A Meditation

A Meditation on how the similarities between Western Christmas/New Year/Winter Solstice and Vietnamese Tet holiday suggest the existence of a Jungian archtype and demonstrate the hitherto suspected Universal Oneness of Man through common festival customs
(or "There's No Place Like Home)

England has 8 foot Christmas trees...Hanoi has 8 foot kumquat trees

England has red and gold everywhere...Hanoi has red and gold everywhere

England has snow and toasty fireplaces...Hanoi has cold temperatures but no glass in the windows

England has stockings...Hanoi has envelopes of money

England has Christmas cake filled with fruit...Hanoi has Banh Chung filled with pork

England has people worshipping Baby Jesus...Hanoi has people worshipping their dead ancestors

England has children sitting on Father Christmas' knee...Hanoi has the xe om driver that groped my leg

libel warning: it wasn't this man, he's probably quite nice

England has family reunions...Hanoi has family reunions

England has a sleigh driven by 9 reindeer...Hanoi is a city driven by 5 million motorbike

England has homemade mulled wine...Hanoi has homebrewed rice wine

England has turkey that no one really likes...Hanoi has dogmeat that people go mental for*

England has people resolving to be better next year...Hanoi has people hoping they'll be better next year

I can't think of any more.

My Vietnamese lesson tonight is rearranged because my Vietnamese teacher must have a party to send the Kitchen God to heaven, where he reports on the annual behaviour of the family to the Jade Emperor. He knows all your secrets, because he's got a really good viewpoint in the hearth. He rides to heaven on a fish. There is no Western analogy for such genius.

Tomorrow I go to Thailand, and intend to be having too much fun to blog, so there will be a hiatus.

*Edit: have since learned that dog meat is fair game (ho ho) up until the evening before Tet begins, but once Tet begins, dog is out! No dog! What are you doing eating dog, this is Tet! No duck either! Hands off the duck! And cuttlefish, don't even go there. Sweeping your house is out too. And funerals.

Tet

It is coming up to Tet, the Lunar New Yearm in Hanoi, and the atmosphere is like you get before Christmas in England - anticipation and celebration. Someone has hung red Chinese lanterns all down my street, and the majority of shops seem to be overflowing with red and gold, selling firework, incense, streamers, and I don't know what else. The Vietnamese are very superstitiuous, and how you start the new year sets the tone for the coming year. My friend Linh is freaking out because they're renovating their house, and they HAVE to get it finished before Tet. My Vietnamese teacher told me not to spend the new year with my boyfriend's family, because my zodiac sign is incompatible with his mum's (snakes eat roosters), and I'd bring them bad luck. My Vietnamese teacher is one of the most overdramatic people I've ever met.

Also, everywhere is selling Banh Chung, the traditional New Year food which I can only translate as Chung Cake. It is a square cake of sticky rice, filled with bean paste and pork.

thanks be to google

The first time I tried some, I thought it was fucking disgusting. I didn't know it was going to be savoury, and I didn't know it was supposed to be cooked. Salty, clammy rice with an unexpected fatty pork surprise in the middle is quite different to the Christmas-esque cake I was expecting. But I tried it again on the street yesterday, and I'm glad I did - hot and crunchy on the outside, sticky in the middle. Plus everything tastes better when you're sitting on a 10cm high plastic stool. I still didn't eat the fatty pork surprise.

it looked a bit like this except everyone was wearing shiny puffer jackets

The other ubiquitous new year treat...dog. Spotted around town at the end of every month, as it is supposed to make you stronger and more virile, the piles are definitely higher and more frequent at the end of the year. A part of me wants to try it (the aspiring I'm-so-open-minded, I'd-try-anything-once part of me), and I came pretty close when all my friends were eating it, but then the smell got up my nose, and I knew if it went in my mouth I would gag and feel ill for the rest of the day, and have flashbacks for the rest of my life. It is to my disappointment that the ex-vegan, puppy-hugging part of me is more dominant than the open-minded part.

...elsa?!

here some men eat some dog, and feel their sperm count rise

My plans for Tet? THAILAND, with my two small children, Nolly and Goob.

Getting out of Hanoi - pt... IV?

that overblown castle-like building is the gateway to China

Last weekend we went adventuring to Lang Son, right on the Chinese border, to visit Dung's brother-in-law. It was really, really cold. To be honest, I felt quite culture-shocked by the whole thing, which I've not really had since I moved to Vietnam. At the time I blamed the feeling on my inability to communicate - I understood only a tiny bit of the Vietnamese spoken, and whenever I tried to join in, they didn't understand my shoddy Vietnamese. They were super-nice, but I always felt like a huge freaky foreigner.

