Plum Blossoms in Winter

Not long ago, I was having dinner in Dalat, Vietnam, with my friend the Buddhist monk Minh Tam. The subject rolled around to poetry, at which point he pulled out a piece of paper and wrote down the following poem for me by a Vietnamese Zen Master from the 11th century named Man Giac. I later learned it is a famous and much loved poem in Vietnam. It is also in a long tradition of short “death poems” written by zen masters prior to their departure from this life. Here is my translation.

“Telling the World About My Illness”

Spring goes, a hundred flowers fall

Spring comes, a hundred flowers bloom

Life passes quickly before our eyes

On my head, age has settled in

Don’t say flowers stop falling when spring comes to an end.

Last night in the front courtyard, a plumb branch blossom!

From Chinese to English – Via Vietnamese

My friend Minh Tam is like a lot of monks in Vietnam in that he reads and writes Chinese, and has memorized a lot. He studied at the main Buddhist University in Vietnam (Van Hanh in Saigon), and then went on to get a PhD in Buddhist Studies at Delhi University in India, specializing in the history of Vietnamese Buddhism. After he wrote down the poem in Chinese, Minh Tam then wrote out a version of the same poem in “quoc ngu,” using romanicized letters to spell out the mixture of Chinese and Vietnamese words in the original poem (known as “han viet“). Then he wrote out a version of the poem in “regular,” modern-day Vietnamese, without any of the original loan words from Chinese. These three versions are shown in the graphic here, from left to right.

What is the Poem About?

The poem begins by saying that at the end of our lives, we all perish (“spring goes, a hundred flowers fall”).  In the second line, he says that we are reborn when spring comes again (“spring comes a hundred flowers bloom”). But then in the fifth and most famous line of the poem, he contradicts his first line and says “Don’t say flowers stop falling when spring comes to an end.”

How could flowers still fall when spring has gone and now the trees have leaves on them instead of flowers? In Asia, the  plum blossoms come out in winter. It is a beautiful way of saying that even the traditional way of understanding reincarnation as explained in the first two lines is limited: it is too linear.  Life begins, passes, ends, yes, but that is looking at it from the point of view of a kind of progression, which does not fit with this master’s understanding. In fact, he seems to want to say, we die and are reborn in every instant, we and all things together.

If that is what he meant, I think it is most beautiful and tender.

Altar at the Village Định: More deities than you can shake a joss stick at.

As far as I can tell, a định is a cross between a place to pay homage to the village’s deceased leaders (like a monument or memorial but with an altar), a place to worhsip animist deities like the “water god” and the “mountain god,” a place of gathering for the villagers to meet each other (village square), and  in some cases, a place of religious worship (Buddhist).  Because Ong Muoi follows the Buddha’s teachings, he included a buddhist shrine at the định. Whatever the object of veneration, the ritual seems the same: people appear from the village, light joss sticks, place them against their forehead, bow three times, insert them into the incense burner and then start talking to each other. [Sadly the photos of Ong Muoi and his new dinh, which were taken with my trusty cell phone cam, disapeared with the trusty cell phone cam on the streets of Saigon. ]

It should be noted that the 88-year old Ong Muoi built the dinh himself (my last post said he was 82 – I was six years off). And because he is a doctor of traditional Vietnamese medicine, he also set up a small herbal medicine clinic on the site as well, with about 84 newly-built bins filled with local herbs. Not bad for someone his age – or my age for that matter. He said he came back here for the end of his life, because it was where his family is from, and because his relatives were planning on selling the land (or stealing it, I could not tell which).

We sat and talked for a few hours, and it was quite rewarding to finally be able to understand enough Vietnamese to speak with him directly. We would talk about the trip Hai is planning – to take Ong Muoi to Bodh Gaya, the place of the Buddha’s enlightenment – and then rest a bit. Then we talked about the dragon fruit that Hai and I had brought and we were eating  – still not ripe, he said, disapprovingly. He would ask about my breathing, and whether I had taken his advice offered at Diamond Bay, and we would drink some tea, and rest some more. And then he would ask about my dreams. What kinds of dreams was I having? Where they peaceful or disturbing? He would ponder my answes, and often say nothing. He has a kind of non-invasive benevolent presence that is so nice to be around.

And as we sat and talked, night came to the place, and people emerged from the countryside, and the dinh started to come to life. People come there to pray, ring a bell, light incense, chant prayers, or just sit there in the placid way of the locals, squatting on their haunches, talking, sharing or just being silent. Most of them are elderly women, and I am reminded again what I love about this country. Of course there is fascination with a foreigner (me) that can make one self-conscious, but underneath that, there is this intense affection in their faces that one would take the time to come to this place and be with them: it is in their touch, in their words, in their a playfulness and in a kind of encouraging presence that says “whatever journey you may be on, I wish you well.”

