Скачать или смотреть Chapter 2 -A Beautiful Love Story During The War

Chapter Two

Between War and Family (1950–1954)

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1951 – Thanh Mai and the Weight of Love

By 1951, the war had already seeped into every corner of Vietnam. Saigon still glimmered in the sun with its French cafés and colonial façades, but the city also trembled with unease. Refugees arrived daily, bringing stories of burning villages. French soldiers filled the boulevards, while whispers of Việt Minh victories circulated in tea shops and markets.

For my parents, however, the greatest event of that year was not written in newspapers but in the family ledger of life: the birth of their fifth child, Thanh Mai. The name of the flower always blooms during Tet.

Already four children filled their modest home with laughter, quarrels, and endless needs. Now another daughter joined the chorus. Her name meant apricot blossom—a symbol of hope and endurance in winter. When my father held her tiny body for the first time, he whispered, “Even in the coldest times, this flower blooms. May she bloom for us.”

My mother, tired yet radiant, smiled. Her arms had grown strong from rocking babies and stirring broth, her eyes lined with fatigue but bright with quiet determination. With five children now, she knew every coin, every grain of rice would have to be stretched.

The phở restaurant had already become the family’s lifeline. Each dawn, my parents rose before the roosters. My mother tended the broth, her face glowing in the steam rising from beef bones charred with ginger and onion. She washed herbs in cold water, the scent of basil and coriander clinging to her fingertips. She prepared for the day’s customers: rickshaw drivers hungry before their shifts, clerks in French offices, even soldiers with boots that tracked mud across the floor.

The shop was more than food. It was a small theater where war and peace sat side by side. Men in crisp suits debated politics over steaming bowls of Pho. Refugees traded rumors of battles for extra sprigs of lime. Even French officers came sometimes, slurping noodles in silence while keeping one hand near their pistols.

At night, when the children were finally asleep, my parents sat side by side in the quiet kitchen. Sometimes he reached across the table, taking her hand in his palm. Sometimes she leaned her head against his shoulder, both too tired to speak. Romance had changed—it was no longer found in poetry or walks by the river, but in shared exhaustion, in silent companionship, in the simple comfort of knowing the other was there.

Outside, history roared: that same year, China recognized the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and began sending weapons to Việt Minh, while the United States increased its aid to the French. Vietnam’s war had become part of the Cold War chessboard. But inside the family home, history was measured differently—in lullabies, bowls of soup, and the fragile laughter of five small children.

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1951 – Survival in Small Gestures

The year 1951 brought no relief. Instead, it deepened the struggle.

The phở shop grew busier as more displaced families crowded Saigon. Many customers paid with coins, some with IOUs, a few with nothing at all. My mother sometimes served bowls freely to children who looked too thin, whispering, “When our own children are hungry, may someone do the same for them.”



At home, the family was a whirlwind: four older children running about, Thanh Mai learning to walk, the parents juggling exhaustion. My mother’s hair was often tied hastily, her áo dai faded, yet when my father looked at her, he still saw the young woman from the bookstore years ago.

One night, as artillery rumbled faintly in the distance, he returned from closing the shop to find her dozing beside the cradle. He gently covered her with a blanket. She stirred, whispering, “We must be strong—for them.” He nodded, though he longed to say more. In their silence, there was romance—the kind that endures not through words, but through shared resolve.

The wider war grew bloodier

forts in the countryside came under siege; Việt Minh guerrillas cut supply lines. Refugees poured into Saigon, their faces hollow. The children in the shop listened with wide eyes as adults whispered about battles and ambushes. But my parents taught their own children a different lesson: no matter how loud the world’s guns, inside this home, there would be love.

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