Day by day Hanoi is demystifying itself to me. As I wander around aimlessly the streets start to become familiar and I begin to get a sense for the city. My time in Vietnam will be very different than I had imagined. I’m not going to be roughing it like I did in Manila. I’ll only be involved with NGOs on a part time basis. These things kind of bug me. It’s as if I’m on an extended work vacation but I didn’t really need a vacation; my life wasn’t stressful in America. If anything it’s more stressful over here. I do enjoy learning more about the cultural differences and idiosyncrasies of Vietnamese people but I try not to focus on the differences, more on the commonalities.
I used to study the philologists of 18th and 19th century who were the first Western “pioneers” to analyze and dissect Eastern culture so it could be codified and become academic curiosity in university discussions. Their methodology was terrible and their work is largely useless. But it is important to learn from other people’s mistakes. There were many philosophers and assorted intellectuals that were engaged in the practice of thoroughly analyzing ancient Asian texts. From the works of Confucius to the Ramayana or Mahabharata they drew wild conclusions about Indian and East Asian culture. They used these texts as a jumping board to develop the cultural stereotypes and generalizations that still linger today. They used their fanciful imagination and intellectual indulgence to misrepresent the world. Of course, there were adventure-seeking Westerners who actually came to these countries and really sought to experience the difference in culture.
I was watching the Discovery channel and there was a show about an American guy who was with a tribe of traditional Zulu people. He partook in their rites of passage and was invited to the wedding. According to this show, there should be a stick fight between the groom and some other man from the bride’s family. It’s supposedly largely ceremonial but could be used as a way for the bride’s family to express their disapproval of the groom. This particular family held the wedding ceremony but left out the stick fighting bit and danced instead. It seemed to me that it was a pretty innocuous part to leave out but the American guy was more than put off by this. He lamented to the camera that the Zulu people were becoming more Westernized and losing their cultural heritage.
“And the only reason why: apathy.” He had the audacity to say.
This guy is on the other end of the spectrum compared to the philologists of the past, in terms of methodology, but I find him equally wrong. Firstly, who is he to say anything about other people’s cultural practice? It’s like chastising a Jewish person for not eating gefilte fish on Passover. Some people just think that stuff is gross. When I was studying Japanese culture and language, a lot of my peers would wildly idealize what Japan was actually like. Some people thought that it was a nation of stern Samurai ethics or an ultra-modern technologically advanced paradise. I would like to say that the truth is somewhere in the middle, as I say often, but I think these kind of generalizations are fundamentally wrong. There is value in generalizing when one is in the preliminary level of understanding. I would go as far to say that it is necessary to generalize. For example, when somebody studies economics it’s important they start by studying the basic structure of micro and macroeconomics. It would be a major waste of time to try and understand the technical aspects of price elasticity without understanding how a simple supply and demand curve work. You can’t understand Calculus if you don’t know Algebra.
In the study of culture the process is a little bit different however. Not only must you use your generalizations as a stepping stone but they must be discarded as you progress. As time goes on, culture changes. The American guy from that show was frustrated with the present Zulu people’s apparent “apathy” toward their cultural heritage but that’s because he was using his own idealizations and generalizations to imagine how Zulu people were living. He was projecting his own reality which didn’t square with the actual reality. He wasn’t trying to understand the culture of present Zulu people. He was trying to experience what he wanted to experience, like someone at an amusement park. To his credit, globalization does appear to be progressively making the world less interesting but this is the natural course of things. We really are passive players in the sweeping transformations of society.
There are of course good cultural anthropologists or sociologists which I would consider are doing a good job. As studying culture is not a science in the technical sense, the whole field is quite subjective. It really depends on what you’re looking for.
As I walk the streets of Hanoi I see plenty of stores and restaurants which I am quite familiar with. To some people this is comforting but I really don’t care for it. I don’t really care what a McDonald’s burger tastes like in Vietnam (there actually are no McDonald’s in Vietnam). The average Vietnamese eats a wide range of seemingly exotic food but everything seems exotic before you’re accustomed to it. For me food is food and since I’ve burnt away most of my taste buds I don’t really care about what I eat, as long as it has base level of nutrition and I don’t get sick. In my opinion food is not all that important in terms of culture but I know a lot of people would disagree with me. The question of “What is culture?” is always knocking at my door and I still don’t have a satisfactory answer to that. As culture is fluid the answer will be fluid. It does make me think however about how some people complained about the lack of culture in the Philippines. It’s a very superficial analysis but it’s one worth debating. Vietnam on the other hand has a very distinctive aspects that makes you constantly aware that you are in Vietnam and not anywhere else (The Philippines also has plenty of unique aspects to it but most tourists gloss over them because they are not “Asian-esque”, like temples and pagodas). The French influence of Vietnam is interesting and captivating at times. Actually the entire history of Vietnam is compelling and worth looking into. I don’t have bad thing to say about Vietnam or Vietnamese culture. The point of me writing this whole post is to explain that I really don’t care about the fanciful notions of culture anymore. I feel like an old man but without the wisdom. I am not interested in ancient legends and how they have shaped the mindset of the people. There are forces common to all humanity which transforms society. Notions of love, relationships, friendships, sadness, etc. are common throughout the world even if they can be expressed in different ways.
My real goal is to engage Vietnamese people of today from different spectrums of society and learn from them. It’s unfortunate that I’m going to teach here since I am really just a student.
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