Ong Muoi in his understated way pretends to be too busy to engage with the visitors – “his people” – who kind of come up to him, and tease him, tug at him, poke at him. He laughs and smiles, and scurries along, in perpetual motion when out in public. When a  middle aged man brings his youg four-year old daughter to the định, she comes running to see Ong Muoi, who scoops up the shy girl and brings her to sit and talk with us.

A Village Định

Down to Business.

Ong Muoi always like to talk about Buddhist things. Do I believe in reincarnation. What kind of reincarnation? Did I know how to relieve the sufferings of samsara? Was I repeating the name of the Buddha? And I would ask  him things as well. I asked why when I live in Saigon does my energy dissipate so much, and he said because I think about everything too much. (Buddhism for beginners.) He mentioned all of the wild dakinis who tempted the buddha prior to his final enlightenment.

But my favorite story from yesterday was the following: He explained to me the legend that one way Buddhist masters in the old days would check their students progress is that they put them in a big pond filled with crocodiles. According to Ong Muoi, those who had realized the Buddha way would float because they had digested their karma, and those who hadn’t would sink due to the weight of their undigested karma.  I think today we would call that “up or out,” and is one reason I have a hard time keeping my head above water in crocodile ponds (such as Saigon!)

The hour grew late, and Hai and I had to head back to the city. We stopped to eat “bun bi” a delicious noodle, vegetable, chicken combination, and drove 90 minutes through the dark, weaving amidst cars and motorbikes, heading back to the belly of the beast, Saigon. There, we would no doubt be crocodile food in no time.

Nguyen Khuyen, With Nails and Tea

Though the Vietnamese poem translated below lacks the long title, its setting on a pond in the fall, with the author floating along in a small boat while fishing, passes the “Billy Collins test,” i.e. it seems it would be a nice place to be sitting in a cross-legged position with the writer of the poem, listening to the sounds of nature.

It is called “Fishing in Autumn,” (“Thu Điều,” in the original) by Nguyễn Khuyến, a 19th century Vietnamese poet. It is part of a cycle of three poems called  “Poems of Autumn.” Any doubt at all that these three pieces of writing were composed by a Vietnamese poet can be eliminated when one considers the titles: “Fishing in Autumn,” “Drinking Rice Wine in Autumn,” and “Writing Landscape Poems in Autumn.” I suppose he could have written one about the woman  who left him in autumn or one about missing Hanoi in autumn.

From a western perspective, what I find most interesting in regards to this form is that the first person singular does not appear. In fact, there are no personal or other kinds of pronouns in this poem and many others like it. No I, he, she, it, they, we etc.  There are only verbs, prepositions, nouns and adjectives. (In Vietnamese, adjectives can be verbs.) For example, the poem’s first line says “Ao thu lạnh lẽo nước trong veo,” which means “autumn pond | cold| cheerless | water | transparent.” The most direct translation here “The autumn pond is cheerless and cold, the water is transparent,” but there is no verb equivalent to “is” nor is there a person who is observing the situation. This means the poem and others like it are refreshingly absent of self-referential discussion (as Billy Collins would say, poems with titles like “The Horn of Neurosis,”) and very high on direct, clear imagery.

Here is the translation, which tries (once again, see last attempt) to preserve rhyme, and a consistent syllable count (nine versus the original seven). This is followed by a review of the poetic form in use in the poem, and a gloss of the original Vietnamese, tone placements and literal meaning.

What is the poem about? I think that its meaning can be found in the last two lines but I will let you sit cross-legged with the poet and decide for your self what he may be feeling. (Hint: The nibbling fish are a metaphor for…?)

_________________________

Fishing in Autumn

by Nguyen Khuyen

The fall pond cheerless, the water clear

I fish from a small boat drifting here.

Tiny blue ripples roll through the mist

The wind, the leaves fly past with the year

From a deep blue sky hang rows of clouds

On a bamboo path, no one appears

Knees to chest, I can’t put down this pole,

Many  fish tug at the duckweed here.

___________________________

Technical Issues (for poetry nerds only).

The poem comes to us in one of the most common forms used in Tang Dynasty China, known as “dường luật” in Vietnamese, which means literally “Tang era rules.” (“Rules” as in conventions, not as in “governs.”) It is a very tightly controlled form, and includes restrictions on the placement of rhyme, the placement of different tone marks, the placement of certain opposing types of imagery, and of course, more basic constraints such as the number of lines (four or eight, there are two options) and syllables per line (only one option: seven).

The rules governing the placement of rhyme are simple enough: A_A_b_A_c_A_d_A. In this poem the “A” sound is “veo” which sounds like what we use in the U.S. on bologna sandwiches: “mayo.” In the orginal, it creates a kind of echo through out the poem, as it is repeated every second line. I chose the sound “_ere” to replace it, which hardly captures the original.

