AN: So, I disagree with fanon on Kwan being Chinese. Given how Quan is pronounced, I honestly think he's Vietnamese. It's just a difference of opinion. Also, I apologize for the trauma I put Kwan's dad through here. It's definitely R rated in concept, so if anyone wants to skip this chapter that's totally fair.
Kwan was, actually, a misspelling of the name Quan.
He had been born in Tihn Bien, in the province of An Giang, to an unknown woman and a father who had raised him as best he could for as long as he could. In that kind of poor part of Vietnam, it wasn't uncommon for people to smuggle electronics, drugs or tobacco across the border to Cambodia. But Quan's father hadn't wanted that life for his son, nor did he want that example to be what he passed down to his child. Having lost his own parents in the war years ago, he treasured his son, his sole family, his perfect little boy. And few things are more powerful than a desperate parent's love. So, he set out to find work where he could.
The land was green and lush, crisscrossed by streams and creeks. A man could make a living as a farm hand there if he was willing to put in the work, and he was. The long hours and hard labor didn't bother him. The problem was paying someone to watch after his son while he worked, and that cut into his wages significantly. He had to take up additional work cleaning the farmhouse to make any profit, and every night he came to bed exhausted and woke up long before sunrise to work again. Though the picturesque sky and tall green reeds painted a lovely picture, life was hard, made harder when fewer and fewer places were hiring outside their families anymore. Things became impossible when rumors began to follow him that his son's mother was Cambodian. Unkind words were thrown at him, but his biggest concern was his son's future if everyone knew his mixed origins.
Eventually, he picked up his son and spent his savings on travel to Ho Chi Minh City, where he hoped he could find better work. He did and didn't; he fell in with the wrong crowd but went under an assumed name. There weren't a lot of prostitutes in Ho Chi Minh, but there were enough he could be one without worrying about police crackdowns. It was humiliating, degrading work, which he took up only when he and his son were starving, but that gave him little comfort about the stomach churning acts he had to perform now. The other prostitutes, the women, took to caring for the baby during their off shifts immediately. He had a sense that they understood how his pride was breaking, how low he felt, how there were many nights the only thing that kept him going was his son. When he cried, they made no comments, and when he needed someone to watch his son, he never had a problem finding someone.
In Ho Chi Minh, the only thing that was green was the park. He took his infant son there, letting the little one crawl in verdant grass, watching him with sad, tired eyes. Once trapped in city life, it was hard to escape, and this was no way to raise a son. Bad enough he would live with the threat of his mother's identity hanging over him; now his father was nothing to be proud of, either. He grew despondent and thin, seeing the children of other men and women in his position grow into gangsterhood and criminal behavior, dropping out of school, wasting their futures in this, the most prosperous time in their country's history. And his heart broke for how rapidly he had destroyed his son's future, but there was one last shot.
It took some doing to convince one of his friends to take his son to the orphanage and claim that he was hers. The man who ran it had seen him, he knew him as a prostitute, and there was too much chance that his son would be rejected for having a parent with 'income', scant as it was. He watched his wide eyed son become a blur in the distance in the arms of his best friend, the one Quan sometimes called his mother. The betrayal that they were the ones going to leave him behind was intense, vicious, a stabbing pain. It was guilt on top of guilt. This was what he had resorted to. This was what he had done to his son. That night, he became too depressed for tears, and along with his best friend Sang Thi Van went back to Tihn Bien.
Even though he went back to farm work along with her, they weren't in love, and were never married. They settled in a different town, one by the river, pulling together a life of at least some dignity. He wanted to put the past behind him entirely, let it fall away like green leaves turning brown. There had to be no way of his son knowing what he'd become. Sang wrote the orphanage often, checking up on Quan's status, and it was when the boy was nearly three she came running back from the mail box, beaming. She threw her arms around him happily, holding him close.
Quan had been adopted by visiting Americans, and was going to be taken there. His father shook with relief. America, where none of this legacy could follow him, where college was easier to get into, where people were so much richer. His heart ached for his son across the world, but he knew it was for the best. It made all the suffering, the indignity, the nights that gave him nightmares and burned themselves into his mind all worth it. He had done something right at long last. Now, he could live out his life in satisfaction, knowing that if he died tomorrow, he had accomplished the only thing he'd ever truly had a burning desire to do: save his family from poverty.
Twelve years later, in Amity Park, Kwan used his rudimentary knowledge of Vietnamese from classes his parents had made him take to slowly translate and read the documentation of his adoption. His mother's name meant 'noble poet'; she was unemployed, just like his father, and only nineteen when he had been dropped off. She was from the Nam Dinh Province, with no city or living relatives given. He wondered how she got by. More than that, though, he frowned at the name given for his father. It seemed so familiar. It was impossible to have memories that far back, but he had the faintest recollection of a crowded street, an alley, and a sad man. There was no information other than a name and province for his father. The man was a stranger, but Kwan had the strangest feeling it wasn't because his dad didn't care. He reread the name on the paper again. His father's name was Xu Doan Xahn – struggle and green.
The next day, Kwan felt irresistibly drawn to go to the park, where a strange melancholy overtook him. And when his concerned girlfriend asked why he was crying, he couldn't remember or explain why.
