Tag: Hongkong

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.

My Japanese tutors

Ishiguro, Fukuyama, Kawasaki and Murakami. I read Ishiguro in bed, watched Fukuyama on Charlie Rose, watch Kawasaki interview on his latest book Enchantment and dream on with characters in Murukami’s novels.

Multi-media tutors. They might look Asian, but speak and write perfect English. Best of both worlds. Like Singapore or Hongkong.

Ishiguro penned beautiful prose and plot, that even Amazon’s founder must admit, the Remains of the Day was one of his favorites. In Never Let Me Go, the author portrays a love triangle out of the most unlikely of circumstances (among the donors of organs, our sci-fi characters). The mood and textures were so alluring. These supposedly “sub-humans” ‘ were made available as spare parts. “We let you experiment with arts to prove you had souls at all”

(and if they could demonstrate that they were in love, they might get a deferral – like college graduates who got their student loan deferred).

On to Fukuyama. who banked on the End of History (or marking) on the creation of Democratic Institutions e.g. those of the United States of America.

(a wiki check showed his family was in State College, PA “We Are”).

He answered Charlie Rose succinctly, and never missed a beat (about Arab Spring etc..).

Quite a professor, deserving his Standford upgrade.

Then on to the Enchanter. The smile in the eyes says it all.

He kept mentioning Charles Branson, of Virgin group, who stooped down and shined his shoes to win him over (to Virgin frequent flyer). To Guy, one needs to live as if there would always be a tomorrow (in contrast to what Fukuyama commented about America ” who has partied as if there were no tomorrow for the past thirty years”).

Reciprocity rules the universe. So is Karma. We saw that first-hand last Sunday with Bin Laden.

Murukami’s world is dreamy, with male characters who struggle with his own sexual and social identity (Murukami himself is a long-distance runner and writer. I wonder if his next novel would be about the Boston Marathon tragedy, as he once worked on the Tokyo’s rail cultish subject).

Murukami blends romance, cultism and eschatology in one fell swoop in 1Q84, his blended best.

By mentioning these accomplished authors, I am hoping the Asian gene pool rub off on the  second third generation of Vietnamese American. And I hope to live to watch one of my own on Charlie Rose, commanding public attention and admiration. It doesn’t matter where you came from and how humble (or horrible) the circumstances surrounding your beginning (in America). The only thing that matters is where you end up, in this case, undeniable success of my Japanese tutors.

daring swim

I was privy to not once or twice, but thrice, work  in non-profit capacity with displaced Vietnamese.

My first time was at IndiantownGap, Pennsylvania as a Child Welfare interpreter.

Later, in Hong Kong as a relief worker. And latest was in 1983, in the Philippines, where Cambodian and Vietnamese awaited their flights to the US.

One story stuck in my mind.

A 9-year-old boy.

No shirt.

Floated in a basket.

Ended up in a makeshift prison-turned-camp in Hong kong .

He could hardly speak Vietnamese , much less British English, spoken where he would finally be resettled.

I gave him some money, earned from my volunteer stipend.

The camp police caught him with dollars in hand, and took him to question.

So I had to bail him out, and wished him a nice life.

I often wonder how he would eventually turn out.

Will he be working in a Chinese restaurant in London.

Or is he back in Cho Lon, Chinese-enclave of Vietnam, as a successful Viet Kieu.

It has been 32 years to date. He must be in his 40. May even have a big family.

Then those boys I helped place in foster homes.

I am sure they do well, raised and schooled in the hills of Pennsylvania.

They are cheering for the Nittany Lions, same way I do.

But how they got here was slightly different from my journey, which had begun on a barge.

They got here unaccompanied, in the case of that boy, sole survivor on the merciless (pirates robbed and raped many of them) China Seas.

Before there were shows like Survivors on American TV, I had already met some real survivors who challenged my assumption about perseverance and persistence.

We only know something ironically in its absence.  Take comfort, love and companionship for instance. Or, if the AC is off this summer, we moan and groan for lack of cool air.

Love , I refuse to comment. And companionship: my friend is now a widow. I am sure she can comment on this better than I do.

The point is that most of us live within the confine of a bell curve. But many of us will have to face adversity and challenge at some point in our life time.

For me, I take lessons from those barge people and boat people. For some reason, they are endowed with much more than I could ever have e.g. adaptability. And they did not stop there: they put the past behind and move on to success.

The young monk once asked his master “why did you carry the woman – supposedly inhibited and inappropriate – across the river? The master replied “I crossed the river already, why are you still lingering about what happened on the other side?”

Unintended consequences of war and displacement depicted by a daring swim in a basket. No thanks. I will take barge over basket. And the song that stuck in my mind during that period was “We’ve Only Just Begun“.