Ngor, Haing (ca. 1947–1996)
Born in Samrong Young, a village south of Phnom
Penh, Cambodia, Ngor earned a medical degree
from the national university in Phnom Penh and
worked as a doctor in the government’s military
hospital. On April 17, 1975, he was operating on
a wounded soldier when Khmer Rouge soldiers
burst into the operating room ordering immedi-
ate evacuation. Ngor and staff fled the hospital
and joined other Cambodians in a mass exodus
to the countryside, where he later joined his wife
and family.
Ngor and his schoolteacher wife, Huoy Chang,
hid their identities by telling authorities he was
a taxi driver and his wife a street vendor. He was
interrogated about his past, tortured, and impris-
oned three times by the Khmer Rouge. In 1976 his
father was executed for stealing rice crumbs. In
1978 Ngor helplessly watched his wife die in child-
birth, unable to intervene medically for fear of
revealing his past identity. When the Vietnamese
invaded Cambodia in 1979, Ngor fled to a refu-
gee camp at the Thailand border. He arrived in the
United States in 1980.
Ngor was active in the Cambodian refugee com-
munity in the United States and abroad. In 1984
he relived some of his Khmer Rouge experiences in
his portrayal of Dith Pran, a Cambodian translator
for Sydney H. Schanberg, a correspondent for the
New York Times, in the movie The Killing Fields.
In 1985 the role earned him an Academy Award,
the Golden Globe, and several British Academy
Awards, catapulting his acting career. Neverthe-
less, Ngor claimed that his greatest acting role was
convincing the Khmer Rouge authorities that he
was not a doctor. Using his newfound celebrity
status, he cofounded groups devoted to helping in-
ternational refugees. Ngor was also vocal in speak-
ing out against the Khmer Rouge, some of whom
remained in power in Cambodia. In 1996 he was
shot to death outside his Los Angeles apartment by
three Asian gang members. Some speculated the
murder was politically motivated.
An important part of his legacy is his auto-
biography, Haing Ngor: A Cambodian Odyssey
(1987), cowritten by Roger Warner, whom Ngor
met in a refugee camp in 1980. One of the early
Cambodian-American literary works written in
the mid 1980s, the autobiography details Ngor’s
experiences under the Khmer Rouge regime. As a
survivor’s tale, the book testifies to the atrocities
committed by the Khmer Rouge and bears witness
to the suffering of the Cambodian people under
the regime. Haing Ngor: A Cambodian Odyssey has
been revised for several editions and adapted into
plays performed in Cambodian-American com-
munities across the United States. Surviving The
Killing Fields is an audio-cassette publication.
Bunkong TuonNieh, Hualing (Hualing Nieh Engle, Nie
Hualing) (1925– )
Born in Hubei, China, Nieh lived her formative
years through the unremitting Nationalist-Com-
munist strife and the Japanese invasion and occu-
pation of China (1937–45). In 1949 she fled with
her family to Taiwan on the eve of the Communist
victory. From 1949 to 1960, Nieh was the literary
editor of a dissident publication in Taiwan, The
Free China Fortnightly, which was forced to close
down due to the Nationalist “White Terror.” In 1964
Nieh went to the University of Iowa as a visiting
artist. She has lived since in the United States and
married Paul Engle, an American poet, in 1971. In
her recently published memoir, San Sheng San Shi
(Three Lives) (2004), Nieh chronicles her life in
China, Taiwan, and the United States and projects
sensibilities representative of the Chinese diaspora:
She is a tree with “roots in China, trunk in Taiwan,
and branches and leaves in the United States.”
Nieh is the author of more than 20 books. Her
novels, short stories, and essays are written in
Chinese, some of which have been translated into
other languages and anthologized. Nieh is also ac-
tively engaged in sharing literature between East
and West. She wrote in English Shen Ts’ung-wen
(1972), a critical biography of a renowned mod-
ern Chinese writer and research scholar of cultural
relics. Her translations include works from Eng-
lish into Chinese and from Chinese into English.
Among the latter category is The Poetry of Mao
Tse-tung (with Paul Engle, 1973). Nieh is also the214 Ngor, Haing