A Bowl of Pho: Kinh Bui

Kinh and his daughter Jennifer

In spite of the fact that Martin’s Tailoring is officially closed, the doorbell rings frequently. A constant stream of people comes through the door shivering and shaking off the cold of the rainy Saturday evening ready to don their fancy duds for the night’s festivities. One young girl sheepishly steps out of the dressing room in her cotillion dress. Meanwhile a professional dancer throws off her coat and changes into a floor length sequined dress. From their respective platforms both smile approvingly in the mirror, twirling around and imagining the evening to come.

Once the two women have indulged in their moment of vanity, the reality of their current surroundings sets it. The low ceilings of the workshop can barely hold the warmth emanating from the yellow walls covered with posters of the UVA golf team who have also taken their turn on these platforms. Vietnamese travel posters hint at the origins of the shop’s owners who quietly look on from the corner.

Kinh and Lan are standing, pin cushions at the ready, prepared to make any last adjustments. But the two tailors have already surpassed expectations. The women’s showers of praise are as glowing as if the pair had performed a miracle. And indeed the power of a well-fitting dress should not be underestimated.

Kinh does not suffer from any illusions of grandeur:

It’s a selfless sort of pleasure that is characteristic of this 50-something man. His life has been deferred in so many ways that he can very clearly identify the pleasures and joys in his life.

When I ask Kinh about pho, a soup that is as iconically Vietnamese as the hamburger is American, he recalls the recipe as a memory and a continuing source of comfort. “Pho and its aroma is my family.” Noodles and thinly sliced beef float in a spicy beef broth to which you add garnishes like jalapeno chile, mung bean sprouts, lime juice, fried shallots, and herbs as you slurp your way through the bowl.

Kinh met Lan when they were both students at the University of Agriculture in Saigon studying to be veterinarians from 1979 to 1982. They fell in love and decided to marry. But Lan’s mother did not approve of the relationship and did not trust Kinh’s devotion to her daughter. First there was the 4-year age difference. “She said to me, ‘you cannot love someone older than you’.” Then there was the issue of faith: “I was Catholic and she was Buddhist and her mom didn’t want us to marry.” At that time in Vietnam she wouldn’t have been alone in seeing faith as a defining feature.

At independence in 1954, the country was ruled by two different governments one communist in the north and another dictatorship in the south. These governments inscribed faith with new meaning. Kinh is from a family of landowners originally from the north of the country. After the communist government killed his grandfather and appropriated his land, his grandmother migrated southward, like many other Catholics.

The roots of pho mirror the migrations of this period. Originating in the north of the country it became popular in the south in the 1950s when those people fleeing communist rule brought the dish with them. In the south people added ingredients like green beans and different herbs, rau thom (literally translated as “fragrant leaves”).

After 20 years of rule by a regime in South Vietnam that favored Catholics, the communist takeover of Saigon in 1975 signaled a reversal of fortune for the country’s religious groups. One day on his way to school Kinh remembers seeing four coffins pass him and the next day four priests were executed in a square not far from his school.

“The communists used the stomach to rule you.” In the late 70s Kinh remembers eating sweet potatoes at nearly every meal. The government distributed food and with the exception of three days throughout the year, those rations did not include meat. On National Day, Ho Chi Minh’s birthday, and April 30 (the fall of Saigon to the communists) each family was given horsemeat, which was imported from Russia.

At this moment when religion had political and economic ramifications, Kinh and Lan defied convention. Their relationship was a radical subversion of the doctrine espoused by both South and North Vietnamese governments that your faith defines you. In part the young couple was spurred on by the support of his father who was a teacher at the Catholic school in Saigon. “He always said that it’s your heart not your faith that matters. You may go to church or temple but the faith doesn’t affect your way totally. You are more than your faith. Even now my wife and I have different faiths.”

According to Kinh the quality of the pho hinges on the deeply flavored broth, which tastes better when it’s made for a crowd. The particular balance of this elixir cannot be achieved on a small scale. Indeed that may be why Pho is Kinh’s favorite meal. It’s fundamentally communal nature muddles any arbitrary divisions.

Under early communist rule pho and comfort were in short supply. Not only were ingredients hard to come by but state-owned kitchens took the place of most restaurants. According to Kinh this all changed  in the late 80s when the Vietnamese government accepted US foreign aid. This brought greater access to a wider variety of food. Kinh was desperate for some pho. “You can eat pho every day at any time but I like to eat it for dinner because at that time the air is a little bit cooler and you can smell and taste it better.” It was the perfect excuse for Kinh and Lan’s forbidden rendezvous.

Given the fondness with which Kinh describes this nourishing soup, you might think that it was pho that weakened Lan’s mother’s resistance to marriage. But in the end she had in mind more practical concerns. In 1991 she and Lan went to the United States, joining her other daughter in the Charlottesville, Virginia. After a year and half in the United States Lan’s mother began to be concerned by her daughter’s prospects for marriage in their new home. At long last she conceded that Lan could return to Vietnam to marry Kinh. With the assurance that they would finally be together, Kinh found that waiting another five years for a visa was easy.  

However, when Kinh arrived in Charlottesville in 1997, he found that his mother-in-law was still suspect of the marriage. “My wife’s mother lived with me and my wife. We took care of her. One day after 11 years she said to me, ‘you are a very good man.’ It was out of nowhere!” he laughs, still shocked to this day, before adding with smile, “but it was too late to get those 13 years back.”

Keeping the history of Vietnam alive is a priority for Kinh as he raises his daughter in the United States. He tells her stories of his youth and describes Saigon before it became Ho Chi Minh City but the most tangible aspect of his past is pho, which he continues to prepare in small batches for his wife and their thirteen-year-old daughter, Jennifer.