds literally hovering inside the cabin, the 45-minute flightis smooth.

He is greeted at the airportby his cousin, Li Phone Vang, who heard Vang’s radio message and rode his motorbikefor eight hours over decaying roads to see him.

Vang gets a far chillierreception at his hotel in Luang Prabang: The desk clerk immediately takes hispassport to the police station.

“What about my fellow Americans?”Vang asks, referring to The Bee reporter and photographer. He’s told policerequire returning Hmong to register “for security reasons.”

He’s visibly stung, butsoon he’s strolling through “Luang’bang,” as the city is known, reliving thegood times. He passes the old downtown theater where he saw his first movies— Chinese kung fu flicks and Indian romances. He saw his first textbooks asa 12-year-old first-grader at a nearby public boarding school.

It was in 1965, two yearsafter his father’s death, that Vang’s older brother moved the family to Luang’bang.

“If we’d stayed in my father’svillage, I’d be dead,” Vang says. Four of his brothers died there of cholera,malaria or yellow fever.

***

Hiring taxis, Vang visitsa series of Hmong villages south of Luang’bang, where he lived as a teenager.

At the first village, hehands out 10 envelopes, each containing at least $100, sent by his deacon inSacramento.

Ten women weep for joy —the money will buy clothes, furniture and cookware. It’s obvious which Hmonghave relatives in America — they’re the families with new homes, TVs and meaton the table.

The deacon’s mother-in-lawasks about her daughter in Sacramento, who she’s heard has lost interest inher marriage. She asks about her grandson, whose wife took their infant sonand ran away with another man.

In village after village,the Hmong never tire of hearing about marital problems in America.

Ancient Hmong marriage customshave changed in Laos, too. Vang’s cousin, a city councilman, says that in 1995the Lao government passed laws restricting the Hmong to one wife and outlawing“wifenapping,” the practice of kidnapping a future wife.

The anti-bigamy law hasimproved Hmong marriages, the councilman says, because wives “don’t worry aboutbeing replaced.”

Vang also gets an earfulabout the government crackdown on opium, a cash crop that nets Hmong farmersas much as $1,000 a year.

The government has promisedto help the Hmong grow replacement crops, but too often that help does not materialize.

Vang meets a Hmong tuk tuk(taxi) driver who studied economics in Russia only to see all the good jobsgo to his lowland Lao classmates.

“Lao democracy is a totalfraud,” the driver says. “They use the Hmong name to get international funding,but the funding doesn’t get to the Hmong.”

Still, the roughly 400,000Hmong in Laos, population 5.4 million, are better off than the other ethnictribes. Besides help from the states and opium sales, they sell their traditionalpa ndao needlework. At one market, Vang sees a Lao woman sewing pa ndao. Itturns out she’s working for the Hmong.

One of T.T. Vang’s relatives,13-year-old Tia Yang, sews pa ndao from dawn to dusk.

“I really want to go toschool — I’d like to become a nurse someday — but my parents won’t let me,”she confides. “Uniforms and schoolbooks cost too much.”

Before 1975, more than 90percent of the Hmong were illiterate, says Ministry of Foreign Affairs officialSisavath Khamsaly, who like other Hmong in government has taken a lowland Laoname. Now, Khamsaly says, 60 percent can read and write.

But few Hmong make it pastthe third grade, Vang says. And many parents would rather put their daughtersto work than send them to school.

Vang went to elementaryschool in a city 20 miles south of Luang’bang, walking six miles home everyweekend to help work on his family’s farm.

He attended school withhis nephew Yeng Pao Vang, who at 16 was the pride of the Hmong — “He was betterthan the Lao students. He wanted to be a doctor or a pilot,” Vang says.

But by 1973, the Hmong general,Vang Pao, was arming schoolboys.

“We were playing soldier— we didn’t realize the danger. That’s why so many got wiped out,” T.T. Vangrecalls.

At a hill just south ofXieng Ngeun city, Vang asks the driver to stop. “I was wounded right here,”he says. “The communists attacked at 3 a.m. Dec. 3, 1973. My nephew was killedright there — his body was buried next to that big tree.”

Vang fled to a Buddhisttemple, his head bleeding badly, his hearing gone. Thanks to a French doctor,he regained his hearing after a year.

