Chapter 1: "Today"

The room is small and brightly lit from the late-morning sun. It is a traditional Vietnamese-family-altar-room. The only furniture in it is a waist-height credenza topped with a family-altar adorned with fruit, freshly prepared foods and a half-dozen photographs of departed loved ones all in light-blue backgrounds. Bright light streams in from the open windows highlighting the smoke from the burning incense. Its smell intermixed with those of the dishes of food and lemon blossoms from just outside the tightly packed room. There is a somber tone among the family members, some with tears in their eyes. They are performing a one-year-death-anniversary-ceremony. Sitting squarely on the altar are the portraits of an elderly man and woman also in front of light-blue backgrounds. Between those two photographs sits something unusual: a small statue of a rooster ablaze in a fiery red, orange and yellow.