Tag: Viet Kieu

Le Da – Tales of sorrow told by a Rock

My birth certificate shows my parents in their early 40’s.

No wonder my Dad’s taste for music was a bit off.

One of his favorites however stood the test of time: Le Da.

After all, it has something to do with the rock of ages.

It’s very sentimental (Rock solid yet soft when it comes to matter of the heart).

I gave it a try last night. Got a square 100 according to the karaoke machine.

My Dad must have sung through me.

The musical genes.

His generation experienced upheavals: revolution, uprootedness, and twice a refugee.

No wonder they were defined by and encoded their experience and emotion via music. A famous Vietnamese composer of my Dad’s time, Pham Duy, has just passed away.

Other singers (The Uptight) are making their way back to performing in Vietnam: new audience, new aspiration.

Something about a wandering soul seeking solace and wounded heart, soothing.

America has indeed been blessed with many talents from elsewhere.

The experience of America’s newest poet speaks well of this.

The American Century might be coming to an end, but in its place, the American Character barely blooms, blending best in class.

The style and confidence Viet Kieu singers (Vietnamese American) and filmmakers prove this point.

And before you know, you will find The Boat, The Book of Salt etc.. on Amazon book list.

It’s been since its inception that America embraces seekers and searchers.

It entertains doubts and encourages determination.

After all, it has elected not one term, but two terms, an American of exception.

Uniquely 21st century, he always has vacation in Hawaii, a half-way between East and West. There in the cliff, you will find some rocks, some tears and some tales of sorrow only rock could last long enough to tell.

My Dad would be passionate to join, if you give him the second mike. I wouldn’t bet on the score at the end though. Even me, I was just lucky last night.

Saigon vs Little Saigon

Burger King near the heart of Little Saigon, Westminster, CA is now closed.

Burger King at Tan Son Nhut Airport is now opened.

Just one of the many striking contrasts e.g. scooters vs wheels nation.

Skin coffee vs alley coffee, homeless folks vs lottery-ticket sellers.

On and on. People in Saigon have a vague notion of what their fellow countrymen are doing in Little Saigon. They saw it on Music Video.

They heard it second-hand via tourists (often consisted of inflated tales of infidelity or gender role reversal). Entertainers have found inspiration and served as in-betweeners.

Instead of setting city folks against country folks, contemporary comedy focuses on overseas Vietnamese (Viet Kieu)  searching for suitable wives. Sometimes, with the help of  a matchmaker (equivalent of head hunter in the working world).

The cultural gap widens when the prospective groom is from Taiwan or Korea.

But it also exists with Viet Kieu, who grew up in N America or Europe.

He could use the chopsticks, speak a few lines of greeting “Chao Bac”, but he also works out at the gym and drinks Corona instead of Ken (Heineken).

If he chooses Mexican foods over Vietnamese, he definitely is from Little Saigon, and not Saigon.

Saigon now has cappuccino and espresso bars, while Little Saigon just wants to offer Cafe Sua Da and Rau Muong.

Someday, the twain shall meet at Starbucks.

For now, both like AE brand (XS size) and everyone loves Hollister.

California Dreaming still.

The strength of Little Saigon lies in its flexibility and fluidity (to and fro both worlds), while Saigon itself, is rooted in colonial French and rich history of openness and optimism.

One doesn’t spend much on room and board in Saigon. Just put on something hip, and hit the town.

Again, if they were to order Mexican, you can tell they are from Little Saigon.

Go Chipotle and Corona.

Juxtaposing

It just so happens that I am reading Matterhorn and Love Like Hate one after another. The former depicts the Vietnam War from a GI‘s perspective, the later from a Vietnamese viewpoint.

Coincidentally, people depicted in both novels came across as victims of an uncalled-for conflict and whose lives were disrupted and devastated. I found glimpses of truth in these novels: camaraderie, self-transformation and shifting policies (Matterhorn crew depended on choppers for medivac and ration drops, Viet Kieu in Love Like Hate depends on Boeing for home visit).

