Journey to the Past : 20 Years After Fleeing, Actress Kieu Chinh Returns to Vietnam

WESTMINSTER —  It’s a journey that actress Kieu Chinh hopes will help resolve the lingering mysteries of her past.

After 20 years, Chinh will head to Vietnam Monday to be reunited with a brother whom she has not seen in 41 years. The 55-year-old actress, who won critical acclaim for her performance in the 1993 film “The Joy Luck Club,” also plans to visit her father’s grave site, where she will ask his forgiveness for allowing him to die destitute.

Although the official purpose of Chinh’s 11-day trip is to attend the opening of a school in the former demilitarized zone, her personal mission is to find out what happened to her brother and father after the family separated in 1954.

“I feel I’ve gone through many obstacles and painful moments during my life, but my life is still incomplete because I don’t know what happened to my family,” said Chinh, during an interview at her Little Saigon-based publishing company, UniMedia Corp. “My brother and I need to see each other to make our lives complete.”

Although Chinh’s role in “The Joy Luck Club” is her best-known performance in recent years, the Studio City actress is considered a legend among Vietnamese audiences throughout the world.

Before fleeing Vietnam in 1975 at the peak of her career, Chinh starred in 22 feature films in Vietnam, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan and India. Since then, she has won mostly small roles in 45 television shows and feature films, including playing Alan Alda’s Korean love interest in the television series “M*A*S*H.”

Chinh still has the same prominent cheekbones, porcelain skin and large, expressive eyes that made her a star to many Vietnamese film fans. But her face also reveals the pain she’s carried for much of her life as a result of her family’s separation and misfortunes.

The sorrow began early in Chinh’s life. When she was 6, Allied planes bombed the Hanoi hospital where her mother had just given birth to a son. Her mother and brother both died in the World War II raid, and the family’s Hanoi estate was destroyed.

Chinh last saw her older brother, Lan, in 1954--shortly after North and South Vietnam were divided. She was 15 at the time, and her brother, then 21, woke her up in the middle of the night to tell her he planned to join the North Vietnamese Communist forces.

“He said, ‘You take care of Dad,’ ” Chinh recalled. “I was crying and said, ‘No, you can’t go.’ I ran out to the front of the house, and his friend was waiting for him with a bicycle. I put my hand on the bicycle, but he pushed my hand off of it and rode away.”

Chinh immediately woke up her father, who was unable to chase down his only son.

“My father was barefoot, and he ran to the end of the street in his pajamas,” Chinh said. “He then just sat down with his head on his knees and was quiet. He didn’t say a word.”

As Chinh talked about her father--once a wealthy minister with the French colonial government--her eyes lowered and she began to speak slowly and softly.

Two days after her brother left home, she and her father headed to the airport to catch a plane to South Vietnam. As she boarded the plane, her father pushed her inside and told her to stay with family friends who also were headed to Saigon. He wanted to look for her brother.

“That was the last time I saw him,” Chinh said. “I heard from a family friend that my father had been in jail for seven years, and that after he got out of jail, he didn’t have a ration card to buy food. He died suffering from lack of nutrition.”

One of the most emotional points of Chinh’s trip is sure to be her visit to her father’s grave, where she will apologize for allowing him to die hungry in 1978.

“I wasn’t there to perform my duty as a daughter and help him,” she said. “I’m sorry I don’t have the opportunity to be reunited with him. I know that’s the dream we both shared.”

Chinh and her brother, who lives in the family’s old Hanoi home, have communicated through letters and over the phone. But most of their correspondence has been brief, and Chinh still does not know the details of her brother’s life or what really happened to their father.

“We write to each other, but we don’t talk about the past,” said Chinh, who also has an older sister living in France. “All I know is that he’s married and has two daughters. To me, I think we need to see each other in person. We can’t ask such important questions over the phone.”

Two years after Chinh fled Hanoi and arrived in Saigon, she married the son of her adopted family and they later had three children. At 18, she starred in her first film, playing the role of a Buddhist nun. Her career subsequently blossomed, culminating in 1973 when she was honored as best actress at the Asia Film Festival.

In April, 1975--shortly before the fall of Saigon--Chinh fled the country and eventually traveled to Canada, where her three children were attending school. The actress Tippi Hedren, who had met Chinh in Vietnam, agreed to sponsor Chinh and her family and they moved to California.

Since arriving in Hollywood, however, Chinh has never managed to regain the fame she left behind in Vietnam. In 1980, she divorced her husband. A few years later, she suffered an emotional breakdown.

In 1985, her son, Jean-Pierre, then 25, was involved in a car accident that left third-degree burns over half of his body. While nursing him back to health, Chinh broke down.

“I went to the hospital two times. The first time my son called 911, the second time my neighbor called 911 and they wrapped me in a straitjacket,” Chinh said. “It was a very tough time.”

Having recovered with the help of her children and friends, Chinh’s life and career once again appear to be taking an upward turn. Her performance as the protagonist’s mother in “The Joy Luck Club” earned her wide acclaim, and she is organizing a July 1 celebration of Vietnamese culture, called Viet USA 20, at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.

Chinh has personal reasons for returning to Vietnam, but the trip actually was planned through the Vietnamese Memorial Assn., a U.S. group dedicated to building monuments in Vietnam. As co-chair of the organization, Chinh and other members will attend the April 24 opening of an elementary school in Dong Ha, which is near the border that once separated north and south Vietnam.

The association raised $75,000 to open the school because they wanted to build a memorial to honor the 2 million people who died during the Vietnam War. The school is named after Lewis B. Puller Jr., a former U.S. Marine who won a Pulitzer Prize for his autobiography, “Fortunate Son.” Puller committed suicide last year, shortly after he returned from a visit to Vietnam.

“There are 12,000 children in Dong Ha who have no school to attend,” Chinh said. “We wanted to dedicate something to the young generation.”

Among those accompanying Chinh to the opening celebration are Terry Anderson, a former Associated Press bureau chief who was held hostage in Lebanon for seven years, and James Kimsey, a Vietnam veteran and chairman of the communications company, America Online.

“I think this trip is a symbol of the laying to rest (of) the acrimony that’s festered for all these years,” Kimsey said. “It represents a new beginning to relations between this country and Vietnam.”

News of Chinh’s trip has spread quickly in the local Vietnamese community. Chinh said she’s received numerous calls from friends and acquaintances wishing her well on the journey.

Although Chinh said she can’t help but feel anxious about the visit, she’s going to Vietnam with few expectations.

“All I want to do is hug my brother, look at him and hear his voice,” she said. “I last saw him when he was a young man, and now he is an old man. I know on the other side of the ocean, my brother has the same feelings about me.”

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Profile: Kieu Chinh

Age: 55

Hometown: Hanoi, Vietnam

Residence: Studio City

Path to U.S.: Took refuge in Saigon in 1954; left Vietnam before Saigon fell in April, 1975

Family: Divorced in 1980; three children: daughter, Vanessa, 37; sons Paul, 34, and Jean-Pierre, 34

Professions: Actress and publisher

As an actress: Lead roles in 22 feature films in Vietnam, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, India, and some U.S. productions shot in Asia; appeared in 45 U.S. TV shows and movies.

Biggest role: Suyuan in 1993’s “The Joy Luck Club”

Award: Best actress of Vietnam, 1969

As a publisher: Westminster- based Vietnamese American magazine, Viet & World