So the adopted girl, Heidi Bub, finally decided to try and find out about her family and located the adoption agency that had processed her adoption. Writing to it she found that while these assholes refused to open their files (I believe that the US has laws that this agency violated) they would send her a sealed letter her birth mother had written several years previous.
A San Francisco Vienamese-American journalist cum activist had been in Vietnam in the mid-1990s researching the US programme, "Operation Stork." As she sat in a Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) community centre a middle aged Vietnamese woman pushed her way to the front of the cue and without saying much told the activist to give it to her daughter, innocently thinking that the activist would know all Vietnamese and Ameriasians in the US. The best the activist could do though was send it to the authorities at the US State Dept., the agency who ran that clusterfuck of a human tragedy.
So it was that this later came to Heidi Bub along with the particulars of the activist. Naturally Heidi contacted the activist to try and ready herself for the big meet as it were. The activist had a filmmaker friend who asked Heidi if she would agree to have a documentary made about the whole affair.
Heidi tells the camera how this has been her lifelong dream and tearfully tells the activist who is accompanying her as a translator slash facilitator how she is having her deepest wishes answered. Arriving after a 23 hour haul from the States (they ARE killer) she moseys off her jumbo jet into that damp tropical oven, walked into the terminal and voila! I don't get overtly emotional often, a lifetime in war zones will do that to you but I don't mind saying I was sobbing, such a heart warming vignette...and THAT is what makes the rest of the film so frustrating.
By day 2 Heidi, in her cloying Tennessee molasses drawl confidentially tells us that she cannot understand her birth mother wanting to spend every moment by her side: "C'mon on, I'm sorry y'all but all this touchy feely togetherness? C'mon! I reckon it was that moment that made me want to "smack the bitch up," in the words of the great oracle of truth, Da' Prodigy. It only gets better from there.
The birth mother has a large brood and even now Vietnam is a terribly poor nation. This film was made at the turn of the millenium a time in which the country was just liberalising its economy. In other words, ig you think Vietnam is piss poor NOW, you ain't seen nothin'. So, the eldest brother haltingly tells her through the journalist cum activist cum translator (a lot of cummin! Gosh you are so dirty minded) that since Heidi had left for America in 1975 he had been the family breadwinner. Now he said, it was time for Heidi to kick it up a notch and help support mum and put younger siblings, nephews and nieces through school and so forth.
As one could expect from someone who bitches ant moans about her mother daring to want to hold her hand after being separated for 25 years, Heidi wasn't too keen on the idea. She didn't say anything just then but you cannot miss how her countenance changed. Her cheesy corn-fed smile twitched. Big time and she visibly tightened most muscles in her body. As soon as it was time for another camera confessional she haughtily denigrated her brother: "Who does he think he is? I come to find my family and they see me as a business opportunity."
OK, recognising that at the time this film was made the internet was nothing like the behemoth information hiway it is today one COULD write off her ignorance of Vietnam but how to do so when it is juxtaposed against her gripes about her mother's need for reassurance?
Vietnam is a typical Southeast Asian Culture in that the family sublimates its individuality for the betterment of the whole. Actually, ALL Asian Cultures do this. Likewise, the eldest child OR the child with the best means to do so fully supports his or her family. Heidi was in the US, even without the Asian misconception that Westerners are invariably rich there is going to be the assumption that even if one's family member is on the dole in the West they are doing better than the upper middle class back in the "old country". You can hear Americans claiming about living in the ghetto but quite often you will be hearing that complaint via his or her cell phone... Or perhaps you are seeing them express it online on their PC. In SE Asia, there are families living in what are supposed to be private loos (bathrooms), or in a crypt full of human remains. Here in the Philippines it is in every large city.
Heidi should have researched, after all its her homeland but all Heidi could do was think for herself. To compound this travesty in the years since it was filmed, almost a decade ago now, she hasn't expressed one iota of remorse. What a pig. Worse still, according to her own comments on various websites where she has refused to be interviewed but has deigned to issue short responses, she has not communicated with her poor old mum or siblings since that "reunion."
