Read on as I take a break from Vietnam-expat-life writing to get snarky.
The only constant is change, and language is no exception. Words and their meanings are ever evolving, a reflection of the needs, desires, and behaviors of speakers, writers, and readers of that language. This evolution often happens to the joy of some (e.g., the addition of “yooper” to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary in 2014 for my boyfriend and his family, who are from Escanaba, Michigan—his mom got him a t-shirt emblazoned with “yooper” and its definition across the chest shortly after the news came out) and to the dismay of others (see: jegging). Digital culture in particular has played a large role in the English language’s recent evolution: more additions to Merriam-Webster in the past two years include catfish, crowdfunding, digital divide, net neutrality, and NSFW. However, new establishment-recognized words aren’t the only way that language can evolve. I’ve noticed increasing usage of the following forms of internet writing, most frequently in photo captions or status updates on social media, all of which I find to be problematic.
Call me a curmudgeon ahead of my time if you’d like. I just can’t help but think of a lunch and learn that I sat through as an intern at National Geographic, with a famous feature writer as the speaker. He had started out as a caption writer for the magazine. That was all he did—write useful captions to help readers understand the photos they were viewing, all within a tight word count so that they could fit into the magazine’s layout. It was something you had to perfect if you wanted to work your way up the ladder. This profession still exists, perhaps in a less respected way, because digital publications tag their photos so that search engines can help people find what they’re looking for. My point is, I enjoy when captions have a purpose, and when status updates or tweets are informative or funny or thoughtful. But more often, they’re so stylized their only use is to help keep my social media scrolling as mindless as I’d hoped it’d be. “You forgot your tenth complaint,” you’re thinking, you savvy, discerning reader. 10. Listicles. Writers can’t seem to argue a solid point anymore without using lists.
2 Comments
I enjoy noticing signs in Da Nang—neon signs and billboards and chalkboards and posters and permanent building signage, in Vietnamese or English or both. Phil and I went to a free film this past Saturday evening, part of a three-day Japanese film festival called “The Colors of Love”. While the film was free, tickets were required (or so we thought), so we went to the State-run Le Do Cinema in the city center early in the day to pick ours up. All of the tickets had been distributed, but the cinema staff encouraged us to come back after the start time, explaining that the theatre wasn’t likely to fill to capacity. They were right, and we enjoyed what was roughly a Japanese version of Love Actually while sitting in a stiff 2-person seat. The Le Do Cinema doesn’t quite compare to the newly built cinema at the local Vincom mall, which is almost as nice as the theaters in Grand Rapids (high praise, as GR theaters are some of the best in the U.S.). Though the drama we watched at Vincom was rather loud—ear plugs would have been helpful during the musical montages—it was our only complaint. As one review of the Le Do Cinema states, “this technologically backward cinema has only been upgraded once, over 20 years ago…[it] has poor air conditioning and a wet and damp interior.” Appealing, right? All of this to say, outside Le Do that Saturday afternoon I saw a poster for what is sure to be one of the top releases of 2015: Kung Fu Pho. Rather than look up the premise of this film, I’d prefer to make up a few options myself, Balderdash style:
Here's the real movie trailer, if you’re interested. In musty, “totally outdated” theaters now! Another sign that I cherish is one I have dubbed The Condom Mascot. It’s a permanent fixture outside a cafe-and-nonperishables-only-grocer that I walk by frequently to get to my country-music-playing cafe hangout spot. I had to wait until it was closed to get close enough for a photo, so as not to be too conspicuous: I love so many things about this sign. The first is its formality, complete with faux wood texture. But it’s all about the mascot himself. This condom is winking at me. I’m confused as to the moral dilemma that has caused him to have an angel on one shoulder—or should I say in one ball?—and a devil on/in the other. Love seems to be involved. However, if this condom isn’t for use in one-night stands, then why is he winking? Or is the heart symbol part of his joke? That jerk!
Don’t worry, The Condom Mascot is important enough to be lit, so he can spread confusion and protect the vexed from STDs day and night. At my favorite cafe in Da Nang, just a few blocks from my apartment, they play a wide range of music, but their favorite playlist consists entirely of American country music. They play it again and again. The highlight track—at least for me—is “Grown Ass Man”.
