Do you know anything about the Vietnamese? How much do the Vietnamese young generations know about their ancestors? The answer is, "Not at all." Each people are bonded to and influenced deeply by their tradition and culture which others have to find out in order to understand them. Let's go through the book Escape to fairly evaluate their intellectual values. Chapter I displays to your eyes respectable, attractive and artistic tributes to Gods which the villagers from all walks of life participated in to accomplish. The well-organized honoring to a high-ranking official's spirit in his funeral speaks out loud their deep appreciations towards those who bequeathed precious things to them. You would recognize, when reading through the pages, the Vietnamese cherished education and created to their children a good habit of learning, a fair competition for their advancement, and trained them to fight to overcome obstacles and maintain the good of their culture. Chapter II reveals to you an official, a hero, who constantly fought to maintain the beauty of his tradition and culture, and strove to trim off the bad. As a revolutionist, he devoted his life to improve the people's life in building up bridges to better transportation between his village and the surrounding ones and throughout the whole county, improved defective parts of the Common Building Compound and other public facilities, raising beneficial constructing funds which were approved by everybody. Unfortunately, communists appeared and demolished everything which belonged to the respectable tradition and culture and slaughtered patriots. This was the reason why the Vietnamese people had to run away from the North for the South in 1954 and to the U.S.A. in 1975. Chapters III, IV, and V show how we survive and succeed in our new country.
