Altar - Albert Lam

My altar is titled Honoring Vietnamese Immigrants and is dedicated to the many Vietnamese and, like my own family, Chinese-Vietnamese immigrants who escaped Vietnam during the height of their civil war against an invading communist regime. Many families from Vietnam are Buddhist and have altars of our own, which made this relatively straightforward - I was able to use an urn and incense that we had at home. The burning incense pays respect to the many immigrant families who struggled to escape and struggled to make ends meet in a new country. The urn holding the ashes represents how the families essentially had all of their possessions burned away as they left them behind to rise up again and start anew in a foreign land. I chose to use a plastic water bottle specifically because the cap of those water bottles held the amount of water that was rationed to each person a day on many of the boats that Vietnamese refugees rode to escape. The mango and the flowering basil plant are foods that are common in Vietnamese cuisine and I thought the flowers, although small, had ties to ofrendas as well. Finally, the picture of Mì Hoành Thánh, or the Vietnamese interpretation of Cantonese noodle soup, represents the fusion of cultures that 1. Chinese-Vietnamese families like my own experience and 2. all immigrants face when arriving in a new country.