After the Amercan war , Nguyen Van Trung was locked up in a prison camp by Viet Cong , as he he was a real Viet Minh by that time . In Phuc Quoc prison he started undercover to learn English , by the help of a small dictionary that he kept hidden . After his release , he asked government several times to become an English teacher , at the end Viet Cong gave him the permission to start teaching English in a small school on the country side , as it could not harm them over there . Bit by bit he pushed up towards Ho Chi Minh , his old Saigon . At the end he became teacher on the high school . Beside English ( and Vietnamese ) , he speaks French , Japanese and Chinese ( last two I could not control ) , but he is the living proof that allthough politics kills , it will never kill the spirit of people . He believe that education is the key to feedom . He is extremely interested in other cultures , other coutries . We spent hours together , now he is a happy man .