Gone are the days when an employer can scream at a domestic servant, hit her or lock her inside all week long. When not busy, Ha lounges on a leather couch to watch a Chinese, Korean, Indian or Vietnamese drama. A remake of an Israeli film, about a young man who found out his dad was actually a mafia boss, proved particularly popular.
Men at the economic bottom can work in factories or use their motorbikes as taxis. Ha's son is a long distance truck driver who earns $440 a month. His wife farms a bit and does odd jobs. They have four kids. Ha's two daughters are divorced.
"If you want work, you can find work. Of course, there are these drug addicts who rob and steal, but most of them die off by the time they're 30-something."
Since they're exposed to the intimate lives of both the rich and poor, domestic servants are the best source of information. Leery of this dirt dishing abilities, some wealthy Vietnamese are starting to hire Filipina servants, I kid you not, since they can't gossip to the neighbors.
Hungry, I stopped into an eatery for a plate of banh cuon, a sort of ravioli, then a bowl of bun cha, rice vermicelli with pork. The food culture of Northern Vietnam suffered so terribly during those decades of hard-core Communism, it still hasn't quite recovered. In Saigon, you can't eat badly, no matter how humble the venue, but in Hanoi, a knowing eater will often be disappointed. My banh cuon and bun cha, two Hanoi specialties, were fine, however, and my bill came to all of $1.98. I found myself sharing a table with several strangers, with one man not even bothering to finish most of his meat, a sure sign that those harsh, near starvation years are long gone.
Since the food joint was near the lung hospital, a white haired patient ambled over in his blue and white hospital pyjamas, complete with a red cross over his heart. This sort of casualness is typical of Vietnam. On another day, I walked into a restaurant to find no one present, for the proprietor was taking her siesta in a little mezzanine. After coming down to make me an awful bowl of chicken pha' Ÿ, she went back to sleep, and I paid her by handing money between two balustrades on the mezzanine's balcony. Though a crack in the strung up blanket, she reached out a hand, with her eyes still closed, I'm sure.
Like the Chinese, Japanese and Koreans, Vietnamese consider their compatriots as not just belonging to the same race, but family, and in the most literal sense, too, for they call other Vietnamese, "dong bao" ["same womb"], which is derived from the Chinese, å 'è'ž. This notion is obviously more myth than science, for the Vietnamese nation has absorbed plenty of foreign blood through the millennia, via the usual channels of conquest and immigration. Without the bonding concept of dong bao, however, Vietnam would have disappeared eons ago.
Vietnamese citizenship, then, is much more than a legality, but established through the age-old recognition that people who appear similar and, even more importantly, speak the same language naturally belong together. Often, they must also fight together to resist being swallowed up or destroyed by another race. Race consciousness is at the heart of racial survival.
Infused with this knowledge, Vietnamese have never taken any internationalist ideology seriously, especially Communism, a nightmare dreamt up by rootless minds. Protective of family and race, of all those who came from the same womb, they've fought against the Chinese, Mongolians, French, Americans and even against each other, because, well, their foes were deemed as fraudulent Vietnamese. During the Vietnam War, no common North or South Vietnamese soldiers was a traitor, however, because each believed he was fighting for Vietnam.
Though you'll find images of the hammer and sickle, Marx, Lenin and, of course, Ho Chi Minh throughout this country, there is nothing Communist or internationalist about Vietnam. As my Saigon-based American friend, Alec, points out, "The US is more Socialist! At least the public schools there are free. Here, the government does nothing for the people!" What sustain Vietnamese, then, are family and friends, and, in time of war, a fierce recognition that their own survival is bound up with race.
Finishing this piece, I hear funeral music rising from the street, so I go onto the balcony to see two men, wearing white, walking backward in front of their mother's hearse. In the light rain, three young musicians play the rice drum, oboe and the two-stringed dan co. Repeatedly assaulted by alien insanities, most Vietnamese haven't forgotten what's behind, under or inside them.
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(Article changed on October 7, 2017 at 06:40)
(Article changed on October 8, 2017 at 00:03)
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