CAMBODIA ON MY MIND

A memoir recounts how an ophthalmologist—haunted by the stories of the Khmer Rouge massacres and driven by a desire to share his medical expertise with developing countries— embarked on an exploration of Cambodia.

“People’s suffering has always intrigued me, probably because my family went through it,” Hung writes in his opening note. In 1949, when the author was 3 years old, he and his family fled China and found safety in Hong Kong, where he spent his early childhood. By the time Hung was attending medical school in Hawaii, the family had moved to California. Three decades later, in 2004, he set out on his first visit to Cambodia to evaluate how he could provide aid to the nation, which was slowly emerging from the devastation inflicted by the Khmer Rouge. After arriving in Phnom Penh, Hung networked with three ophthalmologists from the Ang Doung Hospital. They told the author that the country of 15 million people had only nine eye doctors. Even worse, they were working with outdated equipment and struggling to succeed in a ravaged economy ruled by endemic corruption. Thus commenced decadeslong friendships, with Hung purchasing and donating to Cambodia technologically advanced surgical equipment, supplies, and instructional videotapes. But there was an additional reason for the author’s journey, one that readers will find more engaging than his frequent technical explanations of eye surgery. He sought to understand the Cambodians and their culture, questioning how a peaceful Buddhist nation could inflict such brutality on its own people. Here the narrative becomes most intriguing because, as Hung’s concise summary of Cambodian history points out, the population is not comprised of a single, homogenous ethnicity. There are, in fact, many “others” in a country that includes Chinese Cambodians, Khmers, Natives, and more: “In Cambodia, one’s place in the economic structure depends greatly on one’s ethnic background.” Of course, the author’s moral question remains unanswerable. Still, his detailed vignettes, recalling his experiences and inquisitive conversations with everyone from doctors to “tuk tuk” drivers, paint a vibrant portrait of daily life, customs, foods, and challenges experienced throughout Cambodian society.

A sensitive, wide-ranging introduction to a diverse Southeast Asian nation grappling with its past.