I think I’m the only one in the cafe who has any idea what this means. I embarrassed Phil by knowing the lyrics to some generic country tune that was blasting through the supermarket in the new Da Nang mall, Vincom, when we were there on a Friday night a couple of weeks back. To put it more accurately, he was ashamed for me. Noticing this, I sang louder, projecting in his general direction. It’s liberating to have very little chance of knowing anybody at all in a public space, and to truly, deeply, not care if any of the people you know were to stumble across you, dancing through the instant noodle aisle. As I explained to Phil, I grew up in a farm town. Some country music was bound to seep in, even if through my subconscious. The local beach bar, where I read in the afternoon from time to time, favors James Blunt albums. Full albums, played from start to finish. It’s probably the same album every time, but I can’t tell because all the songs sound the same. A group of us went to a nicer restaurant in the city center for some live music last week. A Vietnamese cover band with rotating vocalists performed George Michael, The Beatles, The Doobie Brothers, The Carpenters, and The Cranberries, among other related artists. They didn’t have a full drum kit, and one of the guitarists was partial to using a Spanish flair, but we enjoyed their interpretation nonetheless. The vocalists in particular were on point, excellent imitators of vocal styles. I guess you’d expect nothing less from a culture where karaoke is so integral a form of entertainment. Beware, purists and karaoke haters, your ears will never be safe in Vietnam. Morning, afternoon, evening, karaoke may strike. All your antagonists need is a microphone and a speaker. Karaoke happens in restaurants and at home, and is highly common at celebrations that often spill out onto the streets. I’ve heard some traditional Vietnamese music, but it’s more rare. It could be the neighborhood that I live in and the people I hang out with. But even one of my Vietnamese friends is a huge fan of Western music, particular Western pop music. He doesn’t understand why most of his friends from North America don’t listen to the popular music that is produced by North American artists. The Billboard top 10 can’t lie! People are listening to this music! Are they all in Asia? We try to explain to him him that many Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber fans are young, and that people who teach or play music, like many of his foreign friends, don’t tend to enjoy popular music. He also reasons with us that Asia has a bigger population than North America. Case in point: the popularity of Westlife. Never heard of it? I hadn’t either. Well, Westlife was an Irish boy band, formed in 1998 and disbanded in 2012, and they were apparently incredibly popular in Asia with teenagers. My Vietnamese friend played me their Uptown Girl cover. Then, I played him the Billy Joel version. He told me that he liked the Westlife cover better because “it’s the original to me.” I wonder what Billy Joel would say to all of this? Is he aware? I guess he could spend all day, every day, marveling at the wide-ranging derivatives of his work—and trying to profit from them. But how crazy to imagine him sitting down to write the lyrics to one of his songs, say in a room alone in New York, then to think that a teenage Vietnamese boy sang those same words, maybe 15 years later, in his small Vietnamese countryside village along to a track recorded by an Irish boy band. This brings me to an interesting piece of Vietnamese culture—intellectual property does not exist in the same way here as it does in the States. You can find the Apple logo on a blue jeans tag, or the Burger King logo appropriated with “Pho” in the place of “Burger” and “delicious” printed out beneath it on a t-shirt in the tourist shops (if it helps to see it, click here). Ripoff Ray Bans are everywhere, hung on large boards carried on the shoulders of women who wander through cafes—the Vietnamese version of the trench coat salesman. You’ll also hear songs that sound readily identifiable only to realize that they are, in fact, covers. I can’t imagine that the artists are receiving royalties for all of these derivative works. I am not preaching from on high. I’ve participated in this culture, too. I’ve purchased burned copies of DVDs at a shop set up just for this purpose. But what am I supposed to do? I’m addicted to Game of Thrones a few years behind the rest of the Western world, and HBO GO is not available in Vietnam. Their loss. At first, I couldn’t get over the incongruity of the Western music and the Eastern architecture, food, everything else here. But it’s starting to feel common. I’m not so exhausted by constantly processing everything. Some of it is only being processed subconsciously, to come up again in another grocery store in another time and place, likely to Phil’s chagrin. Looking out the window
At others looking out, too Varying heights sightlines Some looking into the room behind me interested in what I’ve turned from A father walks his daughter down the street their eyes ahead on each other hands held stepping at a ratio of 3:1 Traipsing down the asphalt stage Of “An Thuong 1.5” Unnamed Unaware I’m an observer Safe in my box seat only $250 a month Coming down from on high a role reversal My foreign presence on the street-stage watched ever so closely Skin, hair, height a marker of the Unusual Preparing to leave my perch active participation in daily life First, a pep talk The white statue of the Lady Buddha
at the base of Son Tra Mountain Watching bright screaming parasailing tourists Overseeing selfies taken by hoards of bus riders passing through No time to enjoy the waters she surveys To imagine what lies on the other side unseen To hear the tide wash in roll out What would she say to us if we listened? The chord remains unresolved I can’t get over how welcoming and patient the expat community is in Da Nang—or at least the community that I’ve been lucky enough to tap into, through Phil and, ultimately, his sister Angie, who’s been living here for five years now. I’ve been on the receiving end of more generosity in the past couple of months, including from near strangers, than I ever would have expected.
