Tag: Women in Vietnam

From Mandarin to Model (Lung Dai-Chan Dai)

My generation have been a betweener one: from Mandarin to Mobile phone system, from French Colonial to Fashion TV (with Asia Next Top Model).

The saying goes like this “Vong Anh di truoc, Vong Nang theo sau” i.e. when a man passed the King’s exam, he went home to the village , with his lady in tow. Now, it’s the Model who get the gusto.

The Mandarin was supposed to quote from literature (like the old Hamlet), his back elongated from years of reading lying down. Now, it’s the Model whose legs stretch out on catwalk. Hence, from Lung Dai to Chan Dai.

Something is happening in Vietnam, very subtle and sensitive. Women assert  and insert themselves into traditionally male arena: homosexuality, clubbing, gang fighting, adultery, cougars, even robbing (as accomplices). Just stop short of having female wrestling.  The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo got translated and sold here.

Conversely, some guys went to Thailand for sex change.

It’s one thing to turn blind eye, in praise of equality. It’s another to acknowledge that with new-found freedom, Vietnamese women have yet figured out what to choose from the menu. The other night, I kept inhaling second-hand smoking from two young gals in an extremely crowded club (thankfully, those trendy cigarettes were slim).

Career? check. Stress? check. Marriage? no.

Kids? impossible (very cramp and tight space in Asia). Cosmopolitan? check.

In trading up their aspiration, they down-grade traditional mores.

Something must give. Tension abides in their climb to the top. Boy friend from the country side? Machismo? Spouse abuse? Out. Sugar daddy? Negotiable. Sugar Mamma? All the better and safer, with less complication.

Those who went abroad acquired sophistication and success (cosmopolitan). Those who stayed behind in the bubble, followed their instinct and insisted to have the cake and eat it too.

Change could go three ways: up and down in class, sideways when country side collides with city life, and speed of adoption ( women adapt more quickly with modernity than men.) With overseas travel, cable TV and internet,  the flat world pronounces mercilessly who the winners are (and the rest can just pack their bags, as in Next Top Model).

Vietnamese women, and counterparts around the world, walk the tight rope between: how to keep up a sense of self (motherhood and womanhood) in face of change (technology enabled and a more tolerant environment).

Don’t blame them for banding together for mutual support. (as of this edit, I am not sure Sandy’s book, Lean In, would soon be translated into Vietnamese).

Knowing this culture shift, one no longer is in shock when seeing women main-dans-la-main on the streets of Saigon. And those manifestations are just the tip of the iceberg.

The funny thing is, Mandarins are slow to catch on to this trend. Lung Dai-Chan Dai shift presents a dilemma. A very painful and irreversible one. Welcome to Mars, our next frontier for men and women. (Moon was mostly men’s discovery).  From here on out, it’s a two-way street for all.

Branding in Vietnam

Long ago, at Saigon Central Market round about, Saigon’s equivalent of Times Square, Hynos billboard featured a smiling person, showing his white teeth. Back then Vietnam had just done away with blackened-teeth, the same way China’s counterparts were shelving away their bound-feet practice. A society in transition.

Kids wore BATA shoes ( a popular brand in US during WWII, a period when men were enlisted leaving women behind to connect phone calls – switch-circuit technology or to produce army uniforms and weaponry,) Vietnamese women on the other hand, would model after Madam Nhu’s collar-less “ao dai” (she herself perhaps took a page from Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany).

One would find simplest advertising : Co Ba Soap, or Tiger ointment.

You got to brand your products using animal symbols to tap into the undercurrent worldview: animism (tuc “Xam Minh” i.e. sea-creature tatoos for divers and fishermen).

Vietnam has been predominantly an agri-aqua economy, which is well-integrated with other species: even whales got a proper burial. Clever marketers would go along and not against the grain: Eagle batteries and Black-cat Craven-A cigarettes (incidentally, at the movies, MGM opened well with its signature Lion’s roar).

Mothers would feed babies with condensed milk (Birdies), and housewives look for Elephant rice at the market.

Children’s lanterns are in various animal shapes: butterflies, fish, elephants and birds.

One ill-researched professor at Stanford went so far to conclude after being here just one week that the eerie absence of birds, rats and dogs in the cities was due to the aggressive diet of the Vietnamese (I found many dead rats after heavy rain on the street. He apparently chose to tour Vietnam during dry season). I would say he arrived at the city with a pre-conceived demonizing notion ( like his compatriot Buckley’s “They eat dogs, don’t they” (a fiction about China). Incidentally, there has been a growing trend to raise pets now that Vietnam experiences peace for 5 decades.

And when it comes to choosing among the multiple carriers for mobile one must consider Beeline (as of this edit, this Russian-backed carrier didn’t fan out, being a late entry into an entrenched duopoly). Unlike in the States with Cricket Wireless (BTW, our own To Hoai already had his fictional character as “de men”, cricket, more than half a century ago).

In some shopping malls, it’s Lacoste  . The ubiquitous crocodile may someday get a proper burial as well.

Such as the harmonious nature of the Vietnamese consumers who often smile even amidst a tense confrontation. But with that ubiquitous smile, I still miss that of the Hyno’s man when boarding a bus at Saigon Central Market with my grandma on her monthly trip to the bank (grandpa’s retirement allotment), I often cherished both her still “blackened teeth” and those of the Hyno’s figure.

Today’s students carrying RMITbackpacks don’t realize what had transpired : blackened teeth ancestors who greeted you with sincerest of smiles, people who took time for Sunday stroll, and both love and music were in the air

“Sunday Morning, I walk in the park, hey, hey, hey, it’s a Beautiful day”.

Do you know where Saigonese often ended up? Where else but the city zoo.