i would like to tell the story of three gods and their importance in vietnamese society. i will talk about mr. phuc, mr. loc and mr. tho. these three gods are fairly ubiquitous. you see them on calendars, in homes and in businesses on a fairly regular basis. they relate to buddhism in the following way. they have the power to right wrongs that were committed in previous lives. for example, if you were a bad person a few lifetimes ago, these gods will either make you happier or more miserable depending on the level of your guilt.

the god on the left of the picture above is mr. phuc. he is responsible for the happiness of every person in society. in his left hand you can see a scroll where he recounts the good and bad actions of everyone and then dispenses happiness either in this life or the following life. in his right hand he holds a golden rod which can grand people wishes and happiness and what not.

the god in the middle is mr. loc. he is the god of material wealth. he is the god of money (though there are other gods of wealth), possessions and things. in his left hand he holds a wand which can be used to make material possessions either appear or disappear. all of the gods have long facial hair which is a symbol of virility.

the god on the right is mr. tho. when a person reaches 60 years of age, they are thrown a ‘welcoming tho party’ where everyone congratulates them on being such wonderful survivors. mr. tho is the god of old age. he is wise (as can be seen by his engorged forehead) and walks using a giant cane. he dispenses life and does so based on people’s actions in previous lives.

these three gods are seen in most places in vietnam and many an incense stick is lit in their honor.

i teach an american literature class and in that class we are currently studying the ‘great gatsby’. in that book there is one character who is an arrogant jock named tom. he is described by mr. scott fitzgerald as ‘one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty one that everything afterwards savors of anticlimax.’

i am doing my best to fend off arrogance and a large head but sometimes this experience makes me feel like a movie star or something better. maybe an astronaut.

in vietnam, there are two newspapers with a huge circulation. ‘tuoi tre’ and ‘thanh nien’ are the two most popular and people here love to read their papers. they both mean ‘youth’. every morning and afternoon the coffee shops are full of young men sitting around and staring at the football scores and what not.

someone wrote an article about me and put it in the ‘thanh nien’ newspaper. the paper is published in ho chi minh city but it is circulated throughout the country. i was news.

you can see a picture of my head (it’s a big picture and i do not look good) and the whole article here
here is a translation of the article:

“AN AMERICAN GENTLEMAN WITH A VIETNAMESE HEART”

(under the title there’s a huge picture of my head which is hilarious.)

if you have the opportunity to visit long xuyen and an giang university, you might just meat an young american who is tall, handsome, always with a fresh smile and someone how especially speaks vietnamese wonderfully named jonathan david moyer (everyone calls him jon). he came to vietnam with the mcc organization (mennonite central committee) in order to improve the english speaking skills and education at an giang university. after he graduated majoring in international business with a minor in spanish at bluffton university in bluffton ohio, jon came to vietnam following the advice of his former teacher, dr. dan wessner who used to teach in can tho university. his mother has been the principal of a high school in america for 15 years and his father is a business man. unlike the majority fo voulenteer teachers who come to vietnam only fulfilling an obligation, jon works very enthusiasticly and happily at a university that was founded only 4 years ago. jonathan lectures english and american literature, has organized english speaking clubs for non major students and the people’s committee, and has organized a special friday night movie club. he is very busy at work but every free opportunity he has you can see him happily with his vietnamese friends drinking coffee or eating at a road-side stand. his vietnamese skills are fairly fluent and if you make friends with him he’s sure to surprise you. when asked about living in vietnam, jon said he really likes it because vietnam is very safe and the food is very good. jon really likes the coffee in vietnam and also enjoys some food that is very special to vietnam like (and here they list foods that most foreigners find disgusting). jon finds vietnames culture to be fascinating and he hopes to travel back to vietnam and possibly do some research for a post graduate program. you can say that he is an american who has a vietnamese heart and soul. whether you are near or far, you can get in contact with him at 076942721. if you do, you’ll find something very interesting and exciting.

and that’s the whole article.

while it’s not very long, it did appear in the middle of the fourth page and i was swarmed with people in the coffee shop who wanted to congratulate me for being so famous. everyone has wonderful things to say. the article made me out to be some sort of super human that is able to cross over all barriers. the article was a absurd glorification of a normal person. i did a bad job of translating it.

so, my phone number is at the bottom and i didn’t think anything about it until i came back to my room. i came back to my room at 10:00 and my phone rang.

from 10:00 until 11:00 i received phone calls one after another. i would hang up the phone and it would ring again. sometimes i would have to wait about 30 seconds between the rings, and other times it would ring the second i put it down. i received 12 calls from girls and 6 calls from guys in one hour. the phone conversations went something like this:

hello, is jon there?

this is jon.

oh, i just read an article in a newspaper about you and i was talking to my friends and wanted to call you. can i ask you some things about your life?

sure.

how old are you?

guess.

27?

24.

i think you’re very handsome and very lovely and i would love to get to know you.

thank you. where are you from?

(people called from everywhere. from hanoi, from ho chi minh city, from da nang, from da lat, from can tho, from vung tau. they wanted to meet me and they were a days trip away. amazing.)

oh. next time i go to _________ i’ll make sure to look you up. do you have a phone number?

yes. it’s _________________. i think if you meet me we’ll have a very good time together and we’ll be best friends. i want to start learning english and i would love to talk to you in english and i want to introduce me to my family. you’re very interesting jon!

bla-bla-bla.

that was for a normal girl who called. the men were different. one man called and he was 75 and had a doctorate from russia. he was from hanoi. he rambled on for a while in russian and was fun to talk to. another man who was also from hanoi wanted to practice spanish with me. we had my first conversation with a vietnamese person in spanish. an older lady called me looking for information about my mother’s school. she has a nephew studying in america and wanted to know if he could get a scholarship. amazing.

my ego is inflated and i float on air. i will walk out into the world again and people will wave and point and congratulate me on the specious story about a young man in the mekong.

oh, and i unplugged my phone long ago.

the seventh day of the year of the monkey and the last addition to the now world renown ‘special two week lunar new year edition’.

tet has blown through like a gigantic storm. it was a hurricane. we began to feel the effects of the celebration about three weeks ago and we will continue to feel the aftershocks until the first month of the lunar year ends. it was impossible to ignore the pure natural power of this storm.

while the storm had been brewing on the horizon for a couple of weeks, the real effects could be felt in the two days preceding the new year. those two days were full of people running home with supplies to last through the upcoming siege. men with motorcycles laden with drinks and food. women with decorations. children wheeling things down the road either on bicycles or in wagons. everyone was stockpiling and i caught the fever. the two days before tet i made sure to go to the market and buy enough supplies for me and the dog. we bought enough fruit, bread and sausages (for the dog) to last a few days of isolation.

then the storm hit.

the fireworks and the familial celebrations of the last day of the year bring in the new year, and foreshadow the storm’s arrival. prayers at the pagoda will cement good fortune for the coming year. trips to the fortune teller will guide decision making. the first few hours of the new year are eerie. they are like nothing i’ve ever seen. there is some strange communal understanding that something great and grand is happening. it’s never stated, it can just be seen in almost everyone’s eyes as they dart past you in the night on their motorcycles.

i am still shocked at the shear size of the celebrations. on the first day of the lunar new year, a town of about 250,000 people stops. the town ceases to function in any way. somehow 250,000 people all find a home to hide in, everyone shuts their doors and windows and the outside world no longer is of any importance. for a foreigner, this is incredible. over christmas, there is a similar occurrence in america, but it is much smaller in scale. we do not celebrate any one holiday as universally as tet is celebrated over here. this is the middle of what i would call the tet hurricane. everyone is bunkered down.

