That freedom is long gone, for the state always catches up with the pioneers to impose its endless rules.
One of the oddest escape from civilization stories I've come across is of a Korean who lived in the Central Highlands for twenty years and left behind fifteen children, all with one woman, a Rade who died of a broken heart soon after he left.
When his daughter-in-law told me about this character, I said no way, for South Korean soldiers only arrived in Vietnam in the 60's, but she insisted that he was indeed Korean, so I figured he must have served in the Japanese Army during World War II. The man stayed behind and lived among the Rade, in a house on stilts with no electricity or running water. Women walked around bare breasted. When the Vietnam War became increasingly savage, the old Korean finally went home, to die.
Near the end of the Japanese occupation, up to two million Vietnamese died of starvation, a calamity barely registered even in Vietnamese history books. Though my grandma lived through this, she never talked about it until her last few years, as dementia unblocked distant memories and loosened her tongue. Many Vietnamese, though, can cite their own experience of near starvation from the 1980's, before the government finally wised up and backed away from a state-monopolized, micro-managed economy, i.e. socialism. My poet friend Phan Nhien Hao told me that when he was in college during this time, he desperately craved food all day long.
No strangers to food insecurity, Vietnamese don't tend to waste anything edible, and this is even truer of rural areas, where farmers and fishermen grow, raise or catch food. To them, this earth is but a vast menu, and just about anything that moves can be butchered and marinated.
Vietnamese are not squeamish. Until half a century ago, nearly all of them were farmers, and even today, a typical housewife goes to the market to see all sorts of animal carcasses displayed, as well as skinned frogs still alive, purple and wriggling, to show how fresh they are. Goats are traditionally killed by beating, so they can sweat out all their funk. Nature, often stinking, is never far away.
Vietnam is still far behind the West in the flight from nature and against it, but this is to its advantage, I believe, for its people still retain the essentials to endure whatever comes next.
Last week, we used a mousetrap to catch ten squirrels, right behind our plastic recycling plant. Squirrel is a bit like frog, sweet and tender, but meatier.
One of our employees, Mr. Long, had a cat that failed to catch any mouse for an entire year and, worse, often wandered off, so he decided to slaughter it and invite half a dozen people over. I brought a case of Saigon Beer.
Cat can't touch dog, I'm sorry. One of the best Vietnamese essays ever is a paean to dogmeat. It's a chapter in VÃ... © Ba' º ±ng's 1952 book, Mia' º ¿ng Ngon HÃ Na' »?i [Hanoi Delicacies]. Whimsically ecstatic, he compares the fragrance of dogmeat to that of a young woman, and dogmeat stewed in plum wine to Johann Strauss' The Blue Danube Waltz! In an often quoted passage, VÃ... © Ba' º ±ng states that, "nine times out of ten," a lovelorn incipient suicide would change his mind if you would just treat him to dogmeat.
Increasingly urbanized and westernized Vietnamese are appalled by such culinary habits, needless to say, and my own wife has even threatened me with divorce should I persist in devouring dogs, cats and squirrels, but no man should have to choose between his significant other and dogmeat. It's not a fair contest, to the wife. Like any adulterer, I just need to keep my vice secret, that's all.
Some of the best, most vigorous Americans ever loved dogmeat. Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery digested over two hundred dogs, and their diaries are filled with accounts of buying or bartering dogs from Indians. Patrick Gass on October 11th, 1805, "Here we got more fish and dogs. Most of our people having been accustomed to meat, do not relish the fish, but prefer dog meat; which, when well cooked, tastes very well." William Clark on October 23rd, 1805, "we purchased 8 dogs, Small & fat for our party to eate, the Indians not verry fond of Selling their good fish, compells us to make use of dogs for food." On and on, it goes.
Merrywhether Lewis on April 13th, 1806, "I also purchased four paddles and three dogs from them with deerskins. the dog now constitutes a considerable part of our subsistence and with most of the party has become a favorite food; certain I am that it is a healthy strong diet, and from habit it has become by no means disagreeable to me, I prefer it to lean venison or Elk, and is very far superior to the horse in any state."
An Indian even mocked them for eating dogs. Lewis on May 5th, 1806, "while at dinner an indian fellow verry impertinently threw a poor half starved puppy nearly into my plait by way of derision for our eating dogs and laughed very heartily at his own impertinence; I was so provoked at his insolence that I caught the puppy and thew it with great violence at him and struk him in the breast and face, siezed my tomahawk and shewed him by signs if he repeated his insolence I would tommahawk him, ther fellow withdrew apparently much mortifyed and I continued my repast on dog without further molestation."
The first Americans had to be more savage than the Indians to overcome them, but then civilization settled in, so that by 1783, Benjamin Franklin could already quote an Indian elder complaining, "Several of our young People were formerly brought up at the Colleges of the Northern Provinces; they were instructed in all your Sciences; but when they came back to us they were bad Runners ignorant of every means of living in the Woods, unable to bear either Cold or Hunger, knew neither how to build a Cabin, take a Deer or kill an Enemy, spoke our Language imperfectly, were therefore neither fit for Hunters Warriors, or Counsellors, they were totally good for nothing."
If Lewis, Clark and their men were, say, vegans, they could not have made the expedition, but of course, Westward Expansion itself is now seen as deeply shameful by many Americans, so it would have been better had this genocidal and land grabbing venture never happened, but they don't really mean this, ensconced as they are in some leafy suburb, built over Indian bones. "Give the native Americans back their land," many even demand, knowing it won't ever happen, and they'll get indignant if you say "Indians" instead of "First Nation."