A San Francisco Vienamese-American journalist cum activist had been in Vietnam in the mid-1990s researching the US programme, "Operation Stork." As she sat in a Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) community centre a middle aged Vietnamese woman pushed her way to the front of the cue and without saying much told the activist to give it to her daughter, innocently thinking that the activist would know all Vietnamese and Ameriasians in the US. The best the activist could do though was send it to the authorities at the US State Dept., the agency who ran that clusterfuck of a human tragedy.
So it was that this later came to Heidi Bub along with the particulars of the activist. Naturally Heidi contacted the activist to try and ready herself for the big meet as it were. The activist had a filmmaker friend who asked Heidi if she would agree to have a documentary made about the whole affair.
Heidi tells the camera how this has been her lifelong dream and tearfully tells the activist who is accompanying her as a translator slash facilitator how she is having her deepest wishes answered. Arriving after a 23 hour haul from the States (they ARE killer) she moseys off her jumbo jet into that damp tropical oven, walked into the terminal and voila! I don't get overtly emotional often, a lifetime in war zones will do that to you but I don't mind saying I was sobbing, such a heart warming vignette...and THAT is what makes the rest of the film so frustrating.
By day 2 Heidi, in her cloying Tennessee molasses drawl confidentially tells us that she cannot understand her birth mother wanting to spend every moment by her side: "C'mon on, I'm sorry y'all but all this touchy feely togetherness? C'mon! I reckon it was that moment that made me want to "smack the bitch up," in the words of the great oracle of truth, Da' Prodigy. It only gets better from there.
The birth mother has a large brood and even now Vietnam is a terribly poor nation. This film was made at the turn of the millenium a time in which the country was just liberalising its economy. In other words, ig you think Vietnam is piss poor NOW, you ain't seen nothin'. So, the eldest brother haltingly tells her through the journalist cum activist cum translator (a lot of cummin! Gosh you are so dirty minded) that since Heidi had left for America in 1975 he had been the family breadwinner. Now he said, it was time for Heidi to kick it up a notch and help support mum and put younger siblings, nephews and nieces through school and so forth.
As one could expect from someone who bitches ant moans about her mother daring to want to hold her hand after being separated for 25 years, Heidi wasn't too keen on the idea. She didn't say anything just then but you cannot miss how her countenance changed. Her cheesy corn-fed smile twitched. Big time and she visibly tightened most muscles in her body. As soon as it was time for another camera confessional she haughtily denigrated her brother: "Who does he think he is? I come to find my family and they see me as a business opportunity."
OK, recognising that at the time this film was made the internet was nothing like the behemoth information hiway it is today one COULD write off her ignorance of Vietnam but how to do so when it is juxtaposed against her gripes about her mother's need for reassurance?
Vietnam is a typical Southeast Asian Culture in that the family sublimates its individuality for the betterment of the whole. Actually, ALL Asian Cultures do this. Likewise, the eldest child OR the child with the best means to do so fully supports his or her family. Heidi was in the US, even without the Asian misconception that Westerners are invariably rich there is going to be the assumption that even if one's family member is on the dole in the West they are doing better than the upper middle class back in the "old country". You can hear Americans claiming about living in the ghetto but quite often you will be hearing that complaint via his or her cell phone... Or perhaps you are seeing them express it online on their PC. In SE Asia, there are families living in what are supposed to be private loos (bathrooms), or in a crypt full of human remains. Here in the Philippines it is in every large city.
Heidi should have researched, after all its her homeland but all Heidi could do was think for herself. To compound this travesty in the years since it was filmed, almost a decade ago now, she hasn't expressed one iota of remorse. What a pig. Worse still, according to her own comments on various websites where she has refused to be interviewed but has deigned to issue short responses, she has not communicated with her poor old mum or siblings since that "reunion."