i was lucky enough to have made friends with people in town. i was able to experience tet from a more personal perspective. from this perspective, it feels nothing like a hurricane or a storm. from this perspective it feels like a warm time of tradition, prayer and reflection. of course it’s different for every age group and social class. the young people look forward to receiving ‘lucky money’ and the older people look forward to seeing all of their relatives under one roof again. i had a wonderful opportunity to see tet from both perspectives.

after the storm, there are three days of re-cementing old friendships and rebuilding societal relationships. in a culture where there are so many different ways of addressing another person depending on their age, social status and sex, it is important to go back through all of your old relationships and reaffirm everyone’s place. the first day is for immediate family. the second is for extended family. the third is for friends and teachers and other important people who are not directly related to you.

now, we are left with the residual effects of tet. we are left with a few more weeks of constantly saying and being told ‘happy new year.’ we are left with some traditional left-overs to eat and many people to greet. this holiday does not let up easily.

there is nothing that i can adequately compare this holiday to in america. many people celebrate thanksgiving but there are no residual effects like there are for tet. the hype before christmas is similar to the hype before tet, but christmas ends quickly and tet takes a long time to fizzle out. many americans go home for the holidays but they surely do not bunker down with their families for a long period of time playing cards and chatting for hours on end. there is a bit of commercialism in the lunar new year, but it is mostly confined to giving and receiving money. our christmas can be described as nothing short of commercialism on crack (with a side of stress).

tet is not a day, it is not a week. tet is a tradition, it is a mindset. it is a way to think about family and relationships. it is a way to understand the hierarchy of life. it is a way to make sense of everything. my two weeks writing about tet did not in any way adequately describe all there is to describe. tet is much more than anything i could ever write.

i will end this spectacular ‘special two week lunar new year edition’ with a traditional greeting for the new year in the year of the monkey:

chuc mung nam moi! chuc suc khoe! vang vo vai ky! tien vo vai ty! trong nam con khi!

happy new year! i wish you good health! may you get gold by the kilo! may you get money by the billions! all in the year of the monkey!

the sixth day of the year of the monkey.

nothing important happened today. life moved on as usual and things are winding down. classes have still not began and many businesses are still not opened, but people are starting to come out of their holiday shell.

the fifth day of the year of the monkey.

last night i was invited to attend the new year’s celebration with the chinese self-help society. we celebrated tet in a very traditionally chinese way.

the celebration was held at the local chinese school and it started late in the afternoon. there was a grandstand set up and all the dignitaries sat in a neat row in front of banners covered with unintelligible chinese script. there were speeches that talked about the self-help society and what it did in the previous year. all the important guests were introduced and i stood up, clasped my two hands together and shook them to the right and left of my face as all the other ‘important’ people did when they were introduced.

after the speeches, there were dances by the local dragon dance team. the dances started with four tiger costumes manned by two people each. they would walk around the god of the earth, the one who was responsible for keeping base things stable and harmonious, and dance to him. the god of the earth wears a gigantic mask that is bright pink with red dots for cheeks. he carries a fan and waves it as the tigers pass. the tigers do a number of different things in time with the music. since there are two people controlling one tiger suit, the man in the back must crouch down. his job is to move his legs in aggressive ways. the man in the front controls the head. sometimes he pushes it high above his head and shakes it, other times he moves it from side to side. when they decide to get fancy, they can have the person in the front stand on the shoulder’s of the man behind him or they can roll on the ground in tandem. all of this is done to the rhythm of one large drum played by a fat man, six cymbals played by children and a gongish type of instrument.

the next dance is a man dancing on top of a large bamboo pole wearing a tiger suit. it is interesting but too repetitive.

the last dance is the dance with the actual tiger. there are about 10 people controlling the gigantic dragon which must stretch on for about 40 or 50 feet. they all have a large pole and must follow exactly what the person in front of them did. they run around and do about three or four different things. they can swing the head of the dragon from the ground on one side above their heads to the ground on the other side. when everyone is doing this in unison, the dragon looks like it’s writhing in incredible pain. the dance is very complicated.

then comes the meal. it is a very typically chinese meal, i am told. it looks very vietnamese to me but i am no expert. during the meal there are little children that are paraded about and made to sing. they look scared and they sing poorly but they are children so we all watch and dutifully clap.

the lunar new year celebration came from china originally and, like all bits of civilization that are imported by other cultures, when it came to vietnam, it was changes slightly. the difference is slight.

the fourth day of the year of the monkey.

at the dawn of the new year, many people have their fortune told. i was not venturing out to have mine read to me, but a friend of a friend happened to be a semi-famous teller of the future. in my last hour or so in can tho, we had coffee and he scribbled notes and told me what would happen in my life.

he was a skinny, tallish man with a plaid shirt and short hair. he had a serious look on his face, a look that came with some sort of importance. explaining people’s fate would do that to someone, i imagined. he sat with his legs crossed tightly. he looked at me only when he was giving me my judgement.

the first thing he asked me was what year i was born. i told him, i was a ‘canh than’. i scribbled something on the back of a piece of paper. he drew a couple of lines. he then told me to choose one object, the first object i really noticed. the first object i could see was a bunch of flowers about ten feet behind him. i knew the flowers, they’re called ‘hoa vanh tho’, or flowers that are meant to mean long life. i figured if i was having my fortune told, such a decision must be interpreted as being a good one.

he mumbled something and drew some more lines. the next 10 minutes was full of anxious tension. all of the waiting and scribbling was making me seriously nervous. what if he told me i was going to die in the coming year. what would my future hold and how accurate would it be? i couldn’t help but half believing him.

he slid back from his paper slightly and mumbled, ‘this is bad.’

my slight superstition turned into full blown cult-like belief. my stomach churned, it honesty took a couple of flips. my future was bad and all of his scribbling said so.

he turned to me and told me what would happen. he said that i will be faced with two decisions. i will have to choose whether to stay in vietnam or go back to america. i will want to make a decision but whatever decision i choose will be wrong. what i have to do is accept whatever decision is made for me by someone else. i will always choose wrongly. i already decided to stay on until the end of the next year, a decision that was made months ago. i stopped believing him. it was all too vague.

he looked back at his piece of paper and searched it for answers. he gasped. he saw something. it turned out that i would actually have to go back to america in exactly 40 days. something horrible would happen in america and i would have to return. it would all be beyond my control, once again. also, when i returned to america, i would have to be careful when i am in a car, a plane or on a motorcycle. he saw something horrible that could happen to me when i was traveling somewhere. he saw everything.

there was then some discussion about exactly what 40 days meant and when we started counting and if it meant i would be back in 40 days or if i would leave in 40 days. we were not sure.

his phone rang while he was talking. he didn’t see it coming.

he then decided to tell me what i did this morning. he said i wanted to buy something for someone else and i was going to do it. the conversation shifted to what i did this morning. i got up at 930, met the rector of the university and had breakfast. i didn’t pay for anything but, one of my friends noted, i did mention the fact that i wanted to learn chinese chess and that i would have to buy a board to learn. that was disputed because i wouldn’t be giving it to anyone.

he told me i would life until i was 73 or 74. he wasn’t sure.

he also said i would not find love here and i would find love when i returned to america.

we stood up, i said thanks, and we left. he stumbled on the top step as we reached our motorbikes, maybe he didn’t see it, or maybe it was fate. i thought about what i would be doing in 40 days.

the third day of the year of the monkey.

traditionally, on the third day of the lunar new year, everyone is supposed to emerge from their family bunkers and head out into the world. they are supposed to meet up with their friends and greet their teachers. preparing for an onslaught of greetings from students (or the horrific disappointment of no one bothering to stop by), i hedged my bets and headed west to the town of can tho.

in can tho, i have a number of friends who also work at the university. they were all eager to get out and have a little fun with me. i tied the dog up outside, mounted my motorcycle and headed off before the sun came up. it's really invigorating traveling by yourself on a motorcycle. so much time to think, i always end up talking to myself which is disturbing. i arrived and woke my friends up at their homes.

