Tag: Asia

Death-affirming culture

During lunch time at my first job (Child Welfare Bureau at Indian Town Gap, PA), we threw a football, my first.

That was supposed to be my induction into the Penn State culture the following Fall.

Here in Vietnam, at lunch time, I walk by a casket store. As equally shocking for foreigners as my first introduction to the football back then.

One culture fights every inch toward touchdown (winning is the only thing) while  the other prepared to accept human fate.

In the country side people even pre-purchase caskets to be stored  in the house like furniture, very much like Pre-paid Legal in the US (just in case).

I know this barely scratches the surface of a culture, because cosmetic-surgery is on the rise here (death denying), as modernity starts to eclipse Vietnam’s tradition( age = respect). In addition to this, people also fight for every centimeter in the street and  on the side-walk. There lies the paradox of  resigning to fate and fighting for the future. No offense, but I happened to read an USA Today Blog this morning, describing the author’s arrival to Ho Chi Minh City, and checking in to the Hyatt downtown.  She promised more adventure in Vietnam, but her first installment did not entice me . Too insulated (we checked in, traffic in all directions – has she watched the time-lapse video of traffic here before coming).

I might have noticed the same thing from that vantage point on my first trip (having lunched with a Hyatt’s Boardman out in the terrace), but now that I decide to zoom in, to satisfy my cultural curiosity .

Death is big business here: casket, candle and cremation.

(The other night, I saw a traffic accident  which confirmed this observation besides huge percentage of  male smokers). Most families have ancestor’s photos on the altar (my parents used to have theirs on the altar and now I have my parents’ on mine).

Insurance companies are prospering here. It’s interesting to see the objections people raise when buying life insurance.

Will it cover my casket?

Enough for cremation or a plot of land near the border of Cambodia?

How do my kids prove that I was dead by accident?

At lunch, I also saw a baby napping on a hammock near the casket store.

Life flows continuously here, just like anywhere else.

Except that, at lunch time, I can hardly find anyone to throw a football with. Back then, the sight of co-workers opted for sweats over siesta was a culture shock to me. Just as scooter traffic must be to the USA Today blogger.

Welcome to Vietnam. Cross the street safely. And write something worthy of your stay and your Gold-Card Reward!

Customarily Bad Luck

It’s known urban legend here in Vietnam that you do not take a photo with three people. Someone will need to stand in to defy the odds (of bad luck).

It is also bad luck that a person in the photo but was cut out.

I once saw a family picture which had a missing member. Apparently two sisters were either in love or married to the same man. So out of madness and jealousy, one cut out the other’s image from that photo.

Some ancient cultures refused to have their photos taken, for fear that their souls would be captured.

Imprints of expressions.

Frozen moment in time.

Together then separated.

I still remember one elementary classmate whom I later met in Santa Ana.

He must be the oldest friend of my early memory.

Very special indeed.

His face, his smile and his wagging ears.

Another friend who is now dying, also has an unmistakable square jaw.

Later he went on to play “pro” Rock and Roll (wearing a wig).

Another friend/neighbor with pony tail, still playing 8 shows a week.

I just got back from hearing him. His closing number was requested .

“When mama died, Pappa broke out and cried”

A person is nothing but the sum of his memories.

Conversely, a person with complete dementia is just a walking zombie.

Images and music carry us back in time.

Christopher Reeves used to star in “Somewhere in time“, a very soulful and un-American type of movie, which was quite unlike “Back to the Future“, although both centered on time traveling theme.

Last week, I ran into a childhood friend once again.

After the brief chat, I walked away, still couldn’t shake off  the way I had remembered him: the 7th or 8th grade friend I strummed the guitar with (Something in the way, she moves….).

Soon, we will be able to upload our entire history with Facebook‘s Timeline.

The “me” will be among the “we” as we progress through time.

Sharing intimate moments, leaving them in the “cloud”  till infinity.

An insurance against flood and fire, dementia and destruction.

This Christmas will be one of the most memorable ones for me: I get to share it with a cousin whose husband has been missing in action for more than 36 years.  It took her a long time to place his picture on the family altar (reserved for the dead).  When or if we are having our souvenir photo taken, I probably will ask someone to stand in the photo. You see, we could not discount her husband, whose photo is now sitting on the altar, to belong there or not.

