Vietnam Researchers Find UCI Instructive : Normalization: For visiting doctors, university provides a cultural as well as educational exchange.
Dr. Toan Vu came to UC Irvine from Vietnam to find answers--and learned to ask new questions.
Delving into the intricacies of Parkinson’s disease, he has absorbed into his speech such terms as neurology, movement disorders and myoclonus (involuntary spasms of the muscle).
But he has not just learned medical terms during his stay at UCI as part of an educational exchange program. Living in America for more than a year has also taught him words such as independence, and Vu admits, “I’m not as shy as I used to be.”
“Here, time has a way of transforming your ideas,” said Vu, 27, choosing his words carefully. “It opens up your eyes and reveals to you the things that you never thought of before . . . makes you ask questions you’ve never asked before.”
Vu is among the first wave of students and professionals from Communist-ruled Vietnam to study in the United States since a trade embargo was lifted in February, 1994.
Diplomatic relations restored between the countries in July has prompted more students to apply to U.S. schools, and State Department officials expect that number to continue rising.
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During the 1994-95 school year, 794 students--including 66 Fulbright scholars--and 24 postdoctoral researchers from Vietnam were in the United States, according to the State Department. There were 507 during the previous year, government officials said.
UCI counts three researchers from Vietnam, and three students from Vietnam are enrolled at Cal State Fullerton, according to a school spokeswoman. UCLA and USC also have several enrolled, school officials said.
Those at UCI include Vu, Anh Trinh, 24, and Bang Nguyen, 31. All were nominated by government officials and interviewed by UCI’s Dr. Daniel Truong, who is conducting a neurology research program and hopes the students can continue to help him with research when they return to Vietnam.
Truong plans to study the effects of Parkinson’s disease in Vietnam, where treatment is usually not available, and compare data to cases in the United States, where the disease is readily treated.
“What I want to do is determine whether the treatment helps in the course of the disease or not,” said Truong, who declined to comment further about the research project.
Two more researchers from Vietnam are on their way under a Parkinson’s Foundation research grant. No American students have gone to Vietnam under the program, though the idea has been discussed.
In a sour-smelling lab tucked behind UCI’s medical plaza, Vu and the other students traced the heartbeat of a rat on a dissection table for their research one recent afternoon.
“It’s surprising, almost baffling, to me how much I love everything that I’m learning,” Vu said. “I just wish there were more young people in Vietnam who could experience what I’m now experiencing.”
Trinh, who arrived earlier this year, said she was shocked when told that she had been accepted into the program.
“All of my life, I never thought that I would ever get to go to the United States to study,” Trinh said.
All three doctors said they feel lucky to have the academic opportunities offered to them, and they spend the majority of their time making the most of those opportunities so that they will not disappoint friends and families back home.
All attend classes at night in addition to working on research projects during the day. That leaves little time for a social life, they said, but it is a small price to pay for the information they bring back to Vietnam.
None of the researchers owns a car. Vu does not even have a driver’s license and takes the bus to work each morning. He is living on a tight budget and can only afford to call home for five minutes every two months.
“I thirst for news from Vietnam,” Vu said. “I miss my family, but I try not to think about that. . . . I try to think about how I can study very hard--for me, for my family and for my country.”
They were advised by friends in Vietnam to keep a low profile due to the anti-Communist activities in Orange County, so the researchers have seldom ventured out of their homes except to go to school and shop. Vu has never left Orange County and has gone to Little Saigon only a handful of times, usually because he needed to go grocery shopping, he said.
“I don’t want to get caught up in the politics here,” Vu said. “That’s not what this is all about.”
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Surprisingly, some county immigrants who spent years in Communist re-education camps and now lead protests against the regime agreed. They said they are against Vietnam’s government, not the country’s students. Perhaps, they said, the students will bring home a taste of democracy.
“I believe there’s hope in the students,” said Dang Hoang Ha, a Vietnam War veteran who spent 12 years in a re-education camp and is now secretary of the Orange County-based Refugee S.O.S. Task Force.
“I think it’s going to be difficult, because I think the Communists would do everything in their power to send only those who are loyal to the regime. After all, they need those people. But I also think that people can always be persuaded, especially when it comes to fundamental rights for humans.”
In the midst of learning more about their professions, including medicine, computer technology and economics, the students are sure to gain insights into democratic ideas, said Douglas Pike, a professor of Asian studies at UC Berkeley.
These students, he said, will bring an “inadvertent, almost creeping kind of change.” It is the kind of change that Vietnam’s leaders will not try to stop, he said, because they know that the country needs better-educated people.
“There’s a general belief that education is the real hope for Vietnam, any way you look at it--economically, politically and socially,” Pike said. “It’s inevitable that those students are going to bring back ideas that will reshape the country.”
But Truong is wary of connecting the science with politics.
“There’s no politics in this,” Truong said, careful to qualify his intentions to Orange County’s Vietnamese community, leery of the Communist regime for alleged human rights abuses.
“We see the person . . . the doctor. We don’t see the ideology.”
UCI’s program, funded through private research grants and Truong himself, has its roots in a 1992 visit by a Vietnamese governor who was seeking treatment at UCI, Truong said. The governor, who requested anonymity, then invited Truong to Ho Chi Minh City to speak about education reforms.
There, the Huntington Beach doctor was introduced to medical professionals and education department officials, who then pushed to initiate the exchange program just before the embargo was lifted, Truong said. Two others have participated in the program but have returned to Vietnam.
If successful, the exchange program will help bring new technologies and techniques to Vietnam’s outdated medical facilities, Truong said. And U.S.-trained doctors returning to Vietnam can work with physicians in the United States to exchange data on diseases and other research.
Vu said he is looking forward to going home--his tenure has been extended--but knows that before he heads back to Vietnam, he has to prepare himself for the changes.
“My friends write to me and tell me about all the changes in Vietnam, and I get very excited about those changes,” Vu said. “But at the same time, I know I have also changed. It will be interesting to see if the changes are in the same direction.”