the whole day was very typical.

we started out by having coffee. having coffee during tet is exactly like having coffee at any other time of the year. you sit around slowly milking one glass of very strong coffee. you sit for about an hour and a half.

the next thing we did was drive around aimlessly for about another hour. we drove slowly, about 10 miles an hour and three abreast. this wasn't a waste of time, this was relationship building.

the next thing we did was have another cup of coffee next to the river. the river isn't much to look at, but it's better than looking at a busy street.

we then went to a fruit garden about 20 minutes outside of town. the garden was beautiful but overcrowded with people emerging from their homes after the tet holiday. it was gorgeous, but you had to ignore the swarming masses of children and mosquitoes which are sometimes indistinguishable.

then we were off to have more coffee and noodles. i couldn't have another cup of coffee because i would have died. i had soy milk.

at last we went to some of my friend's homes and met their parents. they twisted my arm enough and i'm going to stay here for the night because i can't quite stomach the drive home especially in the dark.

so, the third day of tet is also important. this is when everyone officially emerges from their homes and re-associates with society. they have reaffirmed their basic family roots and will now blend back in with society. the day was full of good wishes, smiles and lots of time sitting on lawn chairs sipping strong black coffee and staring at the vast mekong.

the second day of the year of the monkey.

on the second day of tet, people are supposed to visit their home land. today, we had a more important mission to complete. i had to go with one of my best vietnamese friends to attend the engagement ceremony of his girlfriend’s sister.

in vietnam, there are three ceremonies when you get married. the first ceremony is when both of the families get to know each other. it is fairly informal and people walk around and ask each other what they do and how long they’ve don’t that. the second party is the official engagement party. this is much more formal with speeches and people standing up with glasses in their hands looking quite important. the third party is obviously the wedding. in the past, according to what i’ve been told, there was seven different parties to allow both families to thoroughly get to know each other. today, that tradition is not carried on because, in the words of my friend, it’s quite tiresome in today’s modern world.

the party i attended was the first one. it was the ‘get to know one another’ party. while it is not fitting with the tradition of the lunar new year, it did seem to work out nicely.

the two families had never met each other before and they gathered at the house of the soon-to-be bride. her house was located on a large island in the middle of the river. it is an incredibly placid place. the trees all seem to sway slowly. the air is very fresh. the sounds of motorcycles are all drowned out by the breadth of the river. it is a farming island and it truly is one of the few slices of paradise left.

the two families stood next to one another on the front lawn of her house trying their best to make conversation. it was interesting, the way they talked was as if they were two families that used to know each other long ago and were finally getting reacquainted. in my experience, vietnamese nationalism views every member of their nation as a member of the same family. i stood around all morning and afternoon and watched two long lost brothers reunite. it’s really difficult to explain. i guess some would feel the same in the mennonite community back home. there we have a tight knit group of people that all have a relatively similar background. in a way, that’s the same thing i see here.

the first day of the new year.

and everything stopped.

i walked outside and the road was absolutely deserted. a road that is normally teaming with motorcycles and bicycles stood silent and barren. the sides of the road were lined with vietnamese flags. there were hundreds of flags all barely floating in the wind.

the first day of the new year, as i am experiencing it, is a solitary time for families. most families end up at home watching television and spending time talking to one another. there is no important meal and lunch and dinner are both large.

yesterday night and afternoon i was invited over to a friend’s house to experience lunar new year’s eve. the afternoon meal was large and was enjoyed only by men. we sat outside in a narrow alley around a foldable table. that particular meal ended up lasting most of the afternoon. we ate until about four, took a brief nap on rock hard beds and then began preparing for the evening meal. we ate the evening meal (this time with the women) and were finished by about 7. from 7 until midnight, i went exploring long xuyen with my friend.

the meals were, to say the least, a gastronomical experience not easily forgotten. the food was wonderful but the amount that was forced on me was staggering. you were presented with a problem. you didn’t want to be rude so you ate all the food that was in front of you. when the host presented you with more food because he didn’t want to be rude, you ended up having to eat that too. when you said you were full, the host didn’t quite know if he believed you. he was afraid you were just being polite. so, with a gorged stomach already, you are offered a gigantic piece of bloody beef. yes, you eat it slowly and loosen your belt.

the town was very excited to welcome the year of the monkey. the streets were packed with motorcycles and the town square was decorated with flags, banners and other patriotic things. at one point, there was a fireworks show. for some reason, the show was held at about 9:30 instead of midnight. it lasted for about 20 minutes and, wherever you were driving your motorcycle, you were forced to stop. whether you wanted to see the show or not, traffic was a chaotic log jam. we sat in the middle of a bridge on my friend’s motorcycle watching the sputtering and smoking of the low flying fireworks.

we also saw a traditional dragon dance outside of the chinese association. about 10 young men all wear the same uniform and hold a large stick which supports a part of the dragon. the head is held by a very experienced dragon dancer. they run around and follow set patterns of movement all to the beat of a gigantic drum and what looks like an old pot painted white.

after the show, we went to my friend’s neighbor’s home. he trades gold and spent most of the night talking about how much he bought and sold of this or that and what the going rate was for such and such. he was very well off. we sat on small plastic stools on the side of the road for about an hour. at five minutes until midnight, we went inside to wish the family a happy new year.

we sat in front of the television and watched the crowds in ha noi and ho chi minh city. we counted down with everyone and yelled when it was the new year. this entire country stayed up until 12:00 midnight to welcome january 22nd.

because i was an honorary member of the family, i was given lucky money. this was a huge honor bestowed upon me and i was quite grateful. i was the second person to receive lucky money because i am the second oldest child. after receiving the lucky money and wishing my ‘parents’ a happy new year and luck, prosperity and old age and what not, we went into the alter room of the house.

i was given incense and asked to pray.

they had a number of alters throughout the room, some dedicated to ancestral veneration, others dedicated to some gods but the alter i prayed at was on the balcony. it was a small alter at the top of the balcony’s railing. on it were two oranges, a can of pepsi and a place to put the incense after you prayed. to my left, just about at eye level and half an arms length away, there was a vietnamese flag fluttering in the wind. i looked out on the naked streets and felt the cool air mix with the musty smoke from the incense. i thanked god for life. i thanked him for everything he did for me. i thanked her for making it so beautiful and so horrible.

next, as my eyes were failing me and i was looking to go to bed, my new family went to the pagoda to pray for the new year.

the pagoda was very, very crowded. the smoke from the incense was so thick that it was hard to keep your eyes open at parts. the smoke literally billowed out of the front door. people believe that the smoke is the vehicle which carries your prayers up to heaven and, in that pagoda, there was a traffic jam of prayers just looking for a way out. i went home and my shirt smelled like prayers.

we prayed a couple of times and watched people mill around. my friend wanted to take my picture and is took next to a giant alter dedicated to uncle ho and had a picture snapped. it should be a good one. i went home and fell into a deep sleep.

this morning, i was woken up, oh, maybe 15 times by the phone. it started at 6. then, ever twenty minutes or so, i received a phone call from another person wishing me a happy new year.

since i am a member of my friend’s family, i went over to their house and was invited for lunch. because i am a member, i didn’t have to worry about being the first person to walk through their door and either bring them good or bad luck. i went inside and listened to the father explain why he thought our meeting was fate.

