Hawker Dreams: A Vietnamese American in Singapore

By Oanh Ngo Usadi

Shining a brilliant light on expat life in Singapore, "Hawker Dreams" sweeps readers into the heart of the rule-abiding city-state where nearly a third of its six million inhabitants are foreigners, each with a story to tell.

 

The memoir is equal parts travelogue, family history, and cultural exploration. Oanh Ngo Usadi takes you on her journey of home and belonging through the prism of language, cuisine, and class. In the multi-cultural, multi-ethnic island where language plays a central role in shaping identities and forging connections "Hawker Dreams" is a celebration of the ties that bind us to a place, no matter where we call home.

• Language: English
• Publisher: O&O Press
• Release date: Mar 9, 2024
• ISBN: 9780999882863

Oanh Ngo Usadi

Oanh Ngo Usadi was born in Saigon but grew up in the Mekong Delta, where her family was exiled after the war. When she was eleven, the family escaped Vietnam as boat refugees. They settled in a small Texas town where her father opened a bánh mì sandwich shop. Oanh’s writings have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Forbes and others. She has been featured in several podcasts including Voice of America, the Bookmonger, and Morphmom.  She has also been a featured storyteller at The Moth Mainstage. You can follow Oanh on Facebook, Twitter and the O&O Press website, OandOPress.com.

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Prologue

A

cross throngs of traffic and pedestrians, I spotted an open-air café on the ground floor of a four-story building. High above, laundry hung drying on balconies, fragments of local life suspended in midair. The Chicken House Café, with its peeling paint and plastic chairs, defied the image I had held of the hypermodern metropolis but stirred memories of a college friend from the early ’90s who loved to say, Never pass up a restaurant with ‘House’ in its name.

In those days, despite nearly a decade living in the United States, my culinary experiences remained largely confined to school cafeterias. My friend had introduced me to the House of Pies in Houston, Texas, a favorite late-night student hangout where I had my first truly delicious hamburger. Now, almost thirty years later, in another new country, I discovered that much like Americans, with their deep affection for hamburgers, Singaporeans had an almost zealous love for chicken rice. This tender, poached chicken, paired with chili garlic sauce and fragrant rice, held a revered status, savored every day and everywhere. Though House had long lost its mark of culinary merit, the Chicken House Café, with its no-fuss neighborhood vibe, was hard to resist.

Come on Benny, let’s cross the street and take a look, I urged, tugging along my overheated, annoyed-at-the-world fifteen-year-old who was in no mood for another detour.

Can we not? I just want to go ... Benny protested, stopping short. Since our arrival in Singapore, I’d noticed his reluctance to utter the word home. For the homesick teenager, it could only mean the house back in New Jersey, with a for sale sign in the yard.

The late afternoon sky, big white puffs against a brilliant blue, masked a heat heavy with moisture. Benny and I had set out earlier in the day in search of drinking glasses, a dish rack, everyday necessities that didn’t fit in our suitcases. Along the way, signs urged people to conserve water, reduce food waste, and practice neighborly kindness. Others cautioned against littering and voyeurism. A looping video on the subway train showed a man being pursued and handcuffed for the crime of molest, or inappropriate touching. Penalties for crimes ranged from fines to caning, prison, even death. As I had been warned often, the tree-lined island with pristine gardens was no place to be outside the law.

Just look around, OK? I’ll be fast, I said, leaving Benny with our bags on the sidewalk outside the café.

At the tail end of the lunch hour, the café was nearly deserted except for a few older men savoring their kopi, which likely meant a highly aromatic, very sweet local cup of coffee. These uncles, as they’re known in Singapore, were sporting the standard hot-weather outfit of T-shirts and shorts, chatting away in Chinese while casually tapping their cigarettes on a cut-out tin can in the middle of the table.

In a glass cabinet, golden poached chickens hung from metal hooks, their heads still intact. A fan whirled overhead, spreading a hint of hot spices coming from a distance. Across the room, a young woman was hard at work slicing chili peppers, adding them onto a bright red mound inside a colander. Beside her, another worker ladled garlic chili sauce into small plastic pouches from a massive vat. No processed condiments here.

