A Bao Grows in Champaign

I was toodling around Champaign today on my bike and I ran into this most awesome trailer park out by the interstate. It doesn’t look like much from the street but when you get inside, you can tell the people who live there are house proud.


They have painted the trailers bright colors in some cases and at the very least, the yards are kept up and sometimes full of kids' bikes and other signs of life.



I found this one trailer at the back of the park that had this amazing garden growing against the sunny side.

I saw these squashes and gourds and vegetables that I did not know the name of though I’d seen them before in markets and it made me think that probably Asians lived there. The front of the house had gorgeous flowers and I waved when I saw somebody in the window and they waved back. That made me bold and so I went up on the porch and said hi. A little boy came out with his mom and I said I saw the garden and admired it. The boy said “is it some kind of a contest or something?” and I said no, that I just saw the garden and thought it was beautiful.

His mom smiled and then apparently asked her son what I was saying. He translated and then she smiled more and said “garden good”! I said yes, very very good. I asked about one of the squashes in the back and the boy grabbed the mom and they took me around back to look.

This one is called bao in Vietnamese. Which is where these people are from. They have been in Champaign for 5 years. The son is in fifth grade and does the talking when nice white ladies show up on the front porch. His name is Tuan. His mom’s name is Tu.

Tuan and Tu and I had a broken but animated conversation about all the vegetables. She was explaining to me about the mint and I said yes, like in Pho which is like the national dish of Viet Nam. And her eyes opened really wide and she said in perfect English “you know pho?” Oh yes, I know pho and pho knows me.

Then the boy’s father appeared and he spoke a little English and we discussed the various vegetables some more. I asked him where he got the seeds because I did not imagine they came from the Farm and Fleet. He said someone gave them to him. Hand to hand seed dispersion.

I asked him where he worked and he said the name of a company that I didn’t recognize but explained that they boxed up toys and sent them around. I think that’s what he said. He said back in Viet Nam he was a fisherman and that he had worked the shrimp boats in the Gulf of Mexico out of New Orleans for the first ten years he was here, saving enough money to bring his wife and sponsor her and their son.



When they arrived they moved here and he bought their trailer for $5000. Good price, he said. New trailer is 25,000. He had fixed it up inside.

He said they wanted to go back to their country but “no money, no money”. I couldn’t tell if that meant no money to get back to Viet Nam or that there is no money in Viet Nam. Probably a little bit of both.

I asked them if they have a good life here and he smiled and said yes, yes good life. "My son, he learns English well. Hard work. But no work, no money."

Then he asked me how many children I had and I said none. And he seemed sad for me. Sad but hopeful. "Some day you have family", he said and he got a big smile on his face.

Seems every farmer I meet, Russ with 2300 acres or Tu with a beautiful pea patch, wants to marry me off and turn me into a farm wife. Now, that wouldn't be the wosrt thing in the world, would it?