Puzzling indeed, and heartbroken in fact.

Slippery Saigon

Someone told me that the rainy season here would end soon.

Yet it is raining still. Outdoor activities like kung-fu class, xe-om, beer stalls all ceased.

I seeked shelters .

The trick to walk safely here is to step firmly with one foot into the sidewalk, not at its edge (which slopes down to facilitate water draining).

Yet the middle of the sidewalk  was often “occupied” by street vendors most evenings.

The last choice is to walk in the street where scooters in all directions fighting for right of way.

Rain or shine, the internet cafe are full: kids playing Chinese chess , soccer and Thumbelina online.

I found a restaurant that caters to Northern taste: boiled pork, shrimp sauce and stuffed tofu.

I miss mom’s cooking.

The owner paced back and forth trying to put his grandson to sleep (on his shoulder).

I remember my old baby sitter, who let me piggyback to and from kindergarten.

I wonder how many favors one accumulated in a lifetime.

And how many favors one gives back ( Karma currency imbalance).

We all need bail-outs at times and we all “occupy” at some point.

Meanwhile, I  read about the Obama’s latest injunction to use foreign aid resources to further human rights’ causes e.g. gay rights around the world.

It’s one thing to finally “don’t ask don’t tell” in the US.

It’s quite another to open US embassies and USAID facilities to be “gay sanctuaries” around the world.

Tall order indeed!

Has anyone briefed him about cross-cultural differences? about Cultural Relativity and Taboos around the world?

People barely got used to using “OK” (condoms) here, much less advancing “don’t ask don’t tell”.

For more than three weeks now, I have been out of one bubble just to enter another.

Here, in Vietnam, people are in constant motion; multi-taskers in the US would feel right at home (people riding scooters in busy traffic with one hand while talking on the phone and smoking).

On my first few trips here, I saw accidents that claimed lives. Lately, it has been less frequent.

Infact, phones are no longer the most sought after, nor are English classes (which are increasingly commoditized ).

Home Karaoke systems perhaps reach saturation point, just like chat room at internet cafes.

Indeed my IT guy and I couldn’t find phone cables (for fax and wireline phones).

Apparently telecom VN has gone completely mobile.

The working class meanwhile are trying to stretch their hard-earned money

(get paid, get a few dresses).

With holidays fast approaching, workers in China and Vietnam are scrambling for the last train home.

Saigon, though still slippery, will then be emptied of migrant workers.

“The Sad Hymn” (Bai Thanh Ca Buon) will be played way past Christmas.

Booze and beer will be consumed till the last drop. Caution: slippery when wet.

Nobody discussed “Occupy” here. We are 100 percenters, sharing the burden and hopefully the beer.

Why not while it lasts! Its famous movie star has just died of a stroke at age 54. His declared wish: someday to return to Vietnam,

and find acting gig among his peers. He has just felt short of that last wish. One of his screen appearances was in “We were soldiers“.

It’s slippery still in Saigon. I will sign off now before treading carefully home, or else, I end up in “We were alive”.

Art expressions in most unlikely places

You would have never thought of running into people ballroom-dancing in the park. But here in GoVap new park, where the young trees are still being nursed, and the lights barely lit up, people came out and did just that. Young and old, male and female, they came out when the heat started to ease. Reminds me of a line in Saturday in the Park, by Chicago (people dancing, people talking, a man selling ice-cream).

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister said 42,000 people still died from unexploded land mines (see Huffington Post).

Perhaps the late Princess Diana would have grieved in her grave.

That’s amount to a lot of dancing feet, had they remained above ground.

Someone was practicing the violin tonight . Last night, I heard a flute (which reminded me of my daughter). It’s soon be time for me to pick up the guitar again.

Survival instruments.

When it’s hot, crowded and polluted, you just don’t go out and buy Friedman’s book.  You learn how to cope with realities.

Young students got used to taking the bus. It saves time and money, although in this culture, or even in the US, when you wait for the bus, you are either homeless or down-and-out on your luck.

Public transit somehow was played down by the likes of Ford and GM, when gas was still cheap and the streets spare of traffic.

