28 June: tombstones

A short while before I left Vietnam to return to the U.S., I visited An Tu Vien, the Christian cemetery in Lai Thieu, where my (maternal) great-grandparents are buried. This image you see here is a small section of the very large cemetery, and it used to belong to the Chinese churches, but they then shared it with the Vietnamese Protestant churches, eventually selling it into our care. It was the very first time that I ever saw my grandparents' site. I went with Chu Dan, sitting on the back of his motorbike for the one hour drive out to Lai Thieu. Of course, we had to wear helmets and took all the necessary precautions. It was a terrible imposition on him, especially with his busy schedule, but of course Co Hoa Trang did nothing but insist that I let them take me. The weather was hot and humid. The cemetery was deserted. I brought a notebook and pen, a videocamera to record the day's events, and a digital camera to capture my photo next to the tombstone of the grandparents I never knew. I did not bring flowers. I took home photographs.