Seccond, the placement of tone marks is shown in the chart to the left (BTBB etc.) In classical Vietnamse poetry, tones are grouped into “bang” and “trac” and then arranged likes notes. (See post). The tone of the second syllable of the first and last line define whether the poem is a “bang” or a “trac” poem in general. This is a “bang” poem. Third, the rules governing the placement of imagery require the poet to create contrast between couplets – the second couplet and the third couplet. This is often done by juxtaposing “heaven and sky” in one couplet against “earth and rivers” in the other.  The technical term for this in Vietnamese is “luật đoi,” or law of opposition. I don’t know if it has a name in English. Finally, there are seven syllables per line which I have altered to include nine syllables per line for reasons having to do with “syllabic density” Vietnamese. (See same post.)

Thu Điều

By Nguyễn Khuyến

Ao | thu | lạnh lẽo | nước | trong veo

Pond | autumn | cold and cheerless | water | transparent

_B_T_BB

Một | chiếc thuyền câu | bé tẻo teo

One | fishing boat | very small

_T_B_TB

Sóng biếc theo làn hơi gợn tí

Wave | blue/green| follow| mist | ripple | small

_T_B_TT

Lá vàng trước gió sẽ đưa vèo

Gold leaves | before the wind | fall | fast

_B_T_BB

Tầng mây lơ lửng trời xanh ngắt

Layers | clouds  | float suspended | sky | deep blue

_B_T_BT

Ngõ trúc quanh co khách vắng teo

Path | bamboo  |   winding  | has people | deserted | totally

_T_B_TB

Tựa gối, buông cần lâu chẳng được

Leaning | knees | leave | pole | long time | cannot

_T_B_TT

Cá đâu đớp động dưới chân bèo.

Fish |  everywhere | bite/snatch | under | legs| water fern

_T_B_BB

To begin to understand thee history of Vietnam’s poetry, it is helpful and pretty much necesary to understand the very unusual history of the Vietnamese language. As far as I can tell, there are four basic periods: (1) the first period in which the phonetic origins of the language were born among an ancient, agricultural (“wet-rice”) people native to what is today North Vietnam but who had yet to create a written language; (2) a period during which the conquering Chinese introduced Chinese language (which the Vietnamese refer to as “Han Tu”) as the “official” spoken and written tongue of the ruling class, which started about 100 AD and ended 1,000 years later; (3) a period beginning after the Chinese left during which the Vietnamese created their own language (chư nom), using a combination of Chinese created “loan words” (characters) and characters they designed themselves using the Chinese phonetic system;and introduced into the language through a 1,000 year occupation by Vietnam’s northern neighbor; and (3) a period from the 17th century until now when a missionary from France living near Hanoi named Alexander de Rhodes designed the modern script used today called “quoc ngu.”.

Its phonetic origins (sounds) derive from a mishmash of other languages endemic to the northern region of Vietnam where the Vietnamese people lived thousands of years ago as farmers and fisherman. These people consisted of two cultures brought together by an ambitious warlord: one was a rice growing culture in the Red River Delta, and the other a mountain-based culture further north towards China. At that time, Vietnamese was soley a spoken language.

After the Chinese invaded the area in about 150BC, they made their own tongue the official language of the government and educated (maybe Rush Limbaugh would call them “elite liberals”). So while Vietnamese was still spoken by the common people, the use of Chinese as the language of the ruling class opened a linguistic spiggot which would flow for 1,000 years – the period of time China occupied Vietnam. By the time the Chinese left, about 60% of the spoken Vietnamese words were of Chinese origin, showing the impact that the written language had on the culture. (One thousand years will do that to a language. Even today, Vietnamese people use Chinese to count things.)

It was not until around the 13th century, after China was gone, that the Vietnamese began to write down a newly created set of ideograms similar to the ones used in China and created a new written language known as “chu nom.” Chu nom, which looks identical to Chinese to the non-initiated (see book cover), contained Vietnamese sounds captured in Chinese-style ideograms, and was the official written language for the next 400 years or so, providing a vehicle for the earliest Vietnamese literary figures such as Nguuyen Du (”The Tale of Kieu,” seen on book cover) and Ho Xuan Huong (a woman who wrote numerous rebellious poems) to write their still famous works.

The Tale of Kieu in Chữ Nôm

All of this changed with the arrival French and Portugese missionaries, who wanted to speed up the learning process for the steady stream of eager new arrivals from missionary colleges in Europe. This led to the creation of a Latin script known today as “quoc ngu,” which captures the rich and textured sounds of the original spoken language in roman letters and diacritics. That makes Vietnamese, as far as I know, the only language to have been written in both Chinese ideograms and Latin letters. Does any of this matter in terms of understanding the poem ? Probably not, but it is interesting to imagine that the sounds one is hearing in the poem consist of an ancient tonal language from the Red River Delta, a collection of Chinese words forced into the language by conquering invaders, and a kind of bizarre cyrillic script devised by a French Catholic Priest. At least they left out the kitchen sink.