he told me about buddhist principles and about how one person had many different lives. he talked about how strange it was that i would end up in long xuyen and how strange it was that i would end up at his house. he said it was fate that brought me there and that, in a previous life, i was either a member of their family, or a very good friend of the family. i listened to his perspective and found it fascinating. he thoroughly believed it and i was tempted to do so too. he said that, since i was a member of the family, i should have a vietnamese name. i told him i had a vietnamese name given to me by a waiter on the way to ho chi minh city, nguyen quoc minh, or someone who’s proud of my country. it’s tongue in cheek. he said i needed a new name that would be in line with the family. i was given the name ho minh tri, or intelligent one. i will go back to their house for supper tonight and find their hospitality to be overwhelming.

tet is turning out to be christmas times 10.

the final day of the year of the goat.

this morning, the roads are completely packed with motorcycles. people are all traveling and bringing things to other people’s houses. it’s chaotic.

the last day before the new year is very important. every family will sit down at about 100 in the afternoon and ‘eat tet’. it’s basically a giant christmas meal that will last all afternoon and will only be with your family, no friends are ever invited.

this meal and the few days after tet have always had quite a mysterious allure to them. last year i was not invited to ‘eat tet’ with any families because i hadn’t formed any meaningful relationships with any families yet. this year, however, i have been invited to ‘eat tet’ with a number of families and choose the family who was by far the mot traditional. to be invited to ‘eat tet’, the family must decide to make you an honorary member for a day.

we will eat and then, after midnight, go to a pagoda and pray for the new year.

the first day of the new year is to be only spent with your family. you’re not supposed to visit any friends and you should stay at home. if you visit friends, it’s disrespectful. the second day is a time when you’re supposed to visit your ancestral homeland. the third day is a day to visit teachers and friends.

one of the reasons that having a stranger in your home over tet is so unique is that people believe that the first person that walks in your house after the new year will, depending if they are important, lucky or unimportant, bring them a prosperous or an unlucky year. the first person is very, very important to most families and that’s why they don’t want strangers in their house when the new year arrives. they have to declare that you’re a member of their family so that you will not be that person. i am excited to experience something so exclusive and will provide actual facts tomorrow. right now i can only relate what i’ve been told, i’ve never actually felt it.

the 29th day of the last month of the lunar new year. one day before tet eve.

today i was invited over to a friend’s house to make different kinds of rice cakes that are very traditional for tet. it’s like being invited over to someone’s house to make christmas cookies.

the process of making ‘banh tet’ and ‘banh trung’ is extremely time consuming. making cookies takes, including going to the supermarket, mixing the dough, cooking and letting them rise, a couple of hours, maybe more. making tet cake and trung cake takes more than a day of solid labor. i only took part in the last stages of the process.

it all starts with the mother or one of the girls going to the market. they must buy green beans, rice, beans, palm leaves, banana leaves, rope made from banana trees, pork, salted eggs and probably some other things. this must be done two days before the tet cake and trung cake are actually put together. that night the mother must boil the green beans and make them into a kind of paste. the past has a similar consistency with pie dough, except it is a bit stickier. the green bean paste must sit and solidify. the next night the mother (or daughter) must prepare the sticky rice. i have no idea how this is done, i only know the final product is a mound of sticky, white grains of rice with mushy, red beans interspersed throughout.

after the two major ingredients are finished, the actual process of cooking the cake can begin.

i arrived at my friend’s house at 7 in the morning to find his father sitting on the front porch with a giant palm leaf at his feet. he was preparing the moulds for the tet cake. tet cake is much more popular in the north of vietnam and that is where he originated from. it is square in shape, about six inches across and an inch high. the outside of the cake is made out of a variety of leaves. he would cut leaves off of the branch, trim them down and fashion a perfect box using only toothpicks. i was impressed.

inside, the mother and the rest of the family was getting ready to prepare the center for the trung cake. the trung cake is more popular in the south and is shaped like a cylinder. it is about as long as a football and as thick as a soda can.

the inside of the trung cake are made from the green bean mash and bacon-like pork. they call it ‘three level pork’ because it has to have fat, meat and skin on it to taste good. you take the bean mush and ball it around in your hand. at first, i was not very willing to mush it too hard because i always remembered my mother scolding me when i played with the pie dough (‘play with it as little as possible so the crust is more flakey.’) well, they mashed it and ploughed it around with their hands until they had a baseball sized clump. then, they put it on a banana leaf and rolled it into a thin cylinder. they then spread the inside out, placed a long strip of bacon in the middle and rolled it up entirely. the bacon was completely concealed in the green bean mush. i did this a few times but was not very good at it.

the father was now finished with his tet cake boxes and we were to begin forming them. the first thing you do is take a banana leaf, wipe it with a rag and place it at the bottom of the box horizontally. then you place another leaf vertically making sure that they fit snugly. you place the last leave diagonally. it’s a little like making origami except that you will end up filling the origami with food and then will cook it for an entire afternoon over an open fire. a bit tedious.

the bottom layer is sticky rice. one bowl. you have to mash it down in the corners to make sure it’s a good foundation. the second layer is green bean mush which is flattened into small, square pancakes and is, once again, mashed into the corners. the third layer is a few big chunks of pork which are unceremoniously plopped in. the fourth layer is the green bean mush and the final layer is the sticky rice. you end up with an odd rice bean pork mixture wrapped in a nice, green origami box.

on top, you have to be careful to fold the banana leaves around the rice entirely to prevent water. you then wrap the whole thing up tightly with rope made from the banana leaf.

the trung cake is made in a slightly different way. the rice is plopped and made into a rectangle on a piece of banana leaf. the green bean cylinder is placed in the middle and the two sides are wrapped around it. when tying it off with the rope, you must put one end in your mouth, wrap it around the cake two times and pull as tightly as possible.

we made about 6 tet cakes (the square ones) and about 10 trung cakes. it took us the entire morning and, by the end, we were exhausted. i was in charge of making two trung cakes and we’ll see if they turn out. they’re still cooking.

before we had lunch, the father went outside and made a small fire in his front lawn. he put six bricks around the fire and we filled a large pan with the cakes and water. a fire was built and one of the sons was put in charge. he had to watch the fire and the pan all afternoon. it took about 5 hours to cook.

so, i made christmas cookies here except i found it to be a lot more time consuming. i wonder how a tradition like that would last in the states. who would spend two to three days preparing a pot of food? while i did spend an entire morning sitting around on a kitchen floor slowly preparing food, i also learned about the fascinating lives of five other people i probably would have never met in my life.

the 28th day of the last month of the lunar year.

vietnam follows the lunar calander that was brought down from china. many words also come from china and there is a third, hybrid language that meshes the two. it is called ‘han viet’ which is used sparcely in formal situations to describe things.

in the lunar calander, there are twelve different animals and every year is named after an animal. i, for example, being born in 1980, am a monkey. the twelve years go from the most important to the least important. also, each year is given a distinguishing name. there are 10 different names to distinguish the different years. the meaning of these different distinguishing names is not clear. i can not find any clear definitions in the dictionary, and i can not find any clear definitions when i asked people.

the combination of 12 animals and 10 distinguishing words repeats itself every 60 years. for example, i am a ‘canh than’ or a ‘canh monkey’ and the next time we will see that year is in 2040, or when i turn 60 years old. on the 60th birthday, there is a very large party that is held which is called the ‘le mung tho’ party. that means the ‘celebration to welcome the tho god.’ the tho god is the god of old age and wisdom. if you have achieved 60 years, you have officially lived through the cycle of your life. here, i will give a list of the different years (in ‘han viet’) and what animal it is. you can figure out for yourself what animal you are and what your distinguishing word is. i will ignore all tones so, for example, you’ll see ‘ty’ and ‘ty’ but they are very different tones and thus have distinct meanings.

