At the age of 7, my grandfather lived by himself in this lonely cottage in the village of Tòng Thái, district of Bất Bạt, province of Sơn Tây. Here, he developed unspeakable emotional trauma that would shape his story and our family’s history for the next 8 decades, the ripple effects of which are still felt to this day.

On our pilgrimage back to Tòng Thái, we thought we would only be able to see the outside perimeter of the house, but the new owner was very kind to invite us inside for tea and visit. He was just happy to receive visitors. It is a very lonely village.

And it was hauntingly surreal to face the little house that holds our origin story. 

My grandfather’s father passed away when he was but a toddler. Although my great-grandfather was the most respected teacher in the province (as a family member recalled, his funeral had a mile-long line of mourners who were mostly his students), he left absolutely nothing for my great-grandmother and their newborn son - except for this gloomy little house.

Of course, as a woman of the time, my great-grandmother had to remarry if she wanted to secure the financial means to feed her and her young son. But her new husband came with one caveat: he would not accept the seed of another man to live in his house.

And so my great-grandmother made the excruciating choice to leave her 7-year-old son at the only safe place she knew, with the promise that she would visit often and provide for him financially. This abandonment was a deeply-cut wound that my grandfather would carry to his grave.

If you’re familiar with the character Javert of “Les Misérables,” the staunch anti-hero with a wounded heart and an unyielding loyalty to justice, then you already have an idea of how my grandfather was in real life.

Whereas Javert was born in a prison and thus vowed to revolt against everything he saw as what his criminal parents stood for by becoming an immovably faithful man of the law, my grandfather was disgusted by his mother’s broken promises, and thus spent the rest of his life staying true to his words, his integrity, and his uncompromisingly black-and-white views of right and wrong, even when his immalleable ideals worked against his (and our family’s) best interests.

…EXCEPT for the one time when he DID stray away from his straight and narrow path….for the woman he loved: my grandmother. And that was a decision that would haunt us to this day.