A Return to Vietnam : Actress Kieu Chinh Leaves Today on Quest to Resolve Lingering Family Mysteries

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 today to be reunited with a brother she has not seen in 41 years. The Studio City resident, who won critical acclaim for her performance in the 1993 film “The Joy Luck Club,” also plans to visit her father’s grave, 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,” the 55-year-old Chinh said during an interview at her publishing company, UniMedia Corp., based in Westminster’s Little Saigon. “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 actress is considered a legend among Vietnamese audiences throughout the world.

Before fleeing the country in 1975 at the peak of her career, Chinh starred in 22 feature films in Vietnam, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Taipei 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, “MASH.”

Chinh’s prominent cheekbones, porcelain skin and large, expressive eyes helped to make her a star among 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.

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 talks about her father--once a wealthy minister with the French colonial government--her eyes lower and her voice slows.

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.”

Chinh now plans to visit her father’s grave--where she will apologize, she said, for allowing him to die that way 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. . . . I think we need to see each other in person.”

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 age 18, she starred in her first film, playing the role of a Buddhist nun. Her career subsequently blossomed and in 1973 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, Chinh has never managed to regain the fame she left behind in Vietnam. She was divorced in 1980, and a few years later 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 strait jacket,” Chinh said. “It was a very tough time.”

Chinh recovered with the help of her children and friends, and her 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 acclaim, and she is organizing a July 1 celebration of Vietnamese culture, called Viet USA 20, at the Shrine Auditorium. Chinh has personal reasons for returning to Vietnam, but the trip was planned through the Vietnamese Memorial Assn., an American group dedicated to building monuments in Vietnam. As co-chair of the organization, Chinh will join other members at 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 members wanted to build a memorial to 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 computer 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.”

Chinh is to be greeted by her brother at the airport in Hanoi on Wednesday, and later pay her respects at the graves of her parents and visit her childhood homes. She also plans to visit two orphanages that Kimsey founded.

News of Chinh’s trip has spread quickly in Orange County’s large Vietnamese community.

“It’s wonderful that she’s going back now after so many years of separation,” said Westminster resident Mai Thao, a Vietnamese novelist and longtime friend of Chinh’s, who sees the trip home as carrying meaning for many Vietnamese refugees in the United States. “If she had gone back a few years ago, it may not have been good. But now, the timing is fine. I think many people support her taking this trip.”

Although Chinh said she cannot help but feel anxious about the visit, she is 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.”