Le Van Vu … A man with an indomitable spirit

Any book of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series is worth its weight in gold or possibly more. The reason for this is unlike myriad other paperbacks; these books tend to leave a lasting impression on the heart.

With interesting tales that are drawn from real life, one will find it a bliss to discover Chicken soup for the soul actually is a series not just one ad hoc book. From one of these books is the life story of Le Van Vu, a Vietnamese business man, whose hard work and determination has left an unfading impression on my heart.

Born in a wealthy family, Le Van Vu had everything going fine for him…but only for a short while. While he was still a teenager, his father was brutally murdered and all the wealth he thought he had, suddenly changed hands. With nothing to fall back on, his life was an indescribable struggle all through his academic years. After finishing his graduation as a lawyer, he started investing in real estate in the southern part of Vietnam to provide housing for the Americans during the wartime. Soon he became wealthy again.

On one of his business trips, when he was in the northern part of Vietnam; he was captured and incarcerated for aiding the Americans. But he miraculously escaped after killing five guards. When he returned to South Vietnam, he was again captured and put in prison stating that he was a plant from the north. After serving the sentence, he found himself poor again. But he rebuilt his empire strategically again. And when the Americans were leaving Vietnam he traded his entire fortune with them for a safe passage to Philippines. There, he was able to convince the president into letting him handle the fishing business. In a few years time, he developed the whole of the fishing belt in Philippines. But as luck would have it, he abandoned all his wealth in order to settle in America.

After sometime, he was so frustrated that he had to start all over again from the scratch again, he seriously contemplated suicide. But encouraged by his wife not to give up, he and his wife started working in a bakery. The bakery owner promised to sell them the bakery provided they pay a huge sum. The sum was so large that it meant sleeping in the bakery and eating bakery items for one full year. Which they did. Amazingly, after a year, they paid of the bakery owner and started churning in profits.
Today, as you could have guessed, Le Van Vu and his wife are multi-millionaires. No wonder his story touches many a fainting soul.