vietnamese -- english
1983 quy hoi -- quy pig
1982 nham tuat -- nham dog
1981 tan dau -- tan chicken
1980 canh than -- canh monkey
1979 ky mui -- ky goat
1978 mau ngo -- mau horse
1977 dinh ty -- dinh snake
1976 binh thinh -- binh dragon
1975 at meo -- at cat
1974 giap dan -- giap tiger
1973 quy suu -- quy buffalo
1972 nham ty -- nham rat
1971 tan hoi -- tan pig
1970 canh tuat -- canh dog
1969 ky dau -- ky chicken
1968 mau than -- mau monkey
1967 dinh mui -- kinh goat
1966 binh ngo -- binh horse
1965 at ty -- at snake

the rat is the highest ranking animal and the pig is the lowest ranking. you can trace this back to your birthday remembering that there are 10 distinguishing words and 12 animals. oh, and ‘canh’, as a distinguishing word is not lucky. i was not born in an unlucky year.

the 27th day of the last month of the lunar new year.

today i went with a friend to venerate his ancestors. i was told to be at their house at 700 and that his father had a car. no one has a car here and this thoroughly confused me.

when i arrived, i was delighted, surprised and couldn’t stop laughing. the car was a french ‘citroen’ from maybe 1950. the father said it was brought to vietnam in 1960 but couldn’t say exactly when it was manufactured. my mother had told me about these cars from when she studied in germany. she said they called them ‘flying nuns’. the cars are squat and curvy, but not in a sensual way. the wheel hubs are gigantic and stretch out horizontally from the body of the car. when you look at the car from the front, you see two giant bug-eye lights protruding from a tiny grill, a hood that is tapered for some reason, gigantic wheel hubs and a tiny cab with a large vietnamese man behind a gigantic steering wheel. i was afforded the front passenger seat because of my height and we were off. to shift gears in this relic of a car, one must pull out a black leaver and turn it. i didn’t quite figure it out and whenever gears were changed, there was a reassuring mashing noise resonating from somewhere beneath us. we drove slowly to their ancestors home land with my hand hanging out of the window and my head hitting the ceiling on every bump.

we arrived on a small, dirt road that runs parallel to a canal of the mekong. there were two largish houses to my right and many older people standing around drinking tea. we walked towards the group and greeted everyone.

we gathered plastic bags full of fruit, bread and other snacks and headed off towards the jungle. walking through the jungle is fascinating and i always end up being on guard for some reason. the ground is formed and clay-like. it does not form a smooth path, but rather a path that is covered in miniature clumps of clay that have been dried and packed by the sun and human feet.

we arrived at the tomb of my friend’s family. it sits in the middle of a beautiful rice paddy that is surrounded on all sides by majestic trees. the tomb is a fairly large, fenced in area with two off-white tombs about three feet off of the ground sitting parallel with each other. between them is a small alter. the tombs are in the half of the fenced in area that is covered with a roof and each tomb has a picture of the deceased on it. it has been half reclaimed by the jungle when we came to visit.

there were large vines growing on both of the tombs. they crept up from the floor and were making a vain attempt to retake the jungle floor. we used a machete and chopped them away. we swept and cleaned and made the tomb look perfect. everyone lit incense and prayed at a small alter.

we went up the path to another set of tombs. this was the extended family. i was shown the tomb of the great-great grandfather who was the founder of the family. he came down to vietnam back in the late 1800’s from china. he had one wife who died and he married another. his tomb was old and made of ornate concrete. he was a very rich man.

all of the men stood around the tombs talking about those that came before them and those that will come after them and the whole system really started to make sense. they do not pray and ask for favors, or protection. they pray to remember and to be remembered. i believe the simple fact that the whole family walks out to the tombs and looks at the grainy black and white pictures is just as important as the actual prayer. to remember those that came before you, to remember their pains and their joys will inevitably help you in your own life. there are lessons to be learned.

i thought about my family at home. my home is a small town about an hour from philadelphia. my family’s church is located not two hundred yards up a hill and every time you set foot on our dining room balcony, you are faced with a sloping cemetery. i remember many sunday diners where my father, some of my great aunts and my grandparents would walk up to the church and mull through the grayish white stones. they would tell stories and remember the people. i remember going with them a few times and, as i grew up, appreciating the stories more and more.

today we returned from our venerating and i was given a tour of the town. it turns out that their great-great grandfather was very wealthy and had the first house built of stone in this province. the remains of the house were still there. there was a gigantic wall with intricate carvings all over it. there were high, arching windows. it was a beautiful wall, but something was wrong. there was only one wall, the rest of the house was missing. the wall that remained looked very sturdy and there were a number of bamboo houses built around it.

back in 1945, the french were raping the vietnamese countryside and also bringing ‘civilization’. they were very concerned with groups that fought against them and one of these groups was the ‘viet minh’ (a predecessor to the viet cong). well, back in 1945, the french were trying to take a firmer grip on their land after being kicked off of it by the japanese in wwii. they ended up burning this gorgeous house because the owner, my friend’s great-great grandfather, sympathized with them. now, all that is left is the charred remains of what must have been one of the most beautiful houses in the mekong.

our day ended and most of the family told me the story of the burnt house. i’ll have to return to take pictures. we said goodbye to everyone, hoped in our french ‘citroen’ drove past the charred remains, and headed home.

the 26th day of the last month of the lunar new year.

spring has finally arrived. in all of the coffee shops you can hear songs officially decreeing it’s coming and we are all appreciative. the songs are numerous and everyone is excited.

however, it doesn’t feel like spring has arrived. the weather used to be hot, but bearable. there were a few days in the ‘winter’ where i felt as if i could shiver if i was drenched in cold water and held naked in front of a breeze. since then, the sun has been shining brighter and we all wear hats and sweat whenever possible. the temperature has been consistently climbing.

it doesn’t feel like spring back home where we finally all awake from our deep, winter slumber and find ourselves in a new and beautiful season. the grass is green, the trees are in bloom and everything is wonderful. even the air smells fresher.

however, the importance of spring coming here is different from america. sure, when i ask people if they notice a change in the seasons they will throw back their heads, think for a while and mention something about a slight temperature change or humidity alteration, but spring is really a time to welcome the lunar new year.

this spring, as all springs before, there is a beautiful ‘spring flower market’ set up in the middle of town. the flower market stretches out along side a wide and lazily flowing branch of the mekong river. there are two giant signs that welcome you to the market. they stand like triumphal arches stretching across busy streets. they are sturdily constructed of wood and concrete and proclaim the arrival of spring in vibrant yellow letters on a red background. they are lit at night and look quite professional.

the market is cluttered with different vendors selling all sorts of flowers and small, banzi trees. i know names for a variety of flowers, but couldn’t match the name of the flower up with how the flower actually appeared. the flowers may be chrysanthemum, petunias and orchids, but i wouldn’t know (i do know what a rose is. that’s about it.) they are yellow, for the most part, and have thick heads that point squarely to the sky. some are red, pink and white, but they are few. the vendors have their flowers lined up neatly and organized into types. people mull through the market and look at the flowers. flowers bring peace.

there are also bonzi trees. some of the trees are gigantic and are taller than me. they are squat and well groomed into odd shapes. some of the bonzi trees are blooming small, yellow flowers. some of the bonzi trees are squat and have few leaves resembling a stump that somehow sprung back to life. some of the trees look like a nest of roots with an odd green leaf protruding. the bonzi trees are expensive.

i walk through the flower market slowly and try to ignore the stares. this time of the year brings everyone together and families come in droves to buy yellow and red flowers for their homes (the two luckiest colors for tet). seeing them all crowd around plants and decide which one would look best in what part of the house reminds me a lot of shopping for christmas trees with my family. i have wonderful memories of walking through fields and supermarket parking lots picking out the best evergreen for our living room. these families are partaking in a wonderfully similar experience choosing the best bunch of yellow flowers that all point their bushy heads straight towards the sky to place in the corner of their living room this holiday season.

the 25th day of the last month of the lunar new year.

mass student exodus from campus. they leave in droves and mill about waiting for a motorcycle taxi to pick them up. they have their backpacks slung over their shoulders and are all beaming and talking constantly as if they have an extra source of energy that magically appeared in the past few days. it’s like christmas and thanksgiving all rolled up into one and sprinkled with a bit of the fourth of july.

they do not live far from here but most come from poor families and thus do not have access to a motorbike. they live in surrounding villages and will return for two weeks to enjoy life with their family. they’re, for the most part, going to be returning celebrities. in an area with a population of about 20,000,000 people and two universities, those that do go to school are the cream of the crop. they will return and the whole village will greet them and they’ll walk around in freshly pressed shirts tucked into dress pants beaming and passing out nuggets of wisdom. now they’re just waiting for a bus to take them. they wait and beam.

going home is the most important thing anyone can do over the lunar new year. a family must be together, they must eat together, they must celebrate together.

i drive my motorcycle around town and lazily drink coffee in this or that coffee shop. i have made friends with hundreds of waitresses and thousands of motorcycle taxi drivers. at my favorite coffee shop, this will be a typical pre-tet conversation.