Vowel Soup

This amalgam language create a very interesting array of sounds of poetry. The bottom-most layer of sounds consists of the letters and their pronunciation. Leaving aside the consonants, which themselves are radically different and fascinating, consider the vowels. There are 12 vowels in the Vietnamese alphabet (although only 11 vowel sounds, as two are pronounced the same), compared to the relative poverty of six in English (a, e, i, o, u and sometimes y). The French captured 11 Vietnamese vowel sounds by using diacritics to modify the six western vowels – “diacritics” being the little hooks, hats and accents attached to most vowels in Vietnamese. (See the little table down there for the twelve.) So, while the vowels look the same as Latin vowels, most of them have absolutely no similarity to the sounds in English, French or any other romance languages. This is why when I go to a cafe and order a coffee for the 300th time, the waiter will still look at me as if I am speaking the language of a small, unknown African tribe: it is extremely difficult for non-native speakers to differentiate between these sounds when they are spoken, let alone to be able to pronounce them.

Dipthong Songs

Moving up one layer up at the archeology site, we find an entirely different group of sounds created by putting vowels together, which are called dipthongs. For example, the word “gooey” in English contains two vowels sounds pronounced side by side and is a dipthong. In Vietnamese, dipthongs abound: depending on how you define them, there are anywhere from three to 23. For example, the word for milk is “sữa.” That innocent-looking three letter word is actually a piece of linguistic nastiness in disguise. It has two vowel sounds: an “u” with a diacritic, and an “a” without one. Put together these two sounds and you get a dipthong which sounds like the noise you make when you drive up a highway on-ramp for a one hour drive, and there is bumper to bumper traffic: eeuuhhaa. Add to that a tone mark – in this case the up/down “dầu ngã” – and what you get in the end is something like someone hiccupping and saying eeuuhhaa. This and the many other strange sounds in the local language are why when I go to the corner store and ask for milk, I am just as likely to get a mechanic to come out and fix my motorbike. (“sữa” is a noun and means milk, “sửa” is a verb and means to repair. In the south they are pronounced virtually identically. For earlier experiences with the word “sửa,” see this post.)

Alphabet Phỏ

Watch Your Tone with Me

Moving up to the next layer at our “site,” we arrive at the Vietnamese tone marks, which are more like musical notes, and which are added to the vowels or the dipthongs. When accompanied by one of these notes, a word can go up, go down (quickly or slowly), stay flat, swoop up and down slowly, or swoop quickly. For example, the two letters “ma” areoften used in Vietnamese class to illustrate this: they can have different meanings depending on what the tone mark is: má uses the upward rising tone and is a cheek, mà is the downward falling tone and is an interrogative particle (but), mả uses a tone that swoops down and comes back up and is a tomb or grave, mạ uses a tone that drops quickly and stays down and is a rice seedling, etc. (Although English is not a tonal language, words can have intonation (go up or down) depending on their placement and use in a sentence, which is different than having the tone be intrinsic to the word.)

Ups and Downs of Tones

Bang Trac, Trac Bang

In everyday speech, these tones are arranged in a random order. In classical vietnamese poetry, however, these tones are arranged into patterns which creates a kind of melody. (This represents the fourth level up at the linguistic “dig.”) While English poetry has meter from the use of stressed and non-stressed syllables – i.e. iambs, trochees, anapests, etc. – it is more about turning up and down the volume on different syllabes rather than tonal changes. In classical Vietnamese poems, tones are grouped into two categories: the “bằng” tones and the “trắc” tones. The former are so-called “flat” tones, and the latter are so-called “non-flat” tones. Different poetic forms demand different sequences of the two kinds of tones: two common rhythmic patterns are “Bằng bằng trắc trắc bằng bằng,” and “Bằng bằng trắc trắc bằng bằng trắc bằng.” The poem “Cô Lái Đò,” has two stanzas written in a classical seven syllable form, illustrated in the diagram “van bang.”

Bang for Your Syllables

Vietnamese is a mono-syllabic, tonal language. This means when you have seven syllables (as in each line of this poem, in the original) you can get up to seven words (the exception is when compound nouns and verbs are used, which are quite common). In English, when you have seven syllables, you will generally get many fewer words – “uruguay potato vine” has seven syllables and three words, “autobiographical” has seven syllables in one word. This means that in Vietnamese language and poetry has a density in terms of amount of “meaning per syllable (MPS?),” which of course is not a real measure but I made it up anyway (or maybe BPS, “bang per syllable?”).