As I approached, an uncle seated on a nearby stool slipped into his flip-flops and gave a nod, ready to take my order. On the wall behind him, a menu featured dishes with descriptions in Chinese and partial English. It dawned on me that placing an order might not be straightforward. During our first few days on the island, I had encountered many elderly locals who didn’t speak English, even though it was one of the island’s four official languages. Being a Chinese Singaporean, this uncle probably grew up primarily speaking Hokkien or another Chinese dialect, much as his Malay or Indian counterparts spoke their own ethnic languages. Given his age, it seemed likely that Singapore hadn’t yet mandated English as the language of instruction during his school years.

Could I see a menu? I inquired, framing a rectangle with my fingers. Maybe it would be easier to point to something on a page.

The uncle gazed at me for an extended moment, and then spoke in what I presumed was Chinese.

I’m sorry, I don’t understand, I replied.

The look on his face, like he was scolding me with an unspoken just speak Chinese already! was all too familiar. My round face, fair complexion, and overall appearance often misled people into thinking I was Chinese and therefore fluent in the language. Despite Vietnamese borrowing many words from Chinese, the two languages have no common origin, and most of these borrowed words are unrecognizable to untrained ears.

I remembered an incident in a New York City Chinatown restaurant; a friend had raved about the place. The waitress kept talking in Chinese, despite my repeated attempts to explain. When she finally switched to English, it was to declare, No Chinese, no food, before walking away. In astonishment, I resorted to Vietnamese, conveying the same message: Em là người Việt. Em không biết nói tiếng Tàu (I’m Vietnamese. I don’t speak Chinese). She didn’t acknowledge me, but the possibility of delicious food kept me waiting around, and thankfully someone eventually came over, speaking English.

Inside the Chicken House Café, I didn’t want to get into a similar standoff with the uncle.

I’m sorry, I don’t speak Chinese, I reiterated, then quickly added, from Vietnam. I’d learned from past encounters that this little extra tidbit of information could make all the difference.

But you’re American! I could almost hear my husband interject. But saying that I was American didn’t necessarily clarify my inability to speak Chinese; after all, I could just as easily be a Chinese American. But at this moment, the specifics were unimportant as I just wanted to get the message across.

I am from Vietnam, I repeated, much more slowly and loudly, even though I knew it rarely worked. In my early days in America, I had believed this was a uniquely American quirk to make someone understand. Now, I found myself succumbing to the same impulse.

The uncle and I stood staring at each other, waiting for something, then his expression seemed to shift. He raised his palm, signaling me to cease speaking. He then turned and disappeared into the kitchen.

After some time, the door swung open, and out walked a friendly-looking young woman. She glanced around the room while drying her hands on her apron, and her face lit up when she spotted me.

Quả, chị là người Việt, hả? (Goodness, you’re Vietnamese?) she exclaimed, hurrying over to me.

The Vietnamese lilt, the slightest whisper I can make out across a crowded room, felt like home. But hearing those sounds, inseparable in my mind as the language of immigrants, was the last thing I had expected. To my knowledge, there were no Vietnamese immigrants in Singapore. Among friends and relatives, fellow boat refugees, I didn’t know anyone who had resettled on this island.

Still grinning, the waitress gently grasped my hand, giving it a light squeeze—a sweet gesture of familiarity I had often seen among my mom and aunts.

Đúng rồi em, chị là người Việt (You’re right, I’m Vietnamese), I replied, addressing her as em, or younger sister. The waitress had called me chị, or older sister.

But the uncle said you don’t speak Chinese, she said in Vietnamese, her smile fading into a vague concern.  We continued in Vietnamese.

That’s right, I said.

Not even a few words? she asked.

Uh ... no.

How do you expect to work then? Alarm suddenly swept her face. She reached out, again took hold of my hand, and guided us to a far corner of the room.

There, she leaned in and whispered, My God, are you hợp pháp?

Even though no one was within earshot or would have comprehended our conversation, her paranoia made clear she was serious. Except I couldn’t remember the exact meaning of the key word in her question, hợp pháp. I had a vague sense it meant something not good, having to do with the law. My command of Vietnamese, the only language in which I thought and dreamed for the first twelve years of life, was only at a fifth-grade level when I left the country. Living in America, I had lost touch with formal and less commonly used words.