Cases in point:
The list could go on. Not to downplay any of this generosity, but there’s also an element of karma here. All expats remember what it’s like to be a newbie, and many have had friends do plenty of favors for them in the past. This leads me to another interesting element of the expat community. There’s a revolving door effect—I know the names of many expats who have gone home or moved on to another destination, but whom I’ve never met—which has led me to group the expats I know into categories: those who don’t plan to be here for long, those who do, and those who don’t know what the future holds for them. I guess this exists at home, too. People put down roots in different ways—narrow and deep, like oak trees, or shallow and wide, like grass. There’s a 15-year-old girl, Anh, who sometimes joins our pickup basketball games on Sunday mornings. We play at her school, where she has practice from 6–8am. When she joins us, she’s still wearing her full uniform and has waited for our arrival for an hour. Until I moved to Vietnam and started joining in on these games, she was the only female, and was at least 10 years younger than the international men who played. One day, after we were all done playing, everyone was doing what you do after a pickup game—shooting the shit. Anh hadn’t joined in, but seemed to be listening intently. Then, when the conversation lulled, she shook her head, smiled, and said, “I wish there was one language,” conveying that she wasn’t able to keep up with our profanity-peppered, slang-filled, quickly spoken English. Living in a foreign nation has helped me realize how fortunate I am to have been born in an English-speaking nation. We are so spoiled. People often see Phil and me and speak to us in English. Some Vietnamese adults and children are eager to practice on us, starting conversations in cafes or on the sidewalk, or yelling at us in English as we pass them by. I know that English isn’t an easy language to learn, and feel guilty at the effort everyone is making to accommodate me. After all, I’m living in another nation, and I have spent much of my time here thus far exploring cafes and my neighborhood, sitting and reading on the beach, and looking for work, not learning the language. However, Vietnamese is super difficult. From what I can tell, it’s comprised of tons of short words, using different vowel sounds that are barely distinguishable and consonant combinations that are nearly impossible to replicate. As an English teacher friend said, the Vietnamese “swallow their consonants.” After getting over my initial reaction to respond to Vietnamese in Spanish, a second language I can barely claim, I’m still not much use. I know how to say a couple of phrases and have long ago “learned the numbers”, but often blank out when I ask how much something is in Vietnamese and get the appropriate Vietnamese numerical response. Luckily, I’ve gotten pretty decent at mimicry (as any 5-year-old can tell you, fingers help with numbers) and most vendors are kind enough to pull out a calculator or some bills to show me what they mean. It helps that I’m trying to buy something from them. Furthermore, as my teacher friend convincingly argued, there are so many different English-speaking accents—native and foreign—that English speakers are accommodating listeners. We can understand what someone is saying even if we’d have said it differently, including if the tense or order of words isn’t quite correct. But it isn’t as common for foreigners to learn Vietnamese; the Vietnamese aren’t familiar with comprehending foreign accents or small grammatical mistakes. Unless you say something very well, they’ll look at you entirely confused, or, if you’ve done a better job with your pronunciation, they’ll repeat it back to you a few times to make sure they’ve understood. I know my address in Vietnamese, but taxi drivers always repeat it back to me a handful of times before they trust that they know where to go. English is a common ground for many in Da Nang. Couples whose native languages are French and Russian, or Dutch and Vietnamese, speak English with each other. But this common ground is malleable, and often laughable. One of my purest sources of joy here, as a word person, is discovering things that have been rendered meaningless upon translation into English, or ironic combinations of English words worn by the blissfully unaware. Here are a few of my favorite examples: Despite how much easier it would be if we all spoke one language, as young basketball-er Anh wished, I strongly believe that it’s worth the cultural richness to have so many different ways of expressing ourselves, words that tie us to our families and our homes, even if there is a barrier to entry that has rendered me a bumbling fool on more than one occasion. The unintentional hilarity doesn’t hurt.