The Tonal Arrangement for Co Lai Do

For a brief example on syllabic density (BPS) consider the title of the poem: “Cô Lái Đò.” This quaint sounding title is also a little piece of linguistic nastiness. “Cô” means a young woman, usually not married. It has an “o” with the diacritic “^” and has a flat-line tone and is pronounced like the English “co” as in co-dependent (interesting example…mmmmm) “Lái” means to drive, steer, or guide and has no diacritic but has an upward rising tone and is pronounced like “lie,” as in fib or go horizontal. “Đò” is an old-fashioned boat, much like the Chinese sampan and has no diacritic but a dropping tone mark. It is pronounced like “daw” as in Dawson. So the poem’s title sounds like “co lie daw.” Then add the tones, which move as follows: first flat, then up, then down which you can hum to yourself and get a sense for the music.

All of this is to provide a taste of what a Vietnamese poem can do in three syllables, which needless to say, it not easily reproduced in three syllables of English. (There are however poets that I love who write in English with very high “BPS” such as Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens, and e.e. cummings .)

For Further Excavation

There are other elements to these poems that I find interesting, but beyond already too long scope of this post. As mentioned, consonants are intriguing: many of them are so silent a lot of words end up being pure vowel sounds. For example, “hoc” means to study but the “h” disapears at the beginning and the “c” disapears at the end, like the “w” in “how.” The words sounds more like “ouw.” Also, Vietnamese poets make abundant use of internal rhyme and half rhyme, which is made easier by the large number of vowel sounds. For example, the most famous of all classical poetic forms (“luc bat”) uses only internal rhymes – rhymes never come at the end of lines. (The “luc bat” uses alternating six/eight syllable lines with “rhyming pairs,” except that the rhyme in the eight syllable line comes on the sixth syllable. It is the style in which “Kieu” was written.)

I have been trying to finish a translation of a poem called “Cô Lái Đò,” by an early 20th Century Vietnamese poet named Nguyen Binh. I first picked up this poem a few years ago when I was living here, and in a fit of hubris and pretense, tried to memorize it and recite it to people. Of course, native Vietnamese speakers had no idea what I was saying, which led me back to Vietnamese class, and more prosaic discourses with my teacher such as “How are you today?” and “I am fine thank you. And you?” (Which I am still trying to perfect). In any case, by dint of persistence, here I am finally with a translation of the poem that I can live with. The original poem, the recordings and the  translation are all at the beginning of this post, and are followed by a rather lengthy digression on Vietnamese language, poetry and poetic form, which I wrote to explain to myself what was going on in the poem, so I thought I would share it.

The Poet Nguyen Binh

Vietnamese Poetry in A Nutshell

This poem is by a Vietnamese poet and thefore it involves spring. Poets in Vietnam employ spring in the same way that country and western singers in the U.S. employ honky tonk bars. For example, the word “xuan” (or spring) appears seven times in the poem, and it is a 16-line poem. Because it is a Vietnamese poem, it will also involve heartbreak, a young woman, a fisherman or farmer, green bamboo and deep and unfulfilled longing – usually for the woman but maybe for Hanoi in the fall. (Nobody seems to long for my fair city, Saigon.) While I truly enjoy the simplicity and beauty of Vietnamese imagery, the action, and the fun, in Vietnamese poetry for me is in the language.

Notes on Translation

The poem I translated here was based on a late 19th century classical Vietnamese poetic form consisting of a four-line quatrain, with each line consisting of seven syllables. While there is plently of internal rhyme, this form uses end of line rhymes, albeit in an uneven way. Nguyen Binh adopted this model to include, in this case, four quatrains. Because I found it impossible to capture the meaing of the lines in the original seven English syllables (see BPS issue above), I expanded the number of syllables per line from seven to ten. This was an arbitrary number that I chose because many of the lines ended up being that long anyway. Second, there is the eternal question as to whether rhymes should be preserved in translation or not. I have no preference, really, but for fun, and for the purposes of this poem (and to drive myself crazy) I tried to preserve the original rhyme scheme, and try to sprinkle in internal rhymes when I could think of one. Finally, finally, I thought I would mention that this poem has one of my favorite lines in all of poetry, and that is “Bỏ thuyền, bỏ lái, bỏ dòng sông/Cô lái đò kia di lấy chồng” which means “farewell boat, farewell rowing, farewell river/The boatgirl went off to marry a man,” which sounds pedestrian in English, but to my ear at least, fairly sublime in the original. It has end of line rhyme, internal rhyme, it has rhythm (from repeating “bỏ”), it has symmetry in the three syllables cluases at the end both lines, and there is of course the bittersweet conclusion to the poem.

Recordings

To help bring the language alive, I have inserted two recordings of the poem, one by a friend from the south, one by a friend from the north. The two accents are totally different as you will hear.

