"American?"
"Yeah."
"And you too?" I asked the second man.
"He's not from Chicago!" the first guy interjected. "He's from some dumb place in Illinois!"
"And where are you from?"
"DC. And you?"
"Philly. I lived there for about 30 years."
"Cool."
"Hey, it's good to hear an American accent. All you hear around here is Australian!"
"He's Australian," the first guy nodded towards a balding, white mustachioed man sporting an earring, elaborate biceps tattoos, blue dress shirt with cut off sleeves and plaid shorts. "He just got married. Yesterday!"
"Wow!"
His Vietnamese wife was maybe 30 years younger, and together, they owned this just-opened restaurant. The slim lady had her hair cut short and dyed blonde. She had been married for 14 years to an abusive Vietnamese, she later told me.
In every country, there are bad husbands who cheat, scream, drink too much or can't bring home the carbohydrates, but in Vietnam, there's also the added hell of wife-beating or a tyrannical mother-in-law, who often lives in the same house. Though "ma' º ¹ cha' »"ng, nà ng dà u" simply means "husband's mother, daughter-in-law," it connotes the all-too-familiar abuse of the younger woman by the hag.
Often, the fury also has veto power over her son's choice of a wife. One evening by the sea, I met a balut vendor who said she couldn't marry the man she loved because of objections from both their families.
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