I compare this with life in Seattle, where I do not know my neighbors. So far, I view them as suspects in my quest to nab the person who steals my Sunday New York Times. The only neighbor I have even met knocked on my door one morning and told me to turn down the music. I try to convince her that life in Vietnam is rich in ways that cannot be defined in material possessions. They do not know what they would miss if they left.
Families live side by side, in life and death.
Narrow dirt roads lead them to each other, not eight-lane highways. Across the misty river from Hue's Citadel and the Forbidden Purple City sits a national institution. Quoc Hoc is the national school for boys which Emperor Thanh Thai established in 1896, a highly competitive school. Ho Chi Minh, North Vietnamese Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem. My father graduated here.