As I searched through my memories, brushing off years of rust to uncover the word buried in another language, an image slowly emerged: a solitary fishing boat on a vast, blue ocean, seagulls cawing overhead. Someone yelled in Vietnamese, Oh my God! Land! before a crowd of people rushed to one side of the boat, hugging each other, crying and laughing.

Older sister, are you hợp pháp? the waitress pressed, her breath warm against my face.

I still couldn’t fully grasp the meaning of hợp pháp, but I sensed its connection to this distant past.

Our small fishing boat, carrying 150 passengers, had escaped out of communist Vietnam five days earlier. The circling seagulls above offered a glimmer of hope, signaling that somewhere in the South China Sea, we might be approaching land. With our water supply depleted and several passengers gravely ill, we were at a critical juncture, but salvation remained just out of reach, obstructed by one final obstacle.

In that snippet of memory, the meaning of hợp pháp came to me—the word meant within the law. On the vast ocean, we were undeniably outside the law’s boundaries. Having covertly escaped Vietnam, we had relinquished our rights to a homeland and the protection that accompanied it, rendering us stateless.  Our destiny rested on the compassion of any country we encountered and its willingness to offer us asylum. On that particular day, fortune favored us, revealing land to be Malaysia. If it had been Singapore, we would have been directed back to the sea to seek refuge elsewhere.

Now, forty years later, my circumstances couldn’t have been more different.

Younger sister, I’m hợp pháp! I insisted.

The waitress appeared even more baffled.

I glanced outside to check on Benny, and her gaze followed me.

That’s my son, I said, pointing to the back of Benny’s head, a mop of dark hair.

With those words, her face transformed.

That’s your son? she practically shouted. Is he hợp pháp? Her voice returned to a hushed whisper.

She had posed the question, but it was clear that she wasn’t particularly interested in what I had to say. She already knew the answer: of course, he couldn’t be.

The situation, her inexplicable fixation on us, grew increasingly unsettling. Was there information she possessed that I lacked? What if others shared her suspicions? My mind raced through potential scenarios and worst-case outcomes. I suspected this would ultimately prove to be a minor mix-up, a case of mistaken identity. But while we sorted out the misunderstanding, there was a real chance of getting involved with Singapore’s legal system.

I rummaged through my purse to find my temporary IDs, only to discover I had left them at home. The only document I had was my New Jersey Driver’s License, which held some value but none in establishing my legal status in Singapore. As I searched the waitress’s face for some insight, any hint of an explanation, I realized the three of us — the uncle, the waitress, and I — all had misconstrued each other’s intentions, projecting our own biases onto each other’s narrative.

When we first met, I had assumed the waitress was an immigrant in Singapore. In my mind, any foreigner in another country in a low-wage job could only be an immigrant, much like my family’s experience in the US, but I couldn’t fathom how she could have arrived on the island. My narrow thinking had blinded me to the reality of Singapore’s extensive foreign workforce of migrant laborers, many of whom could be from Vietnam.

The uncle had his own limited perspective. Initially, he assumed I was a Chinese-speaking customer uninterested in engaging with him. Since he didn’t speak English, my fluency didn’t matter. If anything, my American accent, which was strange to his ears, and general bewilderment likely led him to peg me as a migrant worker. The timing of my arrival, during the lull between lunch and dinner, reinforced the impression that I might be seeking a job.

Things became muddier with the waitress. To her, I wasn’t just a migrant worker but a newcomer taking the ill-considered step of venturing out on my own. Convinced of her judgment, she refused to budge, even when I tried to explain. In her view, if I was hợp pháp, then I must be aiding my son, whom she then assumed likely to be the one who was not hợp pháp. For her to reach such a conclusion, I cringingly realized, I must look even more unkempt than I thought, with my shirt soaked through and sweat glistening on my face.

Younger sister, we’re both hợp pháp! My son’s hợp pháp. I’m hợp pháp, I said. "Chị người Mỹ" (I’m American), I added, attempting to clarify the misunderstanding.

Người Mỹ? she asked, surprised.

This time, I understood perfectly why she was confused. In Vietnamese, there’s no clear distinction between calling someone an American and saying they’re from America. The term người Mỹ, which means person America, covers both. In a country where immigration is not common and the population is mostly homogenous, these distinctions don’t much matter.

I explained that I was born in Vietnam but left when I was little. I had just moved to Singapore with my family and before that we lived in America.

