Ten Thousand Hands

A story starts out of a helicopter flying out into the sunset, passing by him and he looks out into the sky. He runs across a airplane highway and into the homes of his aunt. He over hears that they must leave now, because the Americans have left them, but his aunt refuses to leave without her mother who has gone out yesterday to the market, selling cigarettes and tells Bee that he must go with his grandmother to her home in Vientiane. He agrees and they leave to the market. Shortly after arriving to the market, he want's to meet with his sister in the village, but his grandmother told him not to speak of her, because she was married off.

A french plane comes by and starts shooting at the village market and began to drop bombs amongst them. Vong looks at a plane that flies too close and realized that they were Vietnamese soldiers. He runs into the forest, lost and dazed with the rest of the survivors, his grandmother is missing and he befriends a little girl whose mother is missing. Night falls and he goes back to find what's left of the village, scavenging for food and he follows a group of people who are planning to cross the Mekong River and follows them and carries the child on his back. Vong decides to follow the group of Hmong Green, because he secretly has a crush on a girl in the group and the girl he carries on his back could understand them. As they make there many days walk across the river, they hear from a second group that Vientiane has fallen and news that Thailand is accepting people to travel to the U.S.

As they travel, the group was silent, but soon they began to understand one another and build a relationship amongst the group, each telling a little bit about themselves. As the days pass by, the old ladies sang of good times in the day and stories in the night about their former lives and ghost stories that amazed Vong.

Later on that night, Vong has a dream about a burning shaman in a cold grassy plain, whose face was clothed, throwing two chickens into the sky, with strings attached to their legs, chanting a strong prayer of calling the spirits back. As Vong moves closer to the shaman, he than began to realize that he was inside a mass graveyard of dead bodies. The bodies began to lift up and one of them speaks to him and tells him that there is a key that is buried underneath the earth. As Vong quickly began to dig deeper and deeper into the mud, the bodies began to float closer and closer towards him. He then finally finds the key and is suddenly grabbed by one of the corpses. He wakes up and realizes that he has been captured along with the woman and children. He finds that the key is silver with a rubber band around and realizes that it is the key to his grandmothers house. As they are imprisoned, they are forced to watch a propaganda film and Vong laughs that their language was not the same as theirs and was curious who are these people and why they do not sound like Hmong. One night, a dog barks loudly into the night and he hears whispers amongst the field and he quickly realizes that a group of soldiers are coming to rescue them. The camp is then torn down and they are rescued, splitting into two groups, one who will cross the river to the refugee camp and the other who will wait for the Americans to come.

Vong follows a group who can take him pass Vang Vieng, but after that, he must make his own way to Vientiane. He befriends a Vietnamese girl named Lynne and she escorts him to Vientiane safely. He later on realizes that she only likes him because he looks like her favorite Chinese actor. He breaks into house grandmothers house and finds the remaining money and memories.

The General's Ending He passes General Vang Pao's house and knocks on their door and finds it that they are being discharged from the Royal Lao Army and airlifted to Udon Thani. Vong presents the seal of General Vang Pao and is accepted into the aircraft and transported out safly, seeing in the eyes of hundreds of bodies being boated out back and fourth and forced to walk to cramped refugee camps.