Orange County Focus is dedicated on Monday to analysis of community news, a look atwhat's ahead and the voices of local people. : IN PERSON : A Singing Career Unraveled by Political Rancor

By GEOFF BOUCHER

Aug. 21, 1995 12 AM PT

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

Thanh Lan’s dazzling singing career in her native Vietnam tumbled with the fall of Saigon, but the memory of the spotlight--and the dream of someday regaining it--carried her through the dark years that followed.

Even when she was laboring long hours in the fields of a re-education camp, Thanh Lan hummed her old wartime ballads, the songs the Communist regime told her she could never sing publicly again. When her seven attempts to flee the country failed, she was sustained by the vision of a glorious U.S. reunion with her adoring fans.

Finally, in December, 1993, she reached American soil, her heart beating fast because she would finally hear the applause again, feel the love she knew was still out there.

But Thanh Lan’s dream was ripped from her. The crowds did not come to embrace their old star. They came to tear her down.

“They said I was a Communist, they said that was the only way I could come here,” Thanh Lan, 47, said through tears last week at her Orange County home. “I dreamed for years of being with my friends again, being with my fans who were here. Then, when finally I was here among them, they pushed me out . . . and I don’t know why.”

It is a question that has dogged Thanh Lan since she was blindsided by the barrage of criticism and protest upon her arrival. She has avoided speaking out on the controversy, allowing it to subside over the past 20 months. Last week, she agreed for the first time to publicly reflect on her tumultuous stay in her new country.

Thanh Lan came to the West on a three-month visa as part of a cultural exchange by the Vietnamese government. To the fervently anti-Communist community of Vietnamese emigres, that clearly made her a tool of the government or, as some of the protesters shouted, maybe even a spy.

Thanh Lan’s Oakland and Orange County concerts in early 1994 were canceled, and the San Jose show was the scene of a mini-riot. Vietnamese American newspapers and magazines railed against her. The U.S. debut of her new film, “Tinh Nguoi” (“Human Emotion”) in Westminster drew only a meager crowd, and the onetime darling of Saigon found herself giving tearful news conferences, pleading for her fans to accept her.

Like one of the tragic heroines in her trademark ballads, Thanh Lan was heartbroken, cruelly taunted by fate. She had her spotlight, but there was no warmth or love in its glare.

“Everything turned against me. It was all about politics. I am not political. All I care about is the music, the artistry. I hate politics.”

In the end, though, it was politics that provided refuge.

In interviews, Thanh Lan had lashed back at the charges against her by recounting her six-month imprisonment in a re-education camp and detailing her attempts to flee her homeland since 1975. To prove she was no sympathizer, she spoke out against the Communists and the blacklisting that had stifled her career.

The statements silenced some of the critics, but they also made it impossible to return to Vietnam, she said.

In her application for political asylum, Thanh Lan told U.S. officials that her well-publicized candor would earn her the wrath of the government in her homeland. Asylum was granted, opening up a whole new life for the singer. But staying in California also meant leaving behind her daughter, a 26-year-old named Loan, and her aging father.

“My father . . . he is so lonely now,” Thanh Lan said, again pausing to collect herself. The songstress now lives in a bright, stylish home in a quiet Orange County housing tract. She asked to leave the city unnamed, a concession to her fears that some of her strident critics are unconvinced she is indeed anti-Communist.

Her 20 months in California have been busy and modestly successful in comparison to the fame she enjoyed in Vietnam. Public scrutiny has subsided, and Thanh Lan said most of the people who approach her on the streets of Little Saigon are fans and well-wishers.

“They ask me what I do, what I eat, to stay so young, so beautiful,” said Thanh Lan, who looks far younger than her years. “I tell them I don’t eat. I’m always starving. You can’t live for fun when you are a public figure. You cannot do what you want.”

Thanh Lan said she has performed in dozens of concerts, videos and other appearances, and she has recorded a handful of albums at a Westminster studio. The material is the kind that always had been her specialty: plaintive ballads, love songs that lean toward melodrama and wring emotions out of her audiences. Many of the songs are about longing for lost loves, be they people or Saigon of the early ‘70s.

“This headline,” she says, pulling a Vietnamese-language newspaper clipping from a tall stack, “it says, um, translated, something like ‘Voice of endless time, voice of endless space.’ Does that make sense?”

Thanh Lan said the timeless quality of her voice and the songs she writes helps her compatriots imagine they are living in another era. “For many, I am part of Saigon of the past, before the Communists came. I am a symbol of the past. I hope I am still a part of the present and the future, but I know the songs make them think of the past.”

Thanh Lan won’t name a favorite song or cite a best role among her more than 20 films. She says she would prefer to think her best work is ahead of her. She aspires to be in American films and to continue making albums.

She says she has time to make up. The years in Vietnam when she was blacklisted, performing infrequently and kowtowing to government dictates about her material, were “lost years,” she said. She values the artistic liberties she has now, but she knows there are strings attached.

The same expatriate community that battered her last year is now her audience. As always, they control the spotlight.

“I need them. I need them to support my living so I can sing and do the things I love. But I cannot do anything against them. I cannot even say anything. I am a truthful person, and sometimes I say what I believe. But that can get you in trouble. In Vietnam, and here.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Profile: Thanh Lan

Age: 47

Came to United States: 1993

Background: A popular singer and film actress in Vietnam who last year received political asylum. She was greeted in her new country by accusations that she was a Communist, even though she had attempted to escape her homeland seven times and had been jailed.

Family: Her 26-year-old daughter, Loan, is a student in Vietnam who hopes to someday join her mother here.

Quote: “I dreamed for years of being with my friends again, being with my fans who were here. Then, when finally I was here among them, they pushed me out. I love them, but now they don’t want me. . . . And I don’t know why.”

Source: Thanh Lan