Those dynamics have now changed, especially here in Asia.

People had resisted the helmet law for a while, until they became convinced by the saved lives. Brad Pit and Angelina Jolie were here to adopt their Vietnamese child.

They had ridden the streets of Ho Chi Minh City right before the law took effect.

The last of the Mohicans.

f it weren’t for the computers, we would see more youth troubles on the street. As it turns out, they are sitting right next to me, and behind me.

I am staying out of trouble too, even at my age.

Social media, blogging, and gaming.

Some companies (French ones) went ahead and forbade employees from using email. They prefer instant messaging for quick results.

Facebook was prescient on this, when its CEO announced the death of email as we knew it.

Young people communicate instantly without format and formality.

Just a quick question.

Here is a quick answer.

Boom!

Hurry up and get to the park, where people are talking, people are dancing, a man selling ice-cream.

Any day in the park.

A platform, a boombox, a partner and there we go.

One and two, one and two.

Dancing under the stars.

The good Lord rains on the field of both the good and the evil.

He gave each a longing for beauty that transcends place, politics and power of the purse.

Who says poor people are boring? I think the opposite is true.

Traffic turns attraction

Crunch time in Ho chi Minh City. A nuisance for many yet a photo-op for tourists.

Millions in ponchos, helmets, dust masks, sunglasses fighting for every inch (centimeter here) to get  home in the pouring rain, while tourists leisurely strolled the colonial side walks in shorts, sandals and Sony cameras trying to record their trips. Who is looking at whom?

These skinny people all wrapped up to protect their skin?

Or these fat people are not afraid of getting sun-burn?

Three years ago, I switched role by playing expat in Hanoi, studying among other expats

from US, UK, Canada, Australia and Ireland. I got a glimpse of how the natives were viewed, perceived and more often than not, judged: English school across from a dog-meat stance, ballroom-dancing in the park and to top it all, a 60’s Berkeley-style stripper family on the streets begging for money to cover health care costs (per recent Yahoo news).

One of our lessons for teachers of English as a foreign language that morning happened to be “soliciting money online from friends to cover shopping debt”.

It struck me that the Western girl in the lesson and the lady out there on the street were doing the same, one with wireless, the other voiceless.

Three years have passed since that morning.

A lot of bank bail outs are now behind us.

Bank buildings got renamed, CEO’s booted.

During the upturn,  people drink and smoke their lives away.

During the downturn, people drink and smoke their lives away even faster.

Always a vicious cycle, a race to the bottom. Vietnam spends 38% of its income on food, Mexico 23%, France 13% while the US a mere 7% (subsidized infrastructure).

I found myself in sudden tears at lunch. This was after I had heard that a friend with cancer would have only six months to live.

What would I do in his shoes?

Dzo (down) the Ken (Heineken)? Visit Yellow Stone Park? Eiffel tower?

My grandmother’s grave? (we’ll meet again soon anyway).

What would you do?

Fighting for another inch in traffic?

Every moment is precious especially towards the end .

“There is a pause in between life and death,” said my friend.

I saw it once with the burning monk. The rising flame was both his baptism by fire and his cremation.

To enter that next ring of eternity, he must and did leave all things behind.

To dance to another drummer’s beat.

After two weeks in country, I have learned to cross the streets without the usual reflex which I found counter-productive. And I definitely resist any impulse to take pictures, because someone else’s stress was not going to be my sensation. Not just Vegas, but also Vietnam, where what happened here, stays here. Traffic is to me, a distraction not attraction.

Vietnam, next Hong Kong?

On my first trip to Hong Kong summer 1981, I was taken in by the energy and entrepreneurial spirit there.

A camera shop (pre-Iphone era) next to a watch shop (again, pre-Ipad era) next to an electronics store.  Shoppers from India, Europe, Australia were all there, bustling about. Double-deck buses (still under British colonial rule) moved to and fro from Kowloon to Sham Shui Po.

China‘s Champs ELysees.

And that’s 30 years ago.

Now, boarding a bus in Saigon, full of college students from the University of Industry, I saw Vietnam‘s future 30 years from now.