‘what are you drinking?’ (the waitress knows but she asks anyways. she stands politely and doesn’t smile. she means to show me respect.)

‘iced coffee’

(she brings the coffee.)

‘teacher jon, (once again with the respect) are you going home for the tet holiday or will you stay in long xuyen?’

‘i will stay in long xuyen. i don’t have enough money to go home.’ (that’s my textbook excuse. i’m going to be going home this summer and that will be a lot more important than going home randomly at the end of january for a couple of weeks to enjoy snow, ice and, most likely, various illnesses related to the weather.)

‘so, you will enjoy the tet holiday in long xuyen?’

‘yes. i will eat at some friend’s house and relax.’

‘teacher jon, i’m sure you will be very sad to be so far away from your family. i hope you are not bored here.’

‘i’m sure i will have fun. i wish you a new year of prosperity, health and success in everything you do.’

‘i wish you the same.’ (by this time her boss is glaring menacingly over at her for interrupting my coffee and she scurries away. such is life.)

so, the question that is brought up so many times is whether or not i will be going home to spend tet with my family. tet truly is more important than christmas. families are, in general more important over here. to spend tet away from home should be eating a hole somewhere deep inside of me. i should be depressed and out of my mind. but, just thinking about home at the end of january makes me want to sit out on my hammock and enjoy the balmy breeze blowing through the palm trees.

i think i’ll have coconut juice for lunch and maybe will order a few slices of juicy, ripe mango.

(i know that my family always has problems meeting up with our extended relatives on christmas because of the logistical problem of choosing between going to the wife or husband’s family. here, that is not a problem. upon marriage, the wife is officially a part of the husband’s family. it’s as if the family adopts another member and every future tet, she will spend with her husband’s family.)

the 24th day of the last month of the lunar new year.

you can feel the excitement of tet burning somewhere on the horizon. people are noticeably more jovial and the petty problems of life do not seem to weigh so heavily on their collective conscience. tomorrow is the last day of school. we will have off for the next two weeks.

while we don’t have to actually go to school and teach and what not, we will still be expected to participate in all of the tet activities. we will be asked to go to countless parties (four this friday alone) and visit a number of houses for general chatting and an opportunity to me so-and-so’s parents.

today i held my final american studies class for the next two months. it is a lecture class given to 104 of the seniors and, when it was all over, i wished them a happy, successful and lucky new year. everyone stood up and clapped and cheered and generally felt good about what was to come.

while nothing particularly interesting happened today regarding tet, i would like to comment on some of the other gods that have been imported and accepted into vietnamese culture from china. today i would like to talk about the god of earth (ong dia) and the god of money (ong than tai).

the god of earth is a very fat man that is usually sitting cross legged on some sort of a bowl. he is extra rotund, thus symbolizing the effect of earth and mass. he is jovial, and smiling. in the picture at the bottom, he is the man on the right. when people here build houses, they must go and pray to the earth god for security. it is his good will that will make sure the house stands the test of time and weather.

the god on the left is the god of money. this is an important god if one wants to lead a very comfortable life. people often pray and light an incense stick to him whenever the need arises.

the alter pictured at the bottom is a very typical scene in most people’s homes. it normally sits in a fairly conspicuous place. the tigers on the left and right of the earth and money gods represent the different gods mode of transportation. some gods ride on tigers, others lions. in the middle of the two gods is a small place to burn incense. the smoke of the incense is what actually carries the prayers up to the gods. in the front, there are offerings of tea.

people here are fairly superstitious but they never really let that get in the way of their lives. while they will pray to the earth god when they want to build a house, they will also not let their belief in the earth god dictate too much of what is going on. bills still must be paid, food still must be purchased from the market and life continues.

23rd day of the last month of the lunar year.

the day of the kitchen god has arrived. the kitchen god, ong tao, returned to heaven at around 12:00 this noon to tell all the other gods what’s going on at home.

the kitchen god sits in the kitchen all year watching what the family does. he sees the good things, the bad things and records it all in a little book of some sorts. there is not statue for the kitchen god because no one knows exactly what he looks like. most other gods do have a statue to commemorate them. there is, however, an alter in most people’s houses somewhere in the kitchen. my friend allowed me to see the alter in his kitchen and take a picture of it. it is a small, incense holder with a plaque behind.

the kitchen god will return to the kitchen on the first day of the lunar new year. he will have told the gods all of the goings on in the kitchen and the family’s fate will be determined based on their past actions. if they were good, they’ll have a lucky year. if there was too much fighting or food wasted, the year won’t be that great, or possibly worse.

there is also a legend about the kitchen god. it goes like this: a long, long time ago there was a female kitchen god who fell in love with two male kitchen gods. she kept both loves a secret and the male kitchen gods were in the dark. one fateful day, when she was in the kitchen (presumably) with one of the male kitchen gods, the other male kitchen god decided he would stop over for something to eat (also, presumably). when she saw the other male kitchen god coming, she quickly ran and make the other male kitchen god that was already in her house go and hide. he hid in a pile of straw. the other male kitchen god came into the house and didn’t notice anything was awry. he chatted a bit with the female kitchen god and went outside. he lit the straw on fire. (this point was not clearly explained to me. i’m sure there was a reason for him lighting the straw on fire. i don’t know.) the male kitchen god that was hiding in the straw died. when the female kitchen god saw this, she quickly ran outside and dove in the pile of straw to try to save the other kitchen god. she also died. when the other male kitchen god saw his love dive into the fire, he also dove in and tried to save her. they all ended up perishing in the fire. this is one reason there is no statue to commemorate the kitchen god. he was burnt beyond recognition in the fire.

today, these three lovers can be found in the kitchen. they are represented by the three prongs that rise from the grill to support the pot. the three prongs represent the three kitchen gods and they will forever be remembered in millions of homes that cook with gas and happen to have a grill with three prongs that supports pots and pans and what not. the female kitchen god is always the middle prong.

so, the kitchen god returned to heaven to tell all of our little secrets. he will be away until the lunar new year arrives, in whole one week.

i asked people how much they believed in the god and i don’t get a very straight answer. my feeling is that it is just a part of tradition that people are happy to follow. it’s a day that brings the whole family together and a day to remind everyone to be good or else next year won’t be lucky at all.






this is a picture of the alter in my friend’s kitchen. the stove is located directly to it’s left. incense is normally burnt in the mornings and afternoons. the plaque is there to commemorate ‘ong tao’.

my time on this earth is short, so i need to finish this before i’m finished. i have been given everything in life. i have enough money. i have enough food. i have friends and do not have any disgusting physical features. things were looking up when i was born. i was born in a country that was experiencing a wonderful string of prosperity. nothing could possibly have gone wrong. that was the naïve assumption. things did go wrong and they did so on so many different levels.

