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1895 Viet Thanh Nguyen%u201cLater we see new tunnels, made big just for you. Last time an American go in this one, he can%u2019t get out. He too fat!%u201d To illustrate his point, Mr. Ly extended his arms and joined his hands, creating a large hoop in the air. %u201cAnyone want to try?%u201dThe tourists grinned and shook their heads, the smallest of them as tall as Phuong%u2019s father. Phuong was afraid he might call on her to slide into the tunnel, but when no one volunteered, her father scowled and raised his fist. %u201cThis is how we win our victory!%u201d he cried. A camera flashed. %u201cWe reunite our country through courage and sacrifice!%u201dTwo more cameras flashed as their father held his pose.%u201cDid he just say what I think he said?%u201d Vivien whispered.%u201cHe doesn%u2019t really mean it. It%u2019s only an act.%u201dBut Phuong suspected that for the tourists, act was fact. Foreigners that they were, they could not tell the difference between a Communist and a man the Communists had exiled to a New Economic Zone. In a few days or a week or two weeks, they would leave, their most vivid memory about this day being the funny experience of crawling on their knees through a tunnel, and a vague memory of the passionate little tour guide and his passable English. We%u2019re all the same to them, Phuong realized, with a mix of anger and shame%u2014small, charming, and forgettable. She was worried her sister might see her this way as well, but when her father waved the tourists onward and Vivien followed, she appeared to be concerned only with brushing away the small cloud of mosquitoes hovering around her.%u2022 %u2022 %u2022On Vivien%u2019s penultimate night in Saigon, she and her father drank four flasks of milky rice wine at 50a Chinese restaurant in Cho Lon. After returning home, Mr. Ly went for a walk with his wife to clear his intoxicated head while Hanh and Phuc settled down on the blanketed floor of the living room, their bed next to the motorbikes. Upstairs, after Vivien closed the door to the room that Phuong shared with her parents, she pulled one of her crimson suitcases out from underneath Phuong%u2019s narrow bed. The suitcase had been loaded with gifts from Vivien and her mother, from jeans and shirts to medicines and makeup, even shampoo and conditioner that had been bottled in the United States and were hence more valuable than the same brand bottled in a local plant. Now the suitcase was packed with souvenirs, a porcelain doll in a silk ao dai for Vivien%u2019s mother, hand-carved teak replicas of cyclos4 for her brothers, a bottle of rice wine with a cobra floating in it for her stepfather, and, for her friends, T-shirts emblazoned with Ho Chi Minh%u2019s5 avuncular face. But when Vivien opened the suitcase, she took out neither these mementos nor her own belongings. Instead, after rummaging underneath these things, she dug out a small pink bag, somewhat crumpled from its journey, and presented it to Phuong.%u201cI%u2019ve got one last thing for you, little sister,%u201d Vivien said. %u201cI wasn%u2019t sure I should give it to you, but I thought I%u2019d come prepared.%u201dPrinted on the bag in cursive writing was Victoria%u2019s Secret. Inside were a black lace brassiere and black lace panties, a wispy thong rather than one of the scratchy, full-bottomed cotton affairs that Phuong%u2019s mother bought for her in packages of a dozen.554Three-wheeled bicycle taxis.%u2014Eds.5Prime Minister of North Vietnam from 1945 to 1955 and President from 1945 to 1969, Ho Chi Minh (1890%u20131969) led an independence movement against the French and established the Communist Republic of Vietnam.%u2014Eds.Who is Phuong%u2019s father imitating in paragraph 49? How does this act strike Vivien, and how does Phuong process it?55What is the overarching difference between the gifts Vivien brought and those with which she is returning? Why is that distinction important?66Copyright %u00a9 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Not for redistribution.