Whenever I eat eggs, I think about fertility and the folk tale about Vietnam’s creation. During my trip to Vietnam, my relatives brought me to a play about the creation of Vietnam. The story is as follows:

When a fairy princess named Au Co and a sea dragon named Lac Long Quang fell in love, these entities from separate worlds came together to create a hundred eggs, which hatched into the first people of Vietnam.

When the deities realized they were too different to live in the same place, they agreed to share their children, allowing half to follow their mother north into the lush mountains to create North Vietnam, and half to follow their father south towards the plentiful sea, creating South Vietnam.

The story is a good metaphor for the immigrant experience, since it is about two worlds colliding to influence one another and create worlds anew. To draw connections between the American and Vietnamese worlds, as well as allude to a sense of displacement, I paint the fairy as the Statue of Liberty. She represents the America, while the dragon represents Vietnam. With this American cultural symbol, the Vietnamese folk tale gains political implications, alluding to American and French colonial influences, which are also present in the Western painting style. The traditional tale now becomes layered with ideas about the American Dream and Manifest Destiny. The eggs which represented fertility of the Vietnamese land can also indicate the possibilities of life in America.

   


Moreover, the folk tale represents a good opportunity to discuss North/South relations. The Vietnamese folk tale emphasizes that all Vietnamese people are siblings with the same mythical origins. However, during the Viet Nam War, brothers fought against one another, depending on whether they enlisted in Communist-controlled Northern Vietnam, or Democratic South Vietnam, creating tensions and unrest that still angers the Vietnamese people to this day. When I returned to Viet Nam, I discovered that my father fought against his brother, who kindly hosted me when I visited Hai Phong! Even though they love each other, the two men refuse to discuss the War. My father adamantly refuses to salute to a Communist Vietnamese flag, while my uncle displays his proudly. Similarly, the U.S. faced similar strife during the Civil War. I draw on this, creating figures that run off to the mountains and the sea, and painting Vietnamese and American flags from the North and South.