But as well as the language, the life was just SO different to what I'm used to. Dung's brother-in-law is a farmer, and works for months at a time on his plot of land, which is several hours drive away from Bac Ninh, where his wife, daughter and new-born son live. His house in Lang Son is a shack, in the most honest and non-derogatory way possible. It may be made of wattle and daub. The water comes from a well. It's freezing. They drink vodka ALL day, literally starting at 7am with breakfast. At the end, I was really keen to get back to the relative normality and warmth of Hanoi. Dung seemed to think the trip was a necessary evil for me, like my character needed building. I think he's just generally amused by me and my floundering confusion.

home sweet home

There were loads of good points too - everyone was really friendly and welcoming, the vegetables came from his farm and might have been the best vegetables I've ever had. Also, they asked if farmers in England live like farmers in Vietnam. I said definitely not, but the main difference is that rather than lots of small-scale farms, in England you get just a few 'farmers' who are kind of like businessman, and then have loads of people working for them. Dung's brother-in-law was really proud that he was his own boss, even if it meant living in a house without proper walls in freezing temperatures. I guess there's always vodka to keep you warm.

in their defence, i am pretty big and freaky

The main attraction of Lang Son is the market. Because it's right on the Chinese border, they get loads of cheap, bad-quality clothes and electronics, and sell them off in a huge glittering tower of tat, set incongruously against beautiful mountain scenery. It was one of the weirdest places I've ever been. I didn't buy anything. Actually that's a lie; I bought some dried sharon fruit.

it looks like a dried nipple! so i couldn't not buy them

really pretty...to the left were some polyester bomber jackets and perhaps some toy robots

(I am sorry for being a lazy absent blogger, but it literally takes HOURS. However, I've just written two, so come back tomorrow for more delights.)

A charming recommendation on the joys of parenthood, from my dad:

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. And thrice times no.

Children often seem cute (or so I'm told, I've never seen it myself).

But then, when small, their fuel exhaust systems malfunction, and their vocal output has no mute button, and they can't control their motor functions to the annoyance of the passenger in front of them. Oh, and they exude slime. And they smell of sick, or talc.

Later, their social interface programs do not interoperate with their parents, they cost unexpected money just to maintain, let alone enhance. They make strange grunting or shouting noises for unexplained or unpalatable reasons. Occasionally they smell of sick again, but now for less wholesome reasons.

Then they bugger off to the other side of the world.

No-one in their right mind would perpetuate this evolutionary dead end, cute or not.

Love'n'stuff

I still think they're cute! Unlike this:

Google has just taught me about the annual "baby crying festival" in Tokyo, a 400-year-old tradition, in which amateur sumo wrestlers hold the babies high in the air, and try to scare them into crying, while a sumo referee judges the match. The toddler who cries longest and loudest is considered the winner. What the fuck?!

A tale

The other evening, I was sitting on the street. Beer was being drunk, and philosophy was being philosophised upon. A man, of moderate age and moderate build, came past with a box of books on a strap around his neck; guide books and novels.

"Hullloooo, you buy?" he bleated.

"NO." was my initial and well-practised reponse. But then...I realised I did want to buy one of his books.

"I need that guide book! The one for Laos! For my upcoming great expedition to Laos!" was my thought. I pointed at the book.

"Ahh, you buy! 300,000!" the wily saleman cheered.

"Cái này 300,000? Nhiều quá!! Em không muốn!" I retorted. He may be wily, but I also possess a small quantity of wile, buried deep beneath my blonde hair. 300,000 is how much you'd pay for this book in England, and then it wouldn't be photocopied and shit.

"Ha! Haha! Hahaha!"

The man laughed.

"Oh, you live in Vietnam?! I'm sorry, I thought you were a tourist. Ok, 180,000."

This book had become $6 cheaper in a matter of seconds, just because I'm not a tourist. We bartered for a bit longer, the wily saleman pointing out how essential the book was for any upcoming trip to Laos, and the not-very-wily-but-at-least-not-a-tourist girl pointing out how poor the photocopying was, and look, these pages don't even open. Eventually I paid 150,000, remarking to my companion James that if it's half the price if I'm not a tourist, it'd be half the price again if I wasn't a Westener. Anyway, I was happy with the book.

A bit later, Dung came and joined us, full of all his fucking street-sense and mother-tongue Vietnamese. I showed him my new purchase excitedly.

"How much did you pay for this? 150,000?! That's so expensive! I wouldn't pay more than 60,000 for this. Look, the photocopying's so bad!"


I console myself that the black hair dye, slitty-eye-surgery and anorexia necessary for me to be sold the book at a fair price would cost more than the $4.50 I lost out on.

My favourite words

Vietnamese uses a lot of classifiers to designate categories (as in "a loaf of bread", "a sheet of paper"). Probably the broadest category is "caí" which classfies objects, but besides this they have more categories than you could ever imagine - e.g. depending on whether a piece of paper is big, small, framed, on the wall, in a book with other paper, how big that book is, whether the book is printed, and so on. I think they have a very precise way of thinking.

My favourite classfier is "cục". This is the classifer for little round things, like rubbers, pebbles and ice cubes. The dot under the u makes it a little short round word, like a little pebble in your mouth. The c is pronounced almost like a b, and you have to do the Vietnamese puffed-out-cheeks face when you finish. It is a cute word. I will show you some time.

I also like "con tem". This means "stamp", but "con" is the classifier for animals - a stamp is like an animal because it moves around, all over the world. "Con dao" means knife - also like an animal because it darts around. I now imagine knives like little fish, or maybe like a small but viscious predator. (I'm not allowed a pet...I have to compensate somehow...)

I will explain to anyone that'll listen my theory about Vietnamese animal names being onomatopoeic, but this is best saved for another day, as now I am going to have a nap.

I want one of these please.