By Hai Van Nguyen
Sunday Editor and Reporter, Vietnam News
Hanoi, Vietnam

I was overwhelmed by the U.S.—not because of the hi-tech world where everything is done electronically, nor because of its sparkling affluence, but because of the warmness of the people that I met during my five-month stay in the U.S. with the Saint Paul Pioneer Press.

It turns out that all my mental preparations for my first trip to the northland of the United States were not necessary. Before going I learned that the Gopher Star state was best known for extremely cold weather assumed to partly affect some traits of Minnesotans. "Remember not to make eye contact with people when you walk on streets," an American living in Vietnam advised me before my departure from Hanoi. Other people warned me of a "hard time" I would face in a country where communism is an odd term, anti-communist feeling common and thus, a visitor from a communist nation should not expect to be welcomed. I thought they probably had a point, especially when I added it up with my interpretation from some American movies I had seen. And I brought to Minnesota all those thoughts.

But things started in a different way right from the first day I was in St. Paul. Joggers in the neighborhood greeted me with a smile when noticing my new face at the nearby bus stop. I got on a bus, embarrassingly finding that I didn't prepare change for the fare. Right then a middle aged woman came up to me, slipped quarters into my hand with a gesture that read "It's nothing. I understand." That unexpected experience made me feel so cozy! I never forgot her face…but had no chance to see her again and repay her the loan.

It took me a few weeks to get used to waking up without the crowd of people talking and the honking motorbikes in early morning. But I was anxious the whole summer to see snow! I was lucky. By the time I was packing to return to Vietnam where snow never falls, I had seen a whiteout blanket on Minnesota. Among other Minnesotan things, I will miss those white flakes!

Minnesota has a diverse population and thus, I did not see strong signs of color racism like it is seen in many parts of the United States. Minnesota is home to 22,000 Vietnamese people, yet the old war had made me unsure if an encounter with my overseas compatriots would be warm. In fact, one of the first persons to welcome me to the Pioneer Press was a Vietnamese-American reporter. Her dad's home is the place I was invited for dinner the first day in the Twin Cities and many days thereafter. It felt like home gathering with them almost every weekend. Between us, there is no division of a former South Vietnam soldier and a person raised in Hanoi.

But in the newsroom, I was really out of my element. Newsroom people were helpful for the most part but 'story humanizing' or 'community news' is a simple term to say, doing it well is such a hard job. Coming from a paper whose front page is dominated with handshake news and community news is never given much space, I struggled on my first assignments. Though my patient editor was always tolerant with my pieces, I started doubting my five-years experience in the writing craft after finding that it was hard to recognize those first stories run in the Pioneer Press that I had written!

American journalism is not universally of a high standard. In fact, the standard between different papers in the same community is uneven. This I realized after my visit to the Kenyon Leader—a weekly paper located one hour outside of St. Paul. I see a big gap of quality between such a community paper and a mainstream one like Pioneer Press. Amazingly, the Kenyon Leader has been serving its community for 125 years and now goes online with just four staff, including the publisher and the managing editor who is also the only writer.

Robert Noah, publisher of the 16-page paper for 29 years, is also the person in charge of delivering the first bundles of papers to news racks every Tuesday night! I asked Noah what the conditions are to run a paper like the Kenyon Leader. "Get enough money to buy the establishment, know what the community is interested in and make sure to run it and earn a living on it," he said with a smile! Interesting and so simple, I think. In Vietnam, we don't have private newspapers and thus, a newspaper set up by just four persons can never get the ball rolling.

My first days in St. Paul, I was flattered that Minnesotans are aware of my country. I had expected, and heard from my AFPF colleagues, Americans to be ignorant of the rest of the world. Vietnam, my home, is familiar to Americans. Jokingly I would say it was the only "not bad" artifact of the war that America involved in Vietnam a quarter of a century ago!

Well, my contentment ended quickly when, after learning that I am from Vietnam, people would ask, "Do you want to stay here?" To many Americans, the word Vietnam arouses the old war and immigration rather than a country. There are Americans who said they voted for Al Gore in the election 2000 because he volunteered to go to the Vietnam War while George W. Bush did not.

Initially I felt uncomfortable with that question, feeling like it was asked in fear that I may be a potential immigrant. I may have read too much into it but obviously the increased immigration is growing to be an individual concern of Americans though the United States is the world's biggest hub for a diverse blend of immigrants.

At an outdoor barbecue a guy asked me the same question, but more frankly "Do you want to seek asylum here?" Not waiting for an answer, he went further offering to help me do so. "Why would I?" I answered, making his eyes roll and his high eyebrows go even further up and apart.

I don't disagree with his hinted message that this country has always been a destination that certain people from different countries would risk their lives to emigrate to. But I am just not among the crowd. Having said that, I still have to admit, among the differences of this society, individual choice is the best thing I have observed. For example, voting is a right and also an obligation in my country but Americans don't cast their votes if they don't want to.

The November, 2000 election saw some areas with only a few percentage of people exercising their right to vote even though when they do, it does count. Wasn't the absence of a President two weeks after the election an evident example that the chance of United States' top executive could be twisted on fingers of public who, in this case, were a few hundreds of Florida seniors?