Every kids on that bus ( with Samsung phones) will start a business or work for MNC companies, which will surely be coming (when wage pressures increase in China and water level rises again in Thailand).

In fact, Quang Trung Software Park is holding a conference on that very same topic (Human resources, mostly ICT, in a flat world).

Thailand wants to play a lead role in connecting and collaborating at this gathering.

Alliances for a planned and collaborative future (who is going to be the next Hong Kong or Singapore?)  Indeed, Manpower and other HR agencies have sprung up all over town. With hard and soft skills, one can command a decent wage here.

The living condition leaves much to be desired however : supermarket is located next to a dry dirty river, for instance. But all that can and will be fixed in time. Right now, younger learners are enrolled in foreign-own classes, picking up an expression here and a tune there.

My relative sent his daughter to the US to complete high school, Singapore to finish college and now to Australia for graduate school.

Stories like this put Vietnam on the path toward becoming another Hong Kong , while Hong Kong itself has moved up the value chain (per NYT Friedman) to full service economy, “off-shoring” its manufacturing further up North.

In other words, if those “Boat People” were to arrive today and be allowed to go off camp to work, they would be at a total loss, as opposed to work off-book in the garment industry as back then (“tailored in Hong Kong”).

Back to ICT as a way out

Young people naturally pick up new skills faster than older workers.

This is especially true for language-acquisition.

Once we can integrate the two camps (business savvy vs tech savvy) we are on our way to a promising future.

I notice primary schools and Universities here have started an all-English curriculum,  Vietnam’s latest attempt to copy the Asian Tiger miracle. Private universities are busy constructing “campuses” modeled after counterparts overseas (Hoa Sen, Tan Tao ), still have to shuttle students to and fro on chartered buses to city’s outskirts.

Countries like Taiwan, Singapore and S Korea have all traveled that road.

The raw materials are present, as evident from my bus ride which was all of a sudden empty after the drop off  at the main campus. Franchise concept has taken hold here: sticky rice chain, sugarcane juice chain, KFC chain, Lotteria chain and Tous Les Jours.

Being a “virgin” market has some pluses. Investors can’t wait to stake out location, location, location and brand positioning.

But the locals will learn the ins and outs of good and bad use of capitals.

(23 things they don’t tell you about capitalism by Chang).

The solution: go ahead with caution, but still move ahead speedily when  opportunity presents itself.

Just the way heavy traffic is here . Just the way people are moving about in Vietnam now. Just the way I saw in Hong Kong then.

Noodle cultures

Imagine you can slurp a spicy, mouth-watering noodle bowl on a rainy night.

Even when it is instant, thanks to the King of Noodles (they even have a noodle museum in Yokohama).

Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Thailand and Vietnamese; all love this staple.

http://www.bangkokpost.com/business/marketing/259168/tf-eyes-vietnam-for-noodles

Take the Korean and Vietnamese samples.

Both are known for North and South.

Both seem to have become what they fought against (Korean industrial might resembles Japan’s rising sun in the 80’s, while post-war Vietnam is defining its multi-polar identity i.e. Chinese, Franco-Russian, or APEC).

These emerging blocks interact and influence one another: young Vietnamese love Korean soaps and stars (Rain), while the Korean invest heavily in Vietnam’s young workforce (who might not endorse the 55-hr work ethic, due to the lingering French laissez-faire  35-hr work week, with coffee and cigarette breaks).

When these cultures export themselves, they stake out block by block, with the Korean districts in Wilshire District (LA) and Garden Grove (OC); similar pattern emerges as the Vietnamese found work in Silicon Valley or  Camp Pendleton near Little Saigon enclave.

Korean cinema, meanwhile, has drifted in the direction of its former enemy ( Japanese) by exploring the grotesque and domestic brutality ( the dark side of an industrial culture coming of age.)

The threat that ties all these disparage cultures (island-apart, literally) is the string noodle, originated in pre-Marco Polo China.

Even Samsung started out as a noodle company.

The Asian retail gal might be in suit, in compliance with industrial codes, but at lunch time, reverts back to her larger cultural codes (segregated, slurping and spicy).

Those culture groups now come face to face with modernity, under the disguise of free trade. Samsung or Sony? Toyota or Tata? Coke or Pepsi (wherever there is Pepsi, there is music, but not “the real thing”).