***

Vang heads to the provincialcapital of Udomxai, where in 1992 officials turned him back, telling him itwas “unsafe” to visit his old village.

About 45 minutes outsidethe town, Vang’s driver lurches around a mountain curve and nearly runs intoa rogue elephant. Later they learn that the elephant had attacked its masterthat morning, putting him in the hospital.

The elephant is an apt metaphorfor Laos, which for centuries called itself the “Kingdom of a Million Elephants.”

Elephants, like the Laogovernment, are hard to figure. Laotians joke that the Lao PDR stands for “pleasedon’t rush,” not Peoples’ Democratic Republic. This may explain why Laos isn’tbrutally totalitarian, but it also explains why it takes years to build roads,schools and health facilities.

At breakfast the next morning,Vang’s hands shake so much he can barely drink his coffee as he steels himselffor the visit to the provincial authorities. After a tense, two-hour wait, theygive him the necessary papers, and the bumpy, six-hour odyssey to his villagebegins.

Each pockmarked mile bringsVang closer to his traditional Hmong youth.

He points out the valueof plants along the road: Elephant grass is used to make pillows and mattresses,mountain grass makes the best roof, and French grass is good medicine. A fewyears ago, when his daughter’s menstrual flow wouldn’t stop, a relative senthim some French grass roots to make a tea that cured her.

Though a devout Catholic,Vang swears by the saga of Chou Xia Lor, the Hmong Tiger Man. In the 1950s Lor,a magician, would change from a man to a tiger and back by putting a bamboobasket over his head.

“This Tiger Man kidnappedshamans, beautiful ladies and children and turned them into his followers,”Vang says, adding that two of his childhood friends were taken by the TigerMan.

The pickup truck Vang hashired hits a rock and stops. Vang and four relatives jump out and disappeardown an overgrown jungle path.

“I’ve waited almost 36 yearsfor this,” says Vang, his voice full of excitement and sadness. He leads theway through briars and branches to a large, overgrown earthen mound.

This is the final restingplace of Wa Chia Vang, farmer, horseman, humanitarian and T.T.’s dad.

Wa Chia, founder of thevillage of Ban Mai where T.T. was born, taught his people how to farm, buildand treat each other kindly. He grew opium, like other Hmong, but never smokedor drank. He raised village orphans as his own.

T.T. Vang stands by thegrave and weeps.

“My dad picked this placeout. He asked to face the rising sun — the Hmong feel the rising sun has thepower to raise the dead,” Vang says.

Vang places wild Frenchgrass flowers and a photo of his mother, who died in 1998, on his father’s grave.“She’s the best flower of all,” he says.

***

Finally, Vang arrives inBan Mai, a village time forgot until two years ago, when an international labororganization paid 150 villagers $1.80 a day to shovel out a crude road.

The village is a collectionof 72 thatched huts between mountains planted with rice and purple and whiteopium poppies. It has no school, no plumbing, no electricity, no medical ordental care. Old superstitions die hard: A snake or a bird in the house is badluck, but a cockroach is welcome because it means there’s plenty of food.

Vang is received like areturning hero.

Several villagers his ageburst into sobs at the sight of him, then nestle in his arms like small children.They are some of the orphans Vang’s father took in. Everyone calls him grandfather,out of respect.

Still, they can’t resisttesting him. They hand him a stick of sugar cane and a Hmong knife to see ifhe can still handle himself. Vang skins the cane beautifully.

Vang stays in his villagefor three days, grousing about the cold nights and the hard bamboo bed. Twosoldiers shadow him, and a police officer sleeps by his side.

One afternoon, after a feastof buffalo and wild pig, Vang seems to forget these hardships and more: theyear a plague of grasshoppers destroyed the rice crop, or the year the ratsdevoured it.

“If you work hard, God provideseverything — water from the spring, firewood, roofing, fresh air, and nightmusic from the owls, birds and insects,” he says.

“Let my wife know I’m notcoming back. I’ll just build a house on top of the mountain. Each of my childrenwill send me $50 a month, and I’ll have a good life. If democracy comes here,I’m pretty sure I’m going to run for Congress.”

But his wristwatch giveshim away — he hasn’t reset it since he left Sacramento. “I’m never going tochange my watch to Lao time,” he says with a faint smile.

A week later, Vang is backin Sacramento.

Copyright 2000 © The SacramentoBee