Southern Friend

Northern Friend

THE ORIGINAL POEM

THE TRANSLATION

New meaning to the term "checkmate"

Perhaps it is a sign of the times, but heading to my local ATM recently to withdraw a few  hundred thousand dong, I came across these two avid chessmen engaged in a game of “co,” which was apparently in such need of being played that those of us in need of cash needed to wait a bit. “Co” is chinese chess (not checkers), and I have no idea how to play it. But such is life in Saigon: rapid modernization surrounded by…chess (?).

Workers in a Local Factory

Like many country’s making the transition from underdeveloped to developed, the main engine of growth is industry, which is fed by workers moving from the countryside to work in factories. (Industry, that is, as opposed to agriculture, which is on the decline as a percent of GDP, and services, which are still relatively small as a percent of GDP.) I read this morning, for example, that Saigon will grow from a city of 6 million today to 10 million by the year 2020. For many of these people, the incentive is quite clear: living in poverty, in the countryside, in one of the poorest country’s in the world, after a war, and a communist crackdown some say was worse than the war itself – after all that, why wouldn’t you want to move to a nice apartment in a high-rise, subscribe to cable, enjoy A/C, and walk on ceramic tile floors.

You don’t have to go much further than the city limits to see this mass migration in progress. Not far from the center of Sai Gon, and Ha Noi, are the well-known industrial zones. Large walls surround monstrous, smoke-bellowing, steel smelting, coal burning, smoke-stacked “nha may,” which literally means house machine in english, a.k.a. factories. When shifts end and begin, streams of workers in matching uniforms march in and out, people who have no doubt left their villages to come and try to earn money for their families.These are the people who make things for export like sneakers, clothes, furniture, and computers – and provide what economists call Vietnam’s “comparative advantage:” cheap labor. (Check the tags in your shirts, pants and shoes!). They work on assembly lines for local and foreign companies, for very little money, in frightening conditions and often live in housing that is provided by the company or shared apartments with co-workers.

Three Strikes and You’re Alienated

This has my over-analytical brain thinking about a few things.

First strike: Working in Factories Here Stinks. As we know from the study of early 19th century England (you took Western Civ, right?), the rapid industrialization of a society – fueled by the injection of private capital seeking to maximize profit – has its dark side, especially if you believe Karl Marx. As workers leave craft-based forms of manual labor, in which they are involved in the creation of the objects of their labor from start to finish (i.e. a chair), and move to the industrial work place, their work becomes only a small part of a much larger whole (i.e. a car), and this has an “alienating” effect on them.

Second strike: Salaries are Going Up VERY Slowly. What is hard not to notice is that the industrial revolution, and the inflow of foreign capital is being managed by a nominally socialist government. Socialism, and the thinking of Marx, are so endemic to this society, that young school children are inculcated in Marxist theory. And to some degree the ideology is supported in practice. For example, this spring, the average worker at a Taiwanese company in Vietnam made roughly $31.60 per month. This led to strikes at some of these companies, as well as ones owned by South Korean and Hong Kong companies. (Japanese and European companies tend to pay more.) The strikes in turn led to a hike in the minimum wage rate set by the government. Karl would be proud.

Or would he? When you do the math on the salary increases, which were about 40%, it works out to be about 33 cents per day or so. Another little fact that is troubling is that this was the first increase in six years. Over that time, the stock market has more than doubled in value, which means that according to the market, the value of the company and in most cases profits are increasing at more than twice the rate that worker pay is being increased. So maybe I am not imagining things when I look at the faces of the workers on their way to and from the factories, and then at the people I visit in the countryside working the land, and see a marked difference in their appearance, as Karl predicted.

Third strike: How do you say founding father in Vietnamese? When America went through its industrial era, it did so on the foundation of 150 years of democracy. This allowed for the vigorous and public struggles for worker’s rights, unionization, and other trademarks of U.S. labor history. (Unfortunately, it also led to the little problem of corporations taking over government through lobbying etc. A different story.) In any case, democracy is a long way off in this country. Though there is a benevolent side to the oligarchy in Hanoi, there is not a Jeffersonian one. It is a one party, communist clique. Period. The other day I went by the U.S. embassy and about 10-15 women were protesting there. I imagined it was about Agent Oragnge, though it could have been emigration policy or anything else. Problem was, there were almost as many policemen with cameras as there were protesters. Vietnamese policemen. And a well known Vietnamese, Western-educated lawyer who has acting as a defense attorney for those promoting democratic ideas was recently removed from his office and has not been seen since – except on a creepy Youtube video confession of his wrongdoing that popped up recently. And don’t even ask about the way some Buddhist elders are treated.