I used to work on the same team with my dear Korean colleague, and our markets were literally side-by-side (geographically, but culturally apart, just like Tijuana and San Diego).

Companies which try to expand to Asian markets need to understand these deep divides, the same as found in Europe or Latin America.

At least, shrewd observers can count on a set of common denominators i.e. food, fun and festivities.

Cultures are moving targets. But underneath, there are forces at work . The average person on the street just know they have changed, slowly, to becoming what their parents and grandparents had once detested (leaving the local village for a global one).

The collective self is giving way to the individual self (see Last Train Home, where inter-generational conflict was played out on their annual journey back to the village).

Consequently, you can take any of the above folks out of the noodle shop, but you can’t take the noodle away from them. Not on a cold day, or rainy day.

That’s what triggered the invention of instant ramen. Our noodle King saw a need (why all these people have to stand in the rain, waiting their turn to order noodle). That solution has been the key to unlock a kingdom, where modernity (speed, efficiency and technology – food processing) was married to tradition (childhood memory, communal activity and uncompromising taste). It’s all in the spices. At least, it was one of the triggers for Columbus to set sail and discover a rounded Earth. The end of all journeys it seems, is to come home and learn to know the place for the first time. That place, for a lot of people, has noodle waiting albeit in instant packages.

East-West shopping

Retailers in Europe figured out a way to push merchandise in this time of austerity: shop in your underwear, leave fully clothed.

Meanwhile, a reporter from the BBC went to Hanoi to learn about another way of shopping: buying paper clothing for the dead (old Hanoi, pho “hang ma”).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00h35lv

That’s how different East and West is. The only way to deal with trade imbalance is for Western countries to export designer “paper clothes” to China and Vietnam, so people can trade up in matters of ancestral worship.

(given that most textile imports to EU and US have been from these countries). When it comes time for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, I miss my deceased parents, and the opportunity to buy them a Fathers Day, Mothers Day card.

If in Vietnam, I would be given another shopping opportunity for them: gold leaves and US dollars, all in paper, to be burned at their graves.

At the very least, I can burn an incense .

Filial duty. One of the highest virtues.

Another one is to gift your teachers on New Year.

Now with online education and home schooling, there is less human interaction . Some virtual math tutors are connected from India, the same way we reach call centers  for tech support.

It’s the best of times (to be learners) and the worst of times (to be teachers).

Characters and learning (now defined as information soaking) are decoupled.

Hence, the Confucian way of modeling characters (Tien hoc Le, Hau hoc Van i.e. first learn characters, then literature) to mold and make mandarins is phasing out.

A bunch of us know full well that those coffee servers (who wear skimpy outfits) in Vietnamese enclaves earn multiple times their customers’ income.

When in Rome, dress like a Roman.

Maybe this Black Friday, Wal-Mart can avert its earning decline by posting a sign that says “come as you were born, and leave fully clothed”. Its puritanical root in Benton, AK probably prohibits this. But those European stores already did , with much fanfare and press coverage. All these campaigns put VIrgin‘s Branson (whose airline launch was the talk of the town) in the back seat. Each generation must come up with a creative-destruction. Shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake, shake the proverbial survival tree (societies who hunt in pack figured out different ways to eliminate the unfits).

Hang in there ole friends. Live young and together in the West, die old and alone in the East (where Father’s Day and Mother’s Day extend well beyond the grave). That’s the only way to end the story. Alone again (naturally).

Paradox, dilemma and irony

Paradox: doomsday for all is not coming, doomsday for one, anytime (especially when you are old).

Dilemma: too big to fail, the book then the movie (might not make it big at the box office).

Irony: got to have a job to land a job (hence, the growth of internship i.e. free  labor).

Underneath it all, we still act out our primal instincts e.g. sacrificing a virgin to appease the gods (common good) via new forms: NINJ loan, TARP and foreclosure (sub-prime borrowers are enjoying free rent before the eviction notice got nailed on the door – yet, the process flows just one way: driving people out on the streets where they were supposed to belong in the first place).

Meanwhile, debtor’s nation will soon face intense competition from China, whose agriculture population now stands at mere 10%.    http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/433041d0-8568-11e0-ae32-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1NHwUmam0.