One can’t wait to get home,  state side (after the drafted tour of duty), the other, can’t wait to save up for the next visit (to show off).

Long ago, I had an idea for a movie script. I called it “OK Salem”, after wartime  popular street greet (it’s either Pall Mall or Salem).

The two central characters in my imaginative “OK Salem” are a lieutenant like Mellas and a shoe-shine boy (like the sidekick kid in Raiders of the Lost Ark). The two befriended and bonded (communicated mostly in numbers e.g. number 1, number 10).

Later, the street kid drifted to America and made it through college. The veteran, meanwhile, turned homeless. A chance encounter brought the two together, albeit with a role reversal. Now, moving on to the other side of the Pacific for a mis-en-scene, each serves as a mirror for the other’s former self.

I could never finish my script, since it is a work in progress (struggling writers all say that). But I know many are still living in the shadow of America’s lost war.

Matterhorn was said to be an epic novel, thirty years in the works. In the novel, there were occasional race and class in-fightings. I felt the exhaustion just trying to imagine what’s like to follow these Marines deep into the jungle of futility.

And ironically, in Love Like Hate, I found sub-texts of in-group discrimination 

(Viet Kieu against the native and vice versa).

To enjoy both novels which cover same region and same time span helps put the war in perspectives (Apocalypse Now 2.0). To read these two novels side by side, is analogous to see “OK Salem” on my desk (unlikely coupling brought together in war).

I know many of us are sore losers (and sore winners) frozen in time (with occasional relapses). I have walked pass many campaign signage in Little Saigon, whose sidewalks have been used as platforms for frequent war rematch.

I am not sure there will ever be real winners in war. But it sure looks like Matterhorn will endure as a safe repository of memories of a place and time far away, yet whose vested emotions remain so close to the heart.

Even mine.

Dakao vs Dalat

Both have open air market. Both got some body of water that defines the city.

But that’s about it. 6 hours apart, they might as well be worlds apart.

Dakao, even without the street construction, can test your patience.

Dalat, even with a new bridge construction, can afford its  lake water drained for months . People here are patient.

Dalat fresh produce, from ground to table, is a given.

In Dakao, you have to get these from an A/Ced hypermarket.

Ironically, as one city starts its third shift, the other goes to bed.

Dalat has red dirt and misty weather. Dakao on the other hand is always noisy, dusty and hot.

Yet more and more people are pouring into District 1.

Must be the opportunities.  Yahoo has a piece about more Viet Kieu are coming back to open restaurants, coffee shops or to make movies. These are cosmopolitan Viet Kieu, at least, more of risk taker than Dalat tourists.

In the US, we have model minorities stereotypes e.g. Philippino nurses, Vietnamese dentists, Chinese herbalists, Indian engineers etc… To defy this “box”, young Vietnamese Americans are breaking out to run for offices, to receive Math award, to author a novel or self-help book (Impressive Impression for instance) and to be a lector at Yale. And like their Chinese American counterparts, a new wave of returnees are opening up off-shored centers, or just to test the waters.

In my opinion, they are coming back to “Dakao-like” opportunities, but they long for “Dalat-like” experience. One is dynamic, the other unassuming.

The head analyzes carefully, the heart whispers carelessly.

And to complete the circle , Dalat produces fresh vegetables for Dakao consumption.

The manure that brought forth produce out of red dirt become the supply for vendors selling on cement sidewalks.

City folks or country folks, both bleed red and often are too busy to read.

I read more in Dalat than in Dakao, where the sound of people toasting each other for health proves to be the only local distraction. Yet even amidst Tet celebration in Dalat, completely furnished with gay troop peddling lotto game, Dalat still proves to be an attraction, away from a Dakao of distraction.

Flamencing Vietnam

The rhythm. The ambience. And the audience at Carmen.

Different breed. Different beat.

The Vietnamese singer tried hard at rolling her Latin “R”‘s, just like her predecessors at the French “un”, or the English “you”.

