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e-mail author (edward@ordman.net)
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This story has appeared in the Christian
Science Monitor.
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I had a good week last week, but with some rough edges late in the week. Thursday my mother was hospitalized - car accident, broken ribs, trouble breathing (home Sunday, doing OK). Friday I had emergency surgery for a torn retina (an easy surgery, and no effect on my vision since I had prior vision problems and couldn't see out of that part of the eye anyway.) Saturday afternoon was the funeral of a neighbor whom my wife and I will miss very much. By Saturday evening I needed cheering up.
Saturday evening, the first week
of class at the University of Memphis, January 2001. My last regular semester,
as I'm retiring at the end of this school year. I'd seen something
in the student newspaper inviting people to a Vietnamese New Year's Party
at the University Center. I suggested it to my wife. She pointed out it
was cold and damp and I needed some rest. I said, some of my students may
be there and they always enjoy it when we turn up at their programs. If
it is too crowded or noisy we can do one circuit of the room and come home
early. We decided to go.
It turned out it was the New Year's
Party not of the students, but of the Vietnamese Community of Memphis
(that name may be translated wrong, all the printed matter and the program
were in Vietnamese). Apparently Memphis has something like 5000 Vietnamese,
I was told, and the party seemed to have five or six hundred of them,
mainly Vietnamese-speaking families, with an incredible number of
wonderful small children. I saw a few students, including (at a distance)
my Vietnamese Ph.D. graduate, but few if any other faculty and very few
Caucasians -- I talked to a journalist and a representative from Memphis
Mayor Herenton's office. But the food looked good and the Vietnamese costumes
looked interesting, so my wife and I took seats among the crowd at one
of the tables.
Shortly I was approached
by some older Vietnamese men. They asked me some questions in Vietnamese.
Pause while they found a translator. Who was I? Why had I come?
I explained that I taught Computer Science at the University of Memphis,
I'd had many Vietnamese students. I've attended a wedding of one of my
Master's students in the Vietnamese community, and followed one of my students
through her becoming a U.S. citizen. And I mentioned that last year my
student David Dung Vu had completed his Ph.D. in Computer Science.
Eyebrows rose. (Perhaps David
Dung Vu, or his family, or his clan, is prominent in the Vietnamese community.
I don't know). The older men conferred, in Vietnamese. Then
one of them asked, would I be willing to be introduced as the Official
Representative to the festivities from the University of Memphis?
I hadn't seen any administrators present, and hadn't seen Clara Nunis,
the International Student Advisor. So I said, if no one else turned up
to be the representative, I was willing.
My wife and I were escorted up and put
near the center of the head table! We then sat through an hour or
more of ceremonies and speeches in Vietnamese, many untranslated. But they
did translate into English the brief introduction of the representative
of Mayor Herenton, and the unexpectedly long and flowery introduction of
the University of Memphis' Representative, Dr. Ordman, with mention
of all I had done for Vietnamese students, all the University had done
for the Vietnamese Community, and how wonderfully the Vietnamese students
were doing in Mathematics and Computer Science.
There was a wonderful Vietnamese
dinner -- egg roll (I probably have the wrong words), barbecued chicken,
rice with shrimp, pork, things I don't have a name for. The serving lines
were very long, with 500 or 600 people at the party, but the head table
guests got waited on. And then there were Vietnamese traditional
ceremonies, songs, dances, and fashion shows.
And there were lions.
I'd seen pictures of Chinese New
Year Dragons. The Vietnamese, it turns out, call them Lions, but they are
the same sort of creature. They had four two-man lions, with huge heads,
and so many moving parts (ears, eyes, eyebrows, mouth, tongue)
that I wondered how they were operated. They did multi-legged dances, precision
acrobatics and somersaults, and poses and jumps and turns on tiny foot-sized
platforms six and eight feet in the air. I'd never seen anything like it,
and had no idea that we had people in Memphis who could give a performance
like this with such skill. [Were some of them students? I wonder
how we can find a way to give other students, or the community, a chance
to see this?] I suspect that very few Caucasians anywhere have
had such wonderful seats at a performance this excellent, at the head table,
with the lions less than six feet away and their heads often coming almost
directly to us as if seeking approval from the honored guests.
I have no idea how
my wife and I got to be so lucky. Was there supposed to have been
an official university representative, but a missed signal at a time when
so many administrative positions are filled temporarily? Was I
recognized from having been at the wedding a few years ago, or pointed
out by a student? Did they know of me, or approach me because I was
the longest-bearded, or best-dressed, or oldest-looking faculty member
present? It was one of those miracles that come but a few times in a career,
sheer luck, happy coincidence, but impossible unless you are in the right
place at the right time and your karma (to mix cultural terms) happens
to be exactly right.
For myself
and my wife, the evening will be remembered for many years, a very special
example of the wonderful experiences we have had at this university and
that would not have been possible without our long time here and our wonderful
relationships with so many students of all kinds at the University of Memphis.
I've appreciated my Vietnamese students very much, as I have appreciated
all my students, but few faculty members ever get to feel as much appreciated
and rewarded by their students as I did on this very special Vietnamese
New Year.
(C) Edward Ordman 2001