One of the oddest escape from civilization stories I've come across is of a Korean who lived in the Central Highlands for twenty years and left behind fifteen children, all with one woman, a Rade who died of a broken heart soon after he left.
When his daughter-in-law told me about this character, I said no way, for South Korean soldiers only arrived in Vietnam in the 60's, but she insisted that he was indeed Korean, so I figured he must have served in the Japanese Army during World War II. The man stayed behind and lived among the Rade, in a house on stilts with no electricity or running water. Women walked around bare breasted. When the Vietnam War became increasingly savage, the old Korean finally went home, to die.
Near the end of the Japanese occupation, up to two million Vietnamese died of starvation, a calamity barely registered even in Vietnamese history books. Though my grandma lived through this, she never talked about it until her last few years, as dementia unblocked distant memories and loosened her tongue. Many Vietnamese, though, can cite their own experience of near starvation from the 1980's, before the government finally wised up and backed away from a state-monopolized, micro-managed economy, i.e. socialism. My poet friend Phan Nhien Hao told me that when he was in college during this time, he desperately craved food all day long.
Vietnamese are not squeamish. Until half a century ago, nearly all of them were farmers, and even today, a typical housewife goes to the market to see all sorts of animal carcasses displayed, as well as skinned frogs still alive, purple and wriggling, to show how fresh they are. Goats are traditionally killed by beating, so they can sweat out all their funk. Nature, often stinking, is never far away.
Vietnam is still far behind the West in the flight from nature and against it, but this is to its advantage, I believe, for its people still retain the essentials to endure whatever comes next.
Last week, we used a mousetrap to catch ten squirrels, right behind our plastic recycling plant. Squirrel is a bit like frog, sweet and tender, but meatier.
One of our employees, Mr. Long, had a cat that failed to catch any mouse for an entire year and, worse, often wandered off, so he decided to slaughter it and invite half a dozen people over. I brought a case of Saigon Beer.
Cat can't touch dog, I'm sorry. One of the best Vietnamese essays ever is a paean to dogmeat. It's a chapter in VÃ... © Ba' º ±ng's 1952 book, Mia' º ¿ng Ngon HÃ Na' »?i [Hanoi Delicacies]. Whimsically ecstatic, he compares the fragrance of dogmeat to that of a young woman, and dogmeat stewed in plum wine to Johann Strauss' The Blue Danube Waltz! In an often quoted passage, VÃ... © Ba' º ±ng states that, "nine times out of ten," a lovelorn incipient suicide would change his mind if you would just treat him to dogmeat.
Increasingly urbanized and westernized Vietnamese are appalled by such culinary habits, needless to say, and my own wife has even threatened me with divorce should I persist in devouring dogs, cats and squirrels, but no man should have to choose between his significant other and dogmeat. It's not a fair contest, to the wife. Like any adulterer, I just need to keep my vice secret, that's all.
Some of the best, most vigorous Americans ever loved dogmeat. Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery digested over two hundred dogs, and their diaries are filled with accounts of buying or bartering dogs from Indians. Patrick Gass on October 11th, 1805, "Here we got more fish and dogs. Most of our people having been accustomed to meat, do not relish the fish, but prefer dog meat; which, when well cooked, tastes very well." William Clark on October 23rd, 1805, "we purchased 8 dogs, Small & fat for our party to eate, the Indians not verry fond of Selling their good fish, compells us to make use of dogs for food." On and on, it goes.
Merrywhether Lewis on April 13th, 1806, "I also purchased four paddles and three dogs from them with deerskins. the dog now constitutes a considerable part of our subsistence and with most of the party has become a favorite food; certain I am that it is a healthy strong diet, and from habit it has become by no means disagreeable to me, I prefer it to lean venison or Elk, and is very far superior to the horse in any state."
An Indian even mocked them for eating dogs. Lewis on May 5th, 1806, "while at dinner an indian fellow verry impertinently threw a poor half starved puppy nearly into my plait by way of derision for our eating dogs and laughed very heartily at his own impertinence; I was so provoked at his insolence that I caught the puppy and thew it with great violence at him and struk him in the breast and face, siezed my tomahawk and shewed him by signs if he repeated his insolence I would tommahawk him, ther fellow withdrew apparently much mortifyed and I continued my repast on dog without further molestation."
The first Americans had to be more savage than the Indians to overcome them, but then civilization settled in, so that by 1783, Benjamin Franklin could already quote an Indian elder complaining, "Several of our young People were formerly brought up at the Colleges of the Northern Provinces; they were instructed in all your Sciences; but when they came back to us they were bad Runners ignorant of every means of living in the Woods, unable to bear either Cold or Hunger, knew neither how to build a Cabin, take a Deer or kill an Enemy, spoke our Language imperfectly, were therefore neither fit for Hunters Warriors, or Counsellors, they were totally good for nothing."
If Lewis, Clark and their men were, say, vegans, they could not have made the expedition, but of course, Westward Expansion itself is now seen as deeply shameful by many Americans, so it would have been better had this genocidal and land grabbing venture never happened, but they don't really mean this, ensconced as they are in some leafy suburb, built over Indian bones. "Give the native Americans back their land," many even demand, knowing it won't ever happen, and they'll get indignant if you say "Indians" instead of "First Nation."
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