One of our expat friends invited us to a Sunday brunch at her and her husband’s home in Hoi An to celebrate her birthday. The brunch was dessert themed and was attended by people from all over the world: America, Australia, Canada, Vietnam, The Netherlands, South Africa, the UK… One of the coolest parts about living in Da Nang is meeting people from different backgrounds and swapping stories. In addition to the nationalities represented at the brunch, I've met and spent time with folks from New Zealand, France, Spain, Poland, Italy, Russia, Ireland, Korea, Japan, and I'm probably forgetting more. Vietnam is at least somewhat new to most expats, so we’re all discovering it as we go, and our points of reference—home—vary, too. At the dessert brunch I learned about fairy cake, or white bread with butter and sprinkles on top, which is commonly served for birthdays in Australia (our hostess is Australian). A British woman brought a pancake tower with bananas between each layer. There was no maple syrup in sight. Apparently, that’s a North American thing. A few weeks back, a big group of us went out to a new restaurant along the river in Da Nang that was serving Pasteur Street beer. (Pasteur is a craft brewery based in Ho Chi Minh City that was started by Americans with experience in the U.S. craft beer industry.) Of course, taste and smell are two of the senses most strongly tied to memory. Sniffing and then sipping the beer got the group all talking about beer at home, as well as foods and other things missed.
On another evening, once again over beers, Phil and I got talking politics with a couple of Danish interns from the international school. A conversation that would have been taboo—or a nonstarter—in many of my social circles back in the States was both enjoyable and educational. I’ve been devouring news since I’ve been here (and unemployed), so I was able to hold my own. Though the Danish knew much more about American current affairs than I knew about the happenings in Dana, I mean Denmark. I’m not only learning about Vietnamese culture while living here. I’m learning about the world. We’re all global citizens in a “world soup”, where I represent the U.S., and to my fellow Americans, the Midwest. I can see why some people get sucked into the expat life—there just isn’t anything quite like it, and certainly not in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Don’t worry, Mom and Dad. I’m still planning on coming home. But I am deeply grateful for this experience. It can’t be replicated. I think it’s safe to say that we respect entrepreneurialism in America—perhaps to a fault. It’s become a buzzword, often more talked about than acted upon.
Vietnam is indeed a socialist republic. But in Da Nang, just about everyone is an entrepreneur. I’ve already waxed poetic—or perhaps prosaic—on the excessive amount of construction here. Resorts are popping up, or being expanded on, no matter where you turn. The skyline along the beach is full of cranes. Hell, a cafe/bar is being built on the small roof of my apartment building, to be shared with the laundry facilities…the drilling right now makes it hard for me to hear my own thoughts…though most of my expat friends give it a life expectancy of six months or less. There is no business too large or too small for Da Nang-ers. Find some old drawings of French villages from a friendly French dignitary of years past? Build your own French village atop a mountain, complete with a funicular, church, three-floor arcade, gardens, wine cellar, bakery…. Have a successful resort across the road from the beach? Build a gargantuan second building full of more rooms and an underground tunnel so that your guests don’t have to cross the street. Be sure to take over the beach you’re across from, with a couple of bars and dozens of chairs for rent. Live on a main road? Open a shop, cafe or restaurant in the first floor of your home. Stick a sign outside so people know it’s not just your house, you sell things. Notice an unoccupied street corner? Buy a cart and sell banh mi sandwiches or nuoc mia (sugar cane juice). Have a motorbike? Get yourself a container to carry around some boiled corn and a speaker to let everyone know what you’re offering without losing your voice. If that’s too much commitment, you can always offer rides to foreigners-on-foot. If you make friends with business owners, they’ll probably let you walk around their restaurant selling any wares you can carry on your shoulder. If you have the good fortune of being a half decent singer, buy yourself a speaker and a microphone and sing some karaoke to diners before you walk around offering them gum for sale. You may have even better luck if you’re able to learn some magic tricks. I’m not saying that it’s easy—particularly for foreigners, who have lots of hoops to jump through when starting a business in Vietnam. What I am saying is, in Da Nang, people aren’t talking about opening