Vietnam, and Saigon in particular, has  always been a mix of culture: Cuban band on Caravelle terrace or Carmen Club nearby.

Not far away, you’ll find the Japanese and Korean alley.

All these venues accommodate a variety of taste and eccentricities.

A few million visitors, and 87 million residents. Even just the top 1 percent need a night out is a crowd.  A business man tried his hand at opening a club in California, thinking their expat counterparts can use some home-grown entertainment. He took a loss and closed it down after a year.

So, Hotel California did not play “I will Survive”.

Ironically, the pool of Viet Kieu would rather spend their entertainment dollars here, thinking it would stretch more. Typical tourist’s loosed purse.

Carmen, with Spanish decor and motif e.g. catacomb and medieval. Very pre-internet with candle and dark menu.

Servers’ outfit has some red on, female ones with flowers on their hair.

Flamenco, or ” I will Survive” in Spanish, all night long.

It strikes me as odd. In Orange County, where Little Saigon was right next door to Santa Ana (one is predominantly Vietnamese, the other Hispanic) you wouldn’t see a Vietnamese in a Hispanic bar. But here, in Vietnam, you  find even on a slow night, Korean and Vietnamese tourists enjoy Spanish exotic flavor, flamencing the night.

Passion evoked by the foreign element of it all.

In Santa Ana, it gets to be too familiar (scarcity principle).

Here, just pass the entrance, you enter a pre-medieval space. And it’s a neutral territory, since there has never been a Spanish War with Vietnam.

So, feeling safe, I joined in. clapping, but not dancing. Only those Korean expat women were brave enough to do so. Must have cost them a  ton of vodka and tonic . When the music stopped in between sets, they left. Probably went bar hopping. French maybe?

They can “tutoyer” over there then. Vietnam can handle that too,  C’est la meme chose.

deja vu

Yesterday I reposted “Invisible Man“.  Today, it’s about “invisible hand“. There is an invisible hand that definitely plays with events in history, and this Adam-Smith-like hand seems to run out of tricks every 40 years or so, so it seems.

In Understanding Vietnam (Berkeley Press), we learn that history seems to recycle itself every 40 years also

(29-69-09).  First the French romantic/liberty movement, then the generation gap movement, and now the consumer movement.

This time, with the confluence of technological shift, policy shift and evolutionary shift, we  see Vietnam emerge

and leap-frog (it now exports more handsets than garment) into the world scene. After all, it has

survived quarrels with three of the UN Security Council members and emerged unscathed (France, US and China).

Saigon Tourist (a Vietnamese consortium in VN) once acquired a SF hotel in Fisherman Wharf  for $44 million (as of this edit, a Chinese consortium has just acquired a development around the Staples Center in the Southland).

It’s like a bi-coastal mirror image of another Vietnamese hotel owner from New York (who by the way donated a lot of money to the victims of disasters in New York).

It’s about time Vietnamese philanthropy plays catch up. The Viet Kieu (Viet expats) community has another 2 years to  face its American version of 40-year cycle. At that point, there will be a hand-over of the torch to the second generation, whom , as studies often confirm, wants nothing to do with their first-generation immigrant parents.

Many FDI projects have been abandoned here in VN. Banks are stuck with bad debts. And companies pick up the tab to retrain their workforce, whose education ill-prepares them for the work world. The only sure thing here are young people getting married in drove over the holidays.

I have seen it before: the rush to spend, then withdraw syndrome to survive, then spend again as if there is no tomorrow, much less next year.

If any indication at all, the young demographics will take up on Western counterparts, from online gaming to online music, from lifestyle consumption to hopefully, a respect for the fragile environment. It’s deja vu all over again here Vietnam: eat, drink and be merry. They did that in war time, now they do it in peace time. 40 years is a long time, but then, 40 years seems like just a blink of an eye. Just try to hear the prelude to some songs you once loved, and tell me you don’t react on reflex as if you had done not so long ago, when you first heard it and felt it resonated.

I hope you love the “invisible hand” better than being the “invisible man”. At least, that hand might give you a chance, another dance.