Oliver Twist in Cholon

What is interesting to ponder is if economic progress constitutes human progress. One thing I have learned while living here is that while it is easy to naively equate economic growth with happiness, it also easy to naively separate the two. This is something that took awhile for my liberally-educated brain to get itself around and understand. Poverty really sucks. Many of my Vietnamese friends, in fact much of their generation, are strongly dedicated to nation-building in a way that my generation in the U.S. is not. They feel they are serving their country when they start a successful business, employ people, and add to the national wealth. I think it is fair to say that I have been lucky to have a high enough standard of living established by my forebears to not make this my central concern in life.

On the other hand, a recent trip to one of the poorer sections of this city left me wondering just how much progress is being made. District Five is one of the oldest parts of the city, originally settled by the Chinese, and of incredible urban and human density. As I walked down back alleys, I saw saw what must have worried the British chronicler of London’s own industrial revolution – C. Dickens. Women squatted in the stoops of dingy doorways , their faces dirty and sweaty (it was unbearably hot that day), many clutching babies that looked only semi-conscious in their arms. They were dressed in ragged clothes, and it looked as if the bags they carried with them was the sum total of their possessions. Priding myself on magnanimity, generosity, and all the other traits of a good doobie, such was my shock at the site of this poverty, that instead of reaching into my pocket for 25 cents and putting it in their outstretched hands, I hurried on.

Scene Outside Binh Tay Market in Cholon

Not far from the market, I came upon a “sinh to” cafe, where one can sit and sip fresh juice, combined with ice and (lots) of sugar. Interestingly, I was not alone for long. The young woman who brought me my drink, a very attractive young woman, sat down next to me after she served me the sinh to. Very next to me. I have learned there are two kinds of friendly Vietnamese: friendly Vietnamese from Saigon, usually (but not always) with ulterior motives, and friendly Vietnamese from the country usually (but not always) with good intentions. It took me a little longer than I care to admit to realize that this was the kind of friendliness with a distinct purpose. Maybe it was the very, very low-cut tank top, the very, very short shorts, or the way she touched my watch. I looked around and the cafe was peopled by men, men alone, at tables, in the shade, in a very poor part of town.

I had landed in what a friend told me is a “cafe om,” which means hugging coffee shop. These are kissing cousins (ha ha) to the “bia om” (beer hugging place), “restaurant om” (eating and hugging place), “karoake om” (beer, eating and drinking hugging place), “cat toc om/goi bau om” (hair cut and hair wash hugging place), “ma sa om” (massage hugging place), and so on. In fact, you can get “hugged” just about anywhere you go around here, and I don’t mean by your friends (people don’t literally hug each other much around here, actually).

I don’t mean to make connections where they can’t be made: poverty and prostitution were prevalent long before the opening of the economy to private ownership, and their existence in Cholon does not mean economic progress is insignficant. When I came here 15 years ago, in fact, District One, which is now home to swank boutiques (see Gucci shoe store), looked a lot like District Five today. The point is that for the time being, most of the economic progress is benefitting an emerging owning class in Vietnam, and the benefits of this growth will be slow to materialize down in the trenches.

In the meantime, the people of the country are being force-fed an economic miracle like a French Goose, and while you suspect the pate will probably come out well in the end, you kind of worry about the goose. There are those who live on the street, who work on the assembly lines outside the city, who sqaut in stoops begging, who clutch the arms of foreign visitors in Cholon, who seem to be propping up the economic miracle with their silence. If you ask the government and most foreign commentators, you would say the economic growth is paying dividends for the whole society. It’s just that sometimes you would really like to get it from the goose’s mouth.

Diamond Bay became (in)famous in Vietnam after it was retained to host the Miss Universe contest in 2008, and then failed to complete construction in time, forcing the contest to be moved to another venue in the same town. This has not prevented the resort from taking full advantage of the exposure their (not) hosting the event garnered.

After a two day side trip to Danang, I arrived a half day before Hai and Ong Moui at Diamond Bay. Upon one’s arrival at the reception area, one is greeted by a life sized portrait of the winner of the Miss Universe contest behind the counter. I forget what country she was from. This kind of sets the tone for what is to come. When you go for a bite to eat, you dine in the company of photos from 100 contestants from around the world. There is nothing like looking out the window at the beautiful bay, eating rice cakes, sipping coffee and having Miss Belarussia staring you down.

Nha Trang (sorry-stock photo)

Ong Muoi and Hai arrived eventually. I was very much looking forward to spending time with Hai’s teacher. I had met him in passing but we had never really spoken at length. He is 82 years old, and has spent most of his life in the mountains of Phu Quoc, an island off the southern coast of Vietnam. He is thin but strong, has a wispy white beard, long hair in a pony tail, and smiles at everyone quite a bit. I asked him how he has stayed so strong at such an advanced age, and he says it is because he climbs the mountain in Phu Quoc everday. I believed him.

