Early Life
Viên was born to Vietnamese parents in Vientiane, Laos, in December 1921. His father was a merchant. Hearing rumors of a gold rush in the Mekong Delta, he moved to what was then called Cochinchina to become a prospector. Although he became a follower of Ho Chi Minh and fought as a guerrilla against French colonial rule, he soon concluded that Minh's movement was more communist than nationalist and joined independent fighter groups. He was captured by the French, released, and enrolled at the University of Saigon where he obtained a bachelor's degree in French literature. His schoolmate was Lâm Quang Thi.
Read more about this topic: Cao Van Vien
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Our instructed vagrancy, which has hardly time to linger by the hedgerows, but runs away early to the tropics, and is at home with palms and banyans—which is nourished on books of travel, and stretches the theatre of its imagination to the Zambesi.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“The poet’s body even is not fed like other men’s, but he sometimes tastes the genuine nectar and ambrosia of the gods, and lives a divine life. By the healthful and invigorating thrills of inspiration his life is preserved to a serene old age.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)