I often believe any ideology espoused in Vietnam is only transitory, the eternal Vietnam is the land all the Vietnamese people have built, that’s the Vietnam that will endure, Eternally!I keep on looking at the photo of the Mỹ Thuận Bridge and I feel extremely elated. So, finally, the Vietnamese people have been delivered from the nuisance of using the barge when crossing the river … We are determined to go back to Vietnam without any idea of what awaits us in the days ahead. In any case, I want to find my final rest in Vietnam – the place where I was born and spent sixty years of my life!Tạ Tỵ [letters to Ngô Thế Vinh dated 2.29. & 7.27. 2000]
Picture 1:left, Tạ Tỵ, 31 years old, on his return to the city after 4 years of fighting the French (Hanoi, 1952); center, Major Tạ Tỵ serving in the Republic of Vietnam’s Armed Forces; right, Tạ Tỵ in 2000. After 1975, he was sent to the reeducation camp for 6 years. In his memoir Đáy Địa Ngục / At the Bottom of Hell, he recounted the harsh days of incarceration and hard laborwhen “food not enough to fill andhunger not enough to kill”; [source: family album of Tạ Tỵ, photo by Phạm Phú Minh, Đáy Địa Ngục, Nxb Thằng Mõ 1985]
