Phu is a pretty young woman with a good heart. Unlike Giang, she was fortunate to grow up in a large family with both farming parents in Van Tao, a nearby village not far from Tu Nhien, where Giang had been living almost all her life. A few years younger than Giang, but they were soon close friends, more than the usual roommate matters.

However, the romance between Thu and Phu did not last long. Before long, Phu found that despite many great qualities Thu possessed, he was a controlling partriarchal type who would expect his girl friend or wife to obey him. Being an assertive independent woman, it seemed no way they could compromise. And, just like any other couples, the end of their romance was the inevitable conclusion after several rows and ugly silence.

During their fight, Giang was often asked to be the judge. That put her in a funny situation because she herself was also having problems with her boyfriend, a soldier who seemed more stingy than he should. As the way most sappy stories go, by the end of Phu and Thu’s romance, Thu had shifted his attention to this quiet, kind-hearted woman who appeared far less assertive than Phu. Being with Giang, who had always lacked the warmth of family, Thu felt more secure and in a sense, needed.

Winter 1969, Thu took Giang to visit his parents for the first time. Everything was going on well. They were set for a wedding in early Fall 1970.

Expecting a wedding drama? Sorry to disappoint you, because on the 18^th of September that year, Thu and Giang were legally married. Due to the brutal war, they could not throw a really big wedding party for both families, but what does it matter? They were happily married, and nurturing hundreds of beautiful dreams.

From the beginning, all the female teachers in Tu Nhien middle-school agreed that Thu possessed the look and the manner of a Yuppie (young urban professional), plus, a rather handsome Yuppie. He was not the tall macho muscular type, but slim with a fair complexion. He always had his shirt tucked in color-matching pants (a new fashion of the time). A few of the teachers even had a crush on him soon after he arrived.

However, at first, Thu seemed pretty undisturbed by the fact that he was the centre of surveillance among the women. He was quiet, paying almost no attention to anyone, thinking the school was just another short stop-over of his serial teaching assignments, hoping that he would be assigned closer and closer back to Hanoi. He stayed at the school’s guest room only from Monday to Saturday morning. On Saturday afternoons, he always got on a bike which was lent to him by a nice villager and cycled back to Hanoi or visited friends in neighboring towns. It was during this time that he managed to save up enough money to buy a camera, self taught the skills of photography and traveled from village to village (usually where his friends lived) to offer photographing services. This significantly supplemented his teaching income. Thu often returned to the school late Sunday evenings or early Monday mornings, always with some flowers to put in a tiny vase on his desk, lightening up the little room quite a bit.

Phu, one of the young teachers who roomed with Giang, always noticed his schedules. She even admitted that she was attracted to Thu for his romantic and poetic manner. Giang was dating with a local man by that time, but Phu was still single. Unlike Giang who was in the Literature and History teaching group, Phu was in the same Math and Physics group as Thu, therefore, they often had the chance to sit for a friendly chat after classes, discussed lesson plans, or observed each other’s classes. By the summer 1968, they started dating and soon became a full-fledged happy couple.

Summer 1963. Thu was completely hopeless that he could ever become a university student. Bitter, frustrated, depressed, and jealous, Thu saw one of the friends he had helped tutoring, now cheerfully showing off his admission letter to everyone, who even came to him with a word of sympathy: “Sorry…I know you are really bright. I think I am just lucky.” Yes, he was lucky to have an uncle who fought the war with the Viet Minh and had a poor widow mother who used to be the servant for a French family.

Following everyone’s advice, Thu enrolled in a post-secondary teacher training college which was basically accepting anyone because of the serious shortage for teachers in the country at the time. After 15 months, Thu successfully completed his teaching certificate and was immediately assigned to teach Math and Physics in a middle school in suburban Hanoi. However, he had barely started his job when fierce US bombing all over Hanoi and the North of Vietnam began. It was the end of 1964.

Before long, Thu received the order to evacuate out of Hanoi. In the next three years, he was assigned with one teaching position after another, first in Vinh Phuc, then Son Tay, and finally Ha Tay. One cold windy morning of January 1968, he boarded on a train heading south with a small, worn-out suitcase that contained almost nothing but a few clothes, a couple of textbooks, and several collections of poems. Several days earlier, the same train also carried one of his younger brothers to the central of Vietnam to perform his military service for the country.

After a long ride and so many inquiries around, Thu finally arrived at the school at noon, when the afternoon classes were about to begin. He was met by the principal, a pleasant modest woman, who was also a resident in the village. After seeing his papers and ID, the lady led Thu to the staff hall and introduced him with other teachers. To his surprise, all of them were young females in their mid or late 20s. Giang was one of them. She was told to show Thu his room, which was a single room located behind the classroom building next to several small rooms for other teachers, separated with the campus area only by a small vegetable garden.

Thu was a very intelligent and well-read young man. He had an aspiration for books and usually spent most of whatever extra money he could save after the family contribution on books, primarily fictions and poetries. He had a few classmates who shared his interest, and they could spend hours reading and discussing the verses, the rhythms, and practiced composing poetries themselves.
When the last high school year was reaching, Thu, like many of his friends, wanted to get admitted to a professional college and pursued a decent career. Being an excellent student with all 4s and 5s in his transcript (Vietnam education at that time adopted the Russian grading system with 5 being the highest), Thu appeared to be one of the most potential candidates for Hanoi University of Technology. In summer 1963, he sat for the entrance exam for Bach Khoa University that consisted of Math, Chemistry, and Physics, and stated his chosen field as "automatics engineer."
Thu never received any admission letter, however, even though he knew that he was in the passing list. A friend of his, whose father was in the admissions committee, told him the grades he earned and said his name was in the list. More surprisingly, a classmate whose performance was far lower was accepted.
The only explanation at the time, as everyone agreed, was that Thu came from the "wrong" class. His mother was a businesswoman and his father used to attend a French school then became a teacher of French in his village. Added with the label "landlord", their children should be the second class citizens and given lower educational priority than those belonging to the "right" class--soldiers, farmers, workers previously employed and exploited by the French--who was considered to be the most loyal to the new regime, thus being the major force for the country's human resource development.