Reunions End 20-Year Trek for Hmong

FRESNO —  Two dozen Hmong refugees, some of the last wandering faces of the Vietnam War, stepped off a bus in Fresno on Wednesday to the cries and embrace of long-lost family, their 20-year journey finally complete.

Ge Xiong, who settled in America with her husband in 1979, kept stroking the weary faces of her mother, brother and sister, trying to believe it was they.

“It’s you,” she wept. “It’s you.”

The trek had taken them from their mountain huts in Laos in the mid-1970s to a life of deadlock in Thailand refugee camps--caught between dreams of one day returning home and the uncertainty of America. So they waited, in some cases for more than two decades.

When it became clear that the Thai government was closing the camps this year, and with their old homeland still ruled by the enemy, the family sent a tape-recorded plea to Ge Xiong in Fresno, asking if she would take them in. But they worried she wouldn’t.

Her mother, after all, was keenly aware of the Hmong custom that a daughter is no longer a daughter when she marries. There was no elder son to take the family in, however.

“I had never heard that desperation in my mother’s voice before,” Xiong, 36, said through a translator. “She said she was going to kill herself if they couldn’t come to America. I told her, ‘Momma, don’t worry. I have a very supportive husband. You and my little brother and sister are welcomed.’ ”

The bus ride from San Francisco down California Highway 99, the flat four lanes that cleave this agricultural heartland, was the final leg of a 12,000-mile trek that began Sunday in Thailand. The same route has been taken by tens of thousands of Hmong refugees over the past two decades, about 50 of whom waited in Wednesday’s warm November sun to welcome a brother, sister or mother whose face they could no longer recall.

Sociologists regard the Hmong as the most disadvantaged immigrant group ever to land in America, and the refugees who have lingered in the camps until now are surely the most ill-prepared of the lot.

The Hmong were slash-and-burn farmers with no written language and almost no concept of Western ways when the CIA recruited them from their isolated mountain huts in the 1960s to fight the Viet Cong. They suffered one of the highest casualty rates of the war, and many of the 125,000 who came to America regard welfare as redress for blood spilled on behalf of their adopted land.

Their customs--girls marrying as young as 13, fertility rates of 9.5 children per mother, shamans sacrificing puppies to cure the ill--have clashed dramatically with life in this farming region.

Those who arrived Wednesday have come at an uncertain time. About 6,000 Hmong have recently left California, citing fear of gangs, high unemployment and impending welfare changes. They have moved to Minnesota, Wisconsin, Oregon and other states where they believe their chances of finding work are better.

“Part of the reason my mother didn’t want to come to America for so long was because she heard about the crime and gangs,” Xiong said. “And she was afraid my brother wouldn’t find a job. I told her not to worry.”

Xiong had never seen her 10-year-old sister, Nhia. Her 23-year-old brother, Pao, was only a year old when she escaped their village, which was under siege by Communist forces, and fled to Thailand.

The rest of the family didn’t have the cash to buy their way out of Laos. It wasn’t until Xiong married and resettled in America that she was able to send them enough money to escape to Thailand.

“For many years, I was heartbroken and my stomach felt empty,” she said. “Then I met my husband and things got better, but there was still this hole in me. It feels like something is missing. It feels like I don’t have a brain anymore because I think too much about them.”

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Just a few months earlier, she had waited with her husband on these same steps outside the Fresno Air Terminal for the bus bringing her father and his second wife and family from San Francisco--their final leg from Thailand.

The father, Chue Tong Xiong, was back at the bus stop Wednesday, but as one of the greeters. He said he is having a hard time adjusting to life in America, life outside the listlessness of the refugee camp. He is aware that at his age, 65, most Americans are retiring. He fears changes in the welfare law that could one day make him and his family ineligible for public assistance.

“I don’t know English and I have no education. I don’t know how I’m going to support myself,” he said.

Then his face turned to the bus rumbling toward him. Mai Vang, one of the resettlement workers, pressed forward. “Here’s the crying part,” she said.

First off the bus was Xiong’s mother, who was wearing a necklace made of braided metal to ward off evil spirits that might prevent the reunion from taking place. She collapsed in her daughter’s arms and wept. Then came Xiong’s brother and little sister in jeans and tennis shoes. They were engulfed by family.

“Honey, you have to be happy now,” one relative told the small girl. “You guys are here now. The crying is over.”

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Who Are the Hmong?

HISTORY: Originally from China, the Hmong are one of the most ancient tribes in the world. Persecuted in China for refusing to discard their unique ways, they migrated to the highlands of Laos in the early 1800s. When war ravaged Southeast Asia in the mid-1970s, they fled to refugee camps in Thailand. More than 125,000 now live in the United States, primarily in California and Minnesota.

TRIBAL NAME: Hmong literally means “free men.” It is pronounced Mong.

BACKGROUND: Sealed off from the outside world, the Hmong adopted a code of laws based on myriad taboos. Among them: Do not feed chicken gizzards to a child or he will grow up lacking in intelligence; do not tickle a baby’s feet or he will grow up a thief.

Hmong in California: About 88,000 refugees from the Hmong tribe of Southeast Asia and their offspring have settled in California, with Fresno County having by far the largest concentration.

Sources: U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement and Hmong leaders in various cities