businesses. They’re doing it. For better or worse. A couple of days after Phil and I moved into our apartment, we decided to “make a Metro run.” Our apartment came furnished, and we were even provided some dishes and silverware. Now please look around your home (in your mind, if you must) and picture all of the items that you own besides furniture, dishes, silverware, and clothing. Look in your kitchen cupboards. Your linen closet. At what you have hanging on your walls. In your garage and your basement. In your junk drawer. We had packed everything we had with us into four suitcases. We didn’t have most of the stuff you just pictured. Well, our apartment did come with this housewarming gift from Obama and Vietnam’s president, Truong Tan Sang. How kind of them! But our cupboards were empty, and we couldn’t eat out forever. We borrowed a Metro membership card from Phil’s sister and brother-in-law and made our way to the superstore, which resembles something of a Vietnamese Costco. I don’t like grocery shopping. I have a silly crippling fear that I’ll forget something that I need and will come home only to be compelled to head to the store again. Combine this dislike with an upset stomach (my body was still getting used to Vietnamese food) and accompanying crankiness, a giant grocery list, and a behemoth of a store with an unfamiliar layout, where most food labels are in a foreign language and math is required to figure out how much money you are actually spending. Poor Phil. Luckily he is patient and had been in this store before, and we had timed our trip during midday, when most Vietnamese nap through the heat. Our two and a half hour “Metro run” was quite the slow-moving, exhausting, frustrating, fascinating adventure. We found Dove shampoo and conditioner—a brand from home!—but the labels were in Vietnamese. Luckily I remembered that Dove shampoo opens on the top of the bottle and conditioner on the bottom. We couldn’t find the spices and asked an Australian parent from Phil’s school that we had bumped into where they were. Once in the correct aisle, we struggled to identify most of the spices that we were hoping to stock up on because they came in bulk sizes and different forms. How dependent we are on labels! We gave up on cumin, cinnamon, and a couple of others. Phil saw a rat scurrying through the bulk rice section—so we opted for the pre-bagged kind. I had to check out the beer section and was fascinated by the selection of Belgian beers. Yes, Trappist beer makes it to Vietnam. Near the end of the trip, while checking out some $1 floor mats in the home goods section, we realized that something in our cart was dripping a red fluid. The ground beef was leaking. We left a beef-blood-stained rug in the aisle, deciding this was a sign to call it quits and head for the register. We made a bit of a scene. In addition to our leaky beef, we were buying so much stuff that we went over the 5 million dong (~$222) limit for an individual purchase. Three sets of Vietnamese customers attempted to get in line behind us, looked at our cart, and moved to a different register in short order. Phil paid the 5 million dong bill, and I bought our remaining items for 26,000 VND. Then we had to get it all home. On a motorbike. Phil had the foresight to bring some large reusable shopping bags, but we couldn’t carry all of this on his bike alone. We had large items, like a trash can and a rice cooker and the all important case of beer. So we paid 50,000 VND for a delivery man to pack most our goods into a styrofoam box on his bike and follow us home. He didn’t speak any English, but seemed to be trying to joke with us from his bike on the ride, motioning for me to get closer to Phil—an impossibility with the bags of groceries piled between my legs. He came with us in the elevator up to the fifth floor, set the box in our living room, and had the good sense to leave without it, motioning that we could keep it. I wouldn’t want to wait for us to unpack it either. Throughout the rest of that day, Phil kept opening our refrigerator, looking in, and closing the door again without grabbing anything. Same thing for our kitchen cupboards. Finally, I asked him, “Whatcha doing?” “I just like seeing our refrigerator stocked,” he said. The next night, we skyped with Phil’s mom, and, while giving her a tour, he made a point to show her the fridge’s contents. Its fullness signified that this was our home now. Our first place together. Our mix of Western imported apples and mustards and Eastern cuts of meat and yogurts represented the cultural mashup of our new haven, meals yet to be cooked in a style to be worked out. |
AboutI quit a job I enjoyed at Founders Brewing Co. in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and left my family, friends, and beloved dog to join my boyfriend in moving across the world, in search of adventure and new experiences. I arrived in August 2015. Archives
August 2016
Categories |