Ah ... I see. You’re a Việt Kiều, she remarked. The label Việt Kiều, meaning Vietnamese living abroad, technically applied to both of us, but in her eyes, we were worlds apart.

I first encountered the term when I returned to Vietnam with my father in the mid-90s, twelve years after our escape from the country. As our plane touched down at Saigon’s Tân Sơn Nhất Airport, the cabin erupted in tears of joy. The homecoming marked the realization of a long-held fantasy for many of us boat refugees on board. Homeland, everyone has only one, like a mother, only one, goes a beloved Vietnamese song. Vietnam awaited us as we had yearned for her all the years that we were away.

On the ground, reality often contradicted this fantasy. People frequently commented on my Vietnamese, either praising it as so good or criticizing it as so bad. It struck me that such remarks would not be directed at someone perceived as a native, and that somewhere in the intervening years, I had lost what I assumed was an everlasting claim.

Inside the Chicken House Café, I detected a similar sense of otherness in the waitress’s gaze. As we waited for the food, she shared her own story. Tuyểt, whose name means snow, was in fact a migrant worker. Both of us came from Vĩnh Long, a province in the Mekong Delta, the heart of rice farming in Vietnam. Her life echoed a familiar tale—young children, a husband who drank too much, aging parents—a life conditioned to be devoted to others.

Tuyểt left her village to work in Hồ Chí Minh City, formerly Sài Gòn, where wages were much better. Still, they couldn’t compare to working overseas. Driven by her family’s needs, she decided to seek work abroad, not an easy choice for a mother. The process wasn’t cheap; she had to borrow money to pay an agency for a work permit in Singapore, chosen for its proximity to Vietnam. With limited English and serviceable Mandarin, she ended up at the Chicken House. Restaurants were common destinations for unskilled laborers.

In Singapore, life became only about paying off debt and sending money home; nothing else mattered. On her days off from the restaurant, Tuyểt took on unofficial housecleaning jobs, getting paid under the table. She mentioned her tooth had been hurting, but she would wait until her next trip back to Vietnam, where everything, including dental care, was much cheaper.

I’ve never seen ‘ma gin na bai xen’ up close, she said, shaking her head. It took me a moment to realize she was referring to the Marina Bay Sands Complex, Singapore’s iconic skyline resembling a ship in the sky, a popular tourist destination.

Tuyểt was right. We were both Việt Kiều, Vietnamese living abroad, but a chasm divided our current lives. Each night, she returned to a shared room with fellow migrant workers on the outskirts of town, while I went home to a private house among fellow professionals in Singapore. The contrast also extended to our hearts, with hers residing firmly in Vietnam and mine beating with mixed loyalties between two worlds.

It’s very lonely here, Tuyểt said, her hand falling on my arm again as she passed by on her way back to work. I really miss home.

I headed back outside, the aroma of freshly poached chicken wafting ahead.

Mom, I heard you speak Vietnamese! Benny called out excitedly. Is there a Vietnamese community here?

Yeah, but I had no idea either, I responded, pleased to see him so engaged.

You know what that means, right? I asked. I thought it would cheer him up. Benny loved everything Vietnamese, especially the cuisine.

Good food! he said, then, catching himself, I still don’t want to be here.

Around us, pedestrians strolled by, speaking in a blossom of languages. In this city-state of almost six million residents, nearly a third came from elsewhere. It occurred to me that in a foreign land, the yearning for home extended beyond the physical place to encompass something deeply tied to it— a sense of belonging that Tuyểt found so elusive.

But how to find this connection? I wasn’t entirely sure. To begin, I thought we should assume we already belonged in this place.

OK, Benny, let’s head home, I said, no more skipping over the word.

We became part of the bustling crowd. Moving along the city sidewalk, everyone jostling, barely making way for one another, none of us could foresee the upheaval to come. Within seven months, Singapore, like the rest of the world, would be ensnared in the grip of a pandemic.

As the global hub took the unprecedented step of shuttering its borders, many foreigners on the island found themselves stranded. Whether just a stone’s throw away in Malaysia or separated by continents on the other side of the globe, home became equally out of reach.  The altered landscape, with life suspended in wait, ushered in a period of reflection, prompting a reassessment of long-held beliefs, including the very