Local family returns from trip to Far East

Rogers City High School student Nancy Xiong, 17, returned January 11 from a trip to Asia with her family. Nancy’s mother Pang and father Youa (Joe) Xiong are the proprietors of Chee Peng Chinese and Thai Restaurant in Rogers City. It was Nancy’s first opportunity to visit Laos, her parents’ country of origin. The Xiong family is Hmong, an ethnic group originally from China and living in areas of Laos, Thailand and Cambodia. They lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin for a number of years before settling in Rogers City. Nancy said her father traveled around Michigan to find a suitable place to settle until he came to Rogers City and knew it was right for them.

She explained that there were two different dialects of Hmong language, referred to as White and Green Hmong. Her family is from Green Hmong. They are distinguished from the White Hmong in their dialect of speech and in the more colorful style of traditional clothing worn during holidays and festivals.

“An easy way to look at it is to compare a person from Michigan with someone from Kentucky. Both speak English, but the vocabulary and accents are different,” she said. Three of the six Xiong children went on the trip to Laos and Thailand with their parents. They left the U.S. on December 22 and returned on January 11.

“We started in Traverse City and flew to Chicago. From there we flew all the way to Japan. That was a 12-hour flight. After a two-hour layover, it was another six hours to Thailand and a short 45 minute flight to Vientiane, the capital of Laos,” Nancy explained. She said there was no visible damage by the tsunami in the Bangkok area or other parts of Thailand that they visited. “The devastation was all in the southern part of the country. I didn’t find out about it right away because we were not watching any TV,” she said. “At first I thought it was just a flood but then we started to hear more and more about it and I was just shocked,” she continued.

Outside of Vientiane in Laos is an area called KM-52, meaning kilometer 52 along the highway. It’s a small village where her mother’s sister lives. Her grandmother also came there to visit. Nancy explained that where her grandmother lives it is not considered safe for visitors.

“KM-52 was like Rogers City, a small town where you feel very safe. The last three days us kids slept in a small hotel in the village and my parents stayed with relatives. That just shows how safe it was. In a big city we could not do that,” she said. “The traffic over there is so crazy, they don’t stay in the lanes and the motorcycles scramble all over the roads,” she said. “The New Year celebration is the most spectacular holiday in the Hmong culture. “It is not like America, where the New Year is a one-day event. They celebrate for up to a month over there. It is a time to put on traditional clothes and have lots of parties. “Young people enjoy it a

lot. It is a time when teenage boys and girls get a chance to meet. They have a game like playing catch. A boy will toss a tennis ball at you and you return it. As you play catch you can get acquainted.

“Socializing and dating are more traditional,” she said. “Boys initiate the relationship, girls could not ask someone to dance or even start a conversation, like we do here in America. I had to get used to that.” Another difference, Xiong explained, is that the individual is not emphasized as much as the group. It would be considered too forward for a girl to speak about herself to others.

“Even though some of my cousins were the same age with a lot of similarities and common language, I felt like a foreigner sometimes but I really enjoyed my trip and the chance to see where my parents grew up and to meet other family members,” she concluded. Nancy is one of the editors of the RCHS school newspaper and hopes to study journalism in college after graduating in 2006.

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