i started my life as any one of the thousands that share my generation. we were born in mid-sized houses on roads that you could play on. life was peaceful and worries were trite. when i was a child, my biggest concern was whether or not the fat kid from up the road would invite me and my brother to play nintendo in his basement. he normally didn’t and i still resent him for it. my parents had larger worries, but they were all trivial when one looked at the big picture. food was always available, so much so that we all had to watch what we ate. entertainment was mesmerizing. i could sit in front of the television for hours and watch nothing at all. i could sit there and just loft off into another realm. we had two cars and they were respectable. one was a chevy cavalier. it was blue.

as i grew up, i came to confront the same issues and problems that so many people of my generation confronted. we watched the cool kids start to date and were envious. we wore the same clothes as the cool kids in a vain attempt to be as cool as they were. we studied in school because we had to; bad grades meant that things would not be smooth at home and who wanted to miss bob sagot and t.g.i.f. on friday night. we made fun of other kids to make ourselves feel better. it was wonderful and we would giggle and smirk for hours quietly in the corner about someone’s latest classroom blunder.

then we hit puberty. girls became something mysterious and wonderful and they were the tribal status symbol. for me, puberty was terrible. i was, what is kindly referred to, as a ‘late bloomer’. in laymen’s terms, that’s a nice way to say ‘a boy who was made fun of because he was too short, didn’t have hair on his legs and his voice was distinctly higher than anyone else in the clan.’ we all learned how to survive those years. we all learned how to avoid the high school bully and how to get out of study hall. at that moment, i didn’t think life could get any worse.

college came and overnight we became adults. we were now in the same class as all the older brothers and sisters of friends who came home with long hair and dirty clothes. we were something wonderful to behold, like a picture of some celestial body exploding. here we were taught ideas that would shake us for our entire lives. we were taught things that didn’t have answers, questions that were more like cruel jokes staring up at us from humanities text books. questions that no one ever had an answer for and that no one ever would be able to clearly understand. we sat for hours and talked about god and government and love and what not. none of it was fruitful, except it made us feel good. in college we were all intellectual stars and bantered back and forth and rated the worth of everything. some subjects were not discussable. some things were rated as being too intellectual for any of us to bother touching, as if we would have to devote our entire lives to the study of one subject and inevitably grow irrevocably un-cool. as in high school, making fun of others was allowed. this time we understood and could identify that it was a way to hide underlying insecurities and, even after outlining that fact, we still partook in the activity because it did make us feel so much better about ourselves and had very few side-effects.

we were also told to care about things. we were told stories about poor countries and poor people and even poorer souls searching for simple things we took for granted. our hearts were filled with compassion for this or that injustice. we were going to go out and change all that. we were going to make the world different and it wouldn’t be a matter of time before all of our screams would be heard. it, however, became evident that our screams would only be heard as the final death rattle of youth. they would not be taken seriously, only as a precursor to growing up. the scream was our communal entry into young-adulthood.

we were made to question everything. we were given simple things and told to weigh their value, their authority. we were asked to question the teacher, the system, the school. without questions, nothing would ever be accomplished. this lead to a total abandonment of truth, for nothing could be firmly rooted if it was barraged with questions because everything, inevitably, had a flaw. we grew sarcastic, and wonderfully so.

we were told to love our country, our system, with all our hearts. the television told us that. the television and old people. we were told that it was pure, unique and proudly benevolent. however, we were told this after we were told to question everything and no one could seriously accept this as fact in any way. all you had to do was look briefly at history to develop a keen taste for hypocrisy.

so, as with all of those in my generation, i came through college believing nothing and everything at the same time. i was, like socrates before me, sure that no one was wise, as i was not wise. however, that in itself was wisdom, to some extent. i was sophomoric but i knew so. i knew the world was not clear and that i could never define or change it. where did i go from here? where does my generation go from here? after being blessed with all, we have no clear direction. after being blessed with all, we still have problems that must be resolved. after being blessed with all, we still have the nagging questions that have no answer.

i type, not to be heard, to be relieved.

i sat at a table with two vietnamese friends tonight and fell in love with a girl.

one of my friends used to go to school with this girl. he said he used to sell papers and candy with her in the streets to make enough money to get by. he talked about how smart she was. they graduated from the same class, ranked one and two. it was a class of 210 students. they were both clearly headed somewhere.

the other man was in love with this girl more than anyone else. we sat and talked about her. his mind wandered as he recounted how wonderful she was slowly, methodically. she knew six languages. she sent him emails in spanish and i translated them into vietnamese. she was studying for her doctorate in canada after finishing a masters program in only 8 months.

he talked about her and didn’t look into anyone’s eyes. he looked straight up at the sky. he talked about her emails and he talked about how much he loved her and i was spellbound. these two men bantered back and forth about how wonderful she was and i ended up falling for her.

i was trapped. one man would ask me whether or not he thought the other man was in love with her. the other man would ask me would ask me the same question. this woman was evidently so attractive that i couldn’t help but fall for her. she was so smart and so successful that anyone would have fallen for her as quickly as all of us had around a meager table with such meager things to eat as rice and iced tea.

i was in love with a girl from vietnam who studied in florida and who knew six languages. i don't think it'll work out long term, though.

there are two places to go in long xuyen if you want to eat. they’re called ‘lang toi’ and ‘tre xanh’ (my homeland and green bamboo, respectively). the other day the boss of the two restaurants came by my house. he invited me to eat at his restaurant with him.

eating at a restaurant with the owner is a once in a lifetime experience. anything you want is a whistle away. if you want this dish or that dish, simply ask for it. the entire staff is there to serve you. they don’t want to lose their jobs.

he told me that i could come back and cook an american dish if i wished. i was more than happy to. with no ovens, one of the only dishes i could think of was bbq ribs.

i went on the internet to find a good recipe. i bought some of the ingredients (i was forewarned that the staff would help me with any ingredients that were fairly basic) and headed off to the restaurant.

at the restaurant, i was a king. i had five people who where there to do anything i wished. i told one man to chop garlic, another man to cook a piece of pork, another man to chop onions and so on. everyone was working and it was incredible. i didn’t do a thing. we told the people to watch the bbq sauce for about two hours while we sat and chatted. he did everything i told him and stirred it every five minutes.

after two hours, the sauce was ready. a small man in a plaid shirt came out to tell me. he asked me what we should do next.

‘do you have any pork ribs?’

‘yes sir, we do.’ (they’re very respectful)

‘good. chop them up into pieces about this size (i show him my thumb) and grill them for a few minutes.’

‘ok sir.’

(after about 10 minutes)

‘sir, they are finished.’