Now, because the Vietnamese tend be even more obsessed with feminine beauty than we in the U.S., the developers decided to name the bungalows along the beach after various contestants in the pageant. My bald, quasi-monastic friend Hai settled in the Miss Albania cottage,and Ong Mui settled in the Miss Korea suite. There, in yet another life-sized portrait, Miss Korean herself, wearing a traditional Korean frock-dress, strikes a tae-kwon-do pose, wielding a large scary looking saber.

Nha Trang (sorry-stock photo)

We met at the pool and then in the dining room and spoke of many things. He read my pulse (Chinese style, with three fingers). He told me I needed to eat more vegetables, that my meditation practice was too mental, and that I needed to breath more deeply . He was right on all counts, and how he knew that from reading my pulse, I have no idea. When we went to the dining room (filled with kodachrome beauty contestants) for a buffet, Ong Muoi looked at the food Hai brought him with great curiosity, as if he had never seen such things before. Finally, he ate some lettuce, and nibbled at some fruit.

That night we decided to go into the city for the Sea Festival that was happenning there. Like many Vietnamese events in Vietnam (TET, Christmas, New Year’s, etc.) the celebration seemed to focus on bringing together as many motorbikes, pedestrians and cars into as small a space as possible. We went out for vegetarian food, and then, because the decibel level on the street was unbearable, I decided to return to the hotel with Ong Mui.

Hai and Ong Muoi

The problem was, I had yet to visit Ong Muoi in his Miss Korea bungalow, and so neither he nor I had any idea where his room was. So we wandered the pathways of Diamond Bay – me and the Taoist monk – trying to find the bungalow in which he was staying. They were all of identical design, and because of the hour, many were unlit from the inside. Was he staying in Miss France? We approached and he shook his head. Mais non! Pas ici! Miss Germany? Nichts. Miss Vietnam? Khong! Miss Iceland? No. Miss Nigeria? No. Miss China? No. Finally, we arrived at the Miss Korea bungalow, and they key fit. We said good night and I left the tenth uncle with Miss Korea rattling a saber above his bed.

The next morning, I met Hai and Ong Muoi at the pool, another memorable moment. Hai had come to the conclusion that rubbing one’s body all over with salt prior to taking a swim was excellent for one’s health, so when I groggily arrived for my morning dip, my two friends were standing poolside covered from head to toe in salt, happily chatting like father and son, which basically they are. I wish I had taken a picture. Instead I rubbed salt on my body and went swimming. It felt great.

During the breaks people would roll through the changing room, folding and unfolding monkish garbs, and I would lie and watch them. But there was one monk from Vietnam who was practicing there and when he came to change his robes, he always bent over and asked me how I was doing, patted me gently, and offered me various kinds of herbs and vitamins. That touched me.

He had been a monk since he was a young boy, and there was always something innocent and child-like in him. I remember for example at a dharma talk one day when the teacher explained a fine point of zen which perplexed my friend. He raised and his hand, and asked “But when you throw something up in the air, it always comes back down.” I remember laughing quite a bit at the simplicity of the way he perceived the world.

So it was great pleasure that I heard from a mutual friend that this monk was visiting Vietnam. He had come to seek help with an incurable medical condition related to a parasite of some kind – or one deemed so by his western doctors in California. I had heard that he was actually so weak he could not go outside, and that he was close to dying.

Here, through the typical “i know someone who knows someone” network used by everyone in Vietnam, he found a mysterious sounding traditional doctor, who asked for his date and year of birth and his symptoms through an intermediary. Based on that information, the doctor told the monk to bathe in four kinds of cinnamon and then go bathe in the sea.

On Sunday, I had lunch with him and his neice, a nun. (See photo). He could not stop repeating the word “unbelievable.” His symptoms had vanished. He was full of energy. We ate a small park near my home, and the water was brimming with fish. The same innocence led him to be more interested in the activities of the fish than anything I could say or do in our conversation.

“Why don’t poor people come here and catch these fish and sell them at the market?” he asked, a question for which I had no answer. From there he launched into a quite sophisticated (and child-like) explanation of the difference between zen meditation techniques in Korea and Vietnam, and how they relate to buddhist metaphysics. He was clearly “back” to use a tired sports metaphor.

Through another set of coincidences he had read a book I had given to our mutual friend in the US called “Fourth Uncle in the Mountain” (see post). He said he wanted to visit the area and meet some of the mystics, madmen, monks and medicine men that lived in that area (or used to, depending on who you ask.) Given my recent trip there, I gave him the coordinates of a temple, a teacher (Chi), and a few towns to pass through to get there.

This morning, I spoke with him on the phone. His voice was radiant. “Unbelievable,” he kept saying. “Unbelievable.” He had arrived at Forbidden Mountain, and was visiting the Matireya Buddha statue. The day before he had visited Chi. He sounded like a fish returning to water, which of course, for a pure-minded monk is the next best thing after nirvana.