Their service sector is growing and scrutinizing every loose brick in the American fortress: from refrigerators to automobiles, from helicopters to pharmaceutical research.

One interesting note from history: during a visit to Pakistan, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger faked a sick leave to take a side trip to China. From there, the Cold War was practically neutralized, setting the stage for today’s multi-polar world. Recently, we saw how Pakistan was once again used as staging area for America’ s new battle ground.

Pakistan, our new dilemma (Please return the SEAL helicopter, and do not forward to the reverse engineering lab in China).

Vietnam, our new irony.

America, filled with paradoxes (loose sex and loose religion, long list of millionaires and high level of national debt, highest incarceration rate yet land of the free).

Dear readers, you got the gist. Connect the dots for yourself. Think, think, think. Apple “think different”, so they make the I-pad 2 through Hon Hai, whose subsidiary Foxconn kept having its factory blow up or employees jump the dorm’s rail. Tell me there is no modern-day sacrifice of human being to appease the gods of consumption (last year, we just wanted an I-pod, now we want an I-pad) and I will tell you to think again.

Unfortunate guy and the happiest place

I still remember Sang. He helped me set up sound equipment on the weekend (my attempt to crowd-source and create an open-air coffee-house for refugees), and attended my class on weekdays.

Sang was in that transition camp in Hong Kong, on his way to Norway, his new home.

I was feeling sorry for him, an unaccompanied minor, who only knew the seas and spoke no other language besides Vietnamese.

Now he is in the happiest country on Earth perhaps with a fully paid house and a steady job.

http://images.businessweek.com/ss/06/10/happiest_countries/index_01.htm?chan=rss_topSlideShows_ssi_5

You will never know.

I thought of Nordic countries as being very cold, isolated and their languages incomprehensible. While in Hong Kong, I was taken to New Territories, on my day off , for a peek at then inaccessible China. That same view, today, looks out to Shenzhen. Back then, it was the equivalence of standing at the Korean DMZ.

Back to Sang.

He got to Norway safely, I learned from a few letters, one of which had a picture of him with sun glasses and cigarette.

Cool!

I was impressed with Norway then, because they took on Sang and others in their most unfortunate of circumstances.

Norway had nothing to do with the wave of Boat People, risking pirates and prolonged processing at camps.

Yet they pitched in because their ships picked up refugees at sea.

And now, it’s voted the happiest country on Earth.

A lot has changed since. Back then, I read the Boat People story on Newsweek. It struck me.

The ordeal and the odd (1 in 2 survived. Survivors might resort to cannibalism at worst,

or got raped along the way, at best).

Now, Newsweek itself got sold off for a token $1.00

And “Ladies and Gentlemen on both sides of the aisle” actually sat together, from senior level on down (Kerry and McCain).

Sang looked up to me, naturally. Now, it’s my turn to envy him.

I wish I were the happiest guy in an unfortunate place instead.

So he projected himself on me, and I, with a delayed reciprocate response years later.

Back then, CNN was a novelty. Today, the President takes his Q&A on YouTube.

My hope is for the last of those “boat people” to find their happiest place this New Year (another wave has ended up in Australia).

Many have posted sweet memoirs about Tet and places they once loved.

It’s a culture which holds high regards for the collective memory (sticky-rice cake, moon cake etc…).

Allegorically, those symbols resonate even and especially for those who now live comfortably in Nordic states.

It will be so strange, if one day, I ran into Sang here in the States, or Vietnam.

And we will exchange notes, how much (the price) we have paid for progress.

We know there is not much room at the top (the Mayan pyramid steps got smaller as you climb higher).

And the way down has always been much scarier, because it’s counter-intuitive for us to ever look down.

Who wants to go back to school like that laid-off textile lady at the age of 55. We were toilet-trained and mentally trained for a one-way race. No one seems to be able to recall more than three top winners in each sector. Hence, it’s more than necessary to attain and sustain the top place.

Just make sure, you have ownership of the climb. For Sang, then, it was a very sad journey he took to transit camp and onto NORWAY.  As it turns out, he was an unfortunate guy in the happiest place on Earth years later.