Plight of Hmong Detailed in Pandau Exhibit

In the aftermath of the Vietnam War, many Laotians risked death if they remained in their native country. The new communist government was imprisoning and executing those who had helped American soldiers or aided the CIA’s fight against communist forces.

Several hundred thousand Laotians fled with their families in 1974 and 1975, many using bamboo plants to keep themselves afloat as they crossed the Mekong River into Thailand.

Ia Vue, a refugee who has settled in Linda Vista, still recalls Thai policemen standing as sentinels at the shore, giving the refugees a choice of paying massive bribes or being executed.

Vue floated down the river with her husband and mother-in-law, then paid the Thai police $6,000 so they could avoid execution.

“We were in the river four hours,” she said. Vue’s husband had been a soldier who, like many members of the Hmong (pronounced “mung”) mountain tribe, had helped the Americans during the CIA’s supposedly secret war in Laos.

Vue and her companions eventually flew to San Diego, where a Hmong community was developing in Linda Vista. Now 34, she has replaced the farm work she did in Laos with a job as a sewing machine operator and the task of raising five children in the community, which now includes more than 1,500 Hmong.

In her spare time, Vue practices a type of Hmong embroidery called pandau. A tradition that is thousands of years old, it is one of the only means for outsiders to understand Hmong culture, which Vue said existed without a written language until about 30 years ago.

The Founder’s Gallery at the University of San Diego is showing Vue’s work, along with that of four other local Hmong women, in a 43-piece show running through Oct. 19.

Pandau often tells a story, sometimes with the aid of words sewn besides pictures on the fabric. Other times, it focuses on a traditional ornamental design, such as the shape of a snail’s shell.

It is distinguished by intricate cross-stich patterns, crewel embroidery and reverse appliques--all designed without the use of a straight edge.

The USD show includes some of the holiday clothes and wedding sashes that pandau has traditionally been used to decorate, as well as several of the larger wall hangings and quilts preferred by Americans to whom the Hmongs have recently been selling pandau work, Vue explained as the exhibit was being installed.

Among the most powerful of the works are a pair of wall hangings by Yee Yang, which depict the Hmong’s post-Vietnam exodus from Laos. The bright colors and crude figures of the works heighten the tragic image of Laotians trying to stay afloat in the chaotic Mekong River, while Viet Cong soldiers point guns on Laotian shores and Thai police await their arrival on the other.

In another wall hanging, Yee Yang tells the story of a tiger who eats a man, dons his clothes and is subsequently killed by the man’s relatives, using colorful needlepoint figures accompanied by English text.

Other, strictly ornamental works, such as Vue’s blue-toned snowflake design, showcase careful stitching that Vue said may boggle a creator’s eyes.

“People get crazy, or a dizzy headache” when they stitch too long, so they often have to confine their work to one- or two-hour sessions, Vue said.

Vue, who learned to do pandau from her mother before she was 7 years old, is now trying to keep the folk art alive by teaching her 9-year-old daughter.

“She’s making the stitches,” Vue said, proudly pulling her daughter’s sampler from her purse. “I make not to sell. Just to teach the children.

“It is very, very hard (to teach pandau to children,)” she said. “They get bored. It takes too long. Hard to think about for long.”

And U.S.-born Hmongs are often more interested in assimilating and getting ahead American-style than in keeping such traditions alive, Vue said.

“They don’t want to learn (pandau) anymore,” Vue said. “They have homework to do. They work at night.”

Even if Vue’s daughter persists in learning her mother’s art, the pandau that she learns may be slightly different than that of her parents’ country.

Local Hmong women, Vue explained, are trying to earn money for cloth and expensive imported threads by selling their work to Americans, who generally prefer more subdued hues than the bold arrays of color that characterize pandau created in Laos.

“Right now, I change the color. Brighter in Laos,” Vue said.