‘good. now coat them in bbq sauce and grill them again. coat them a second time and grill. serve them to us with french fries and some small bowls of the bbq sauce.’

everything was done exactly as i asked. the cooks worked in the back as customers streamed in. we sat at our table eating everything in sight. it was incredible.

the ribs were good but, for a moment, i felt like a chef. when i was in the seventh grade, i had a science fair project. it was a good project and it was nominated for the county prize. when we went to the county exhibition, i was interviewed on television and was asked what i would like to do with my life. i didn’t exactly know how to respond, and i said i would like to be a chef. i said it, and i believed it. i wanted to live in a kitchen and cook all day. i wanted to tell people what to do and i wanted it done. for one day, i was a chef. for one day, i cooked something with an army of staff and it was glorious. i ate the ribs and sauce dripped from my chin. i ate the ribs and smiled.

this is my vietnamese name in chinese. my vietnamese name is ‘nguyen quoc minh’. it was given to me by a waitress when i was traveling to ho chi minh city. one of my friends is a chinese doctor. below the chinese characters is the vietnamese pronunciation.

to sit on my balcony in this weather is a balmy dream. to lay on my hammock and stare up at the sky is bliss. to sway with the wind and listen to the palm trees blow and move is like, for a moment, being in some remote part of heaven.

at one point there were a couple of clouds relaxing in blue space. they slowly moved away and the sky was all mine. the giant palm trees that stand twenty feet from my window stand guard and sway. the trunks of the trees are gigantic, maybe 60 feet tall, and their leaves are giant hands that wave up and down making an odd rustling noise.

jota, my dog, enjoys the time with me too. he sits on the floor under my head. he rests his head on his hands and stretches his feet off at an odd angle. he sighs and looks content.

there are no bugs this afternoon, the sun is not shining to brightly and the wind is sporadic and peaceful. i could lay in my blue hammock all day listening to each minute pass and fade. no one comes to visit me, my phone doesn’t ring and, for some reason, the motorcycles that bullishly destroy the peace with honking and revving have quieted for a moment. maybe they are all sitting on similar baloneys watching the sky and thinking about nothing. how wonderful not to have a thought in your head for a moment. just a moment of peace in an otherwise inhospitable existence.

here, in the sunny, tropical heat of vietnam, the best time to shower is from 10:00-3:00 in the morning/afternoon.

my bathroom has one pale blue showerhead flimsily attached to the wall. the head is connected to a nozzle about a foot off the ground. there is one knob i can turn to make water come out. there is no red knob and, when i arrived, i never thought there would be any use for one. i thought cool, refreshing showers would be the only thing i would ever need to take. who wouldn’t want to take a cool shower after walking around in hundred degree weather with million percent humidity?

i used to take showers in the morning. i would stumble into the bathroom, grumble something to myself in the small, six inch square mirror i have on the bathroom wall and hop in. it would be cold but anyone could easily handle it after sweating through the night.

agh, how things have changed.

i can no longer stand to take showers in the morning. i find them painfully cold and miserable. i end up walking around my warm room shivering and wet. i end up pathetic.

here are some tips for grooming and bathing once you have acclimated yourself to the climate here:
-take showers after your morning classes are over.
-amble into the bathroom and lather your face with shaving cream.
-shave slowly and pay close attention because the mirror is so small and razors are normally sharp.
-if you cut yourself while shaving, no matter, take a shower, enjoy the strange burning sensation and thank the heavens that you are still alive and can feel pain.
-do not run the water continuously because that’s terrible and annoys me greatly when you’re shaving.
-turn the shower on and watch the dog run under the bed. he knows that when the shower is running there is about a 20% chance that i will try to shoo him from under the bed and make him stand in the bathtub with his ears down and his tail between his legs looking thoroughly humiliated while i bath him with scented shampoo and assert my authority as the alpha male in said relationship.
-enjoy the warm water that is heated by the sun. the water canisters are located on the roof and they’re made out of something silver and the sun does a great job of warming them up.
-wash thoroughly as your mother taught you when you were a child and played in the bubble bath with little toys.
-wash your hair and behind your ears.
-towel off and smile at yourself in the mirror. remember that you cut yourself while shaving and you have a small red patch of raw skin under your lip. take a small piece of toilet paper and put it on the cut. remember all the sunday mornings you ate breakfast with your father when he had a similar piece of bloody tissue somewhere on his face. look longingly up at the corner of the room in a fruitless hope to harness a memory and take it for a ride. remember that you will never be as old as your father and that you are, buy all accounts, invincible.
-change into clean clothes and go about your daily activities.
-repeat this at least once a day, or any time you are quite sweaty and/or stinky.

senseless self aggrandizement:

if you would like, you can nominate me for best asian blog at this website here.

sometimes you eat lunch only because you know you won’t have another chance to eat until supper. you’re not really hungry, you only eat out of habit. other times, you eat lunch and your stomach is screaming out to you from inside your belly. it yells and bubbles and churns and begs for food. today was one of those days.

after eating a small bowl of rice for breakfast and working all morning, one tends to be extremely hungry by about 11:30. during the semester, we normally eat at the international guest house where meals are prepared by a very nice lady and her staff of young girls in pajamas. when the semester isn’t in full swing, we’re forced to scavenge throughout the city to find some sustenance. the city is packed with small stands that sell dishes of rice for about 25 cents. you can walk in, sit on a small, plastic and colorful stool and choose from two or three different things. did you want rice with pork? with chicken? with fish? what kind of soup would you like? would you like something to drink? tea or lemonade? pretty basic.

some days we just want to eat at home. today i have to finish grading over 100 english literature finals and my mind is numb with ‘issues of justice’, ‘human mortality’ and all the other ideas the classics conjured. i went out and gathered food in the jungle of the city.

my first stop was the bread lady. we were just going to have sandwiches and there is no mcdonalds for miles. she has a boxy, glass stand on the side of the road between two other sandwich ladies. they all sell the same sandwiches but there never really seems to be any competition. they all charge the same prices and make them the same way. we always go to the lady in the middle for some reason. her husband cuts hair behind her as i order. he is a stern looking man and always seems to be cutting the hair of a small, grey-haired old man. i ask for two cheese sandwiches and one sandwich with eggs. i tell her that i’ll be back in about 10 minutes. i drive down the road to buy something to drink. i go to the ‘sinh to’ lady. ‘sinh to’ is a kind of slushy, fruit drink. i drive through crowded streets, stall at one point in an intersection and blush as i try to restart my motorcycle quickly, and arrive. i ask for two ‘sinh to’ made from pineapple and papaya. they make them with sweetened condensed milk, ice, sugar and fruit (as if pineapple and papaya were not sweet enough.). she puts them both into plastic bags and i leave. 70 cents. i go to the small market near our house to buy fruit. i haggle with a few people and select a small, football sized watermelon. it’s too big, but at about 40 cents, not a bad deal. i stop by the smoked pig stand and buy a small, smoked pig ear for the dog. people would be sorely offended if they knew i was giving it to a dog, but i tell them i’m making soup. my final stop is back at the sandwich lady where her husband puts down his scissors for a moment to give me my three sandwiches. he glares and mumbles the price. 75 cents.

i drive home, jack, jota and i eat and i go back to grading. we don’t have the ‘luxury’ of fast food restaurants, but everything is much more fresh and there is such a variety. you could go out and buy any number of things that had been hanging on trees or munching on leaves as recently as a couple of days ago.

i live in a place that is confusing at its core. i live with this strange angst that never really seems to go away. nothing is clearly defined and things are always chaotic. my culture mixes into this culture. my background mixes into this reality. nothing makes complete sense.

at first, everything was new and exciting. there were no problems, only beauty and exotic things. after a bit, things became normal. the old lady carrying two baskets strapped to her shoulders with a bamboo pole, walking down the street hunched under the weight of the fruit she is going to sell today doesn’t bother me. the little boys selling lottery tickets are only a minor nuisance. life has become quite normal, and that is what the problem is.

anywhere you go you are confronted with the confrontation of two cultures. this confrontation is impossible to ignore. it creates an angst inside of you that doesn’t go away.

there is nothing special about me being here to accentuate this pang. i had the same pang in america, when i was driving through the streets of philadelphia. the white, slave master like face of mr. sanders on a brilliantly lit advertisement and the poor, city folks who went in and bought a biscuit and two wings for 99 cents. drive another block and there are the large banks owned by no one but controlling everything. drive another block and there are the statues and symbols of the birth of america. everywhere you go in this grand, modern world we’re confronted by this terrible reality.

oh, yes, it’s impossible to ignore. it’s possible to turn your head and pretend that there are no contradictions and that everything is hunky dory. this surely is a brave new world we live in. if one chooses to do that, i assume their reality isn’t as full as someone who chooses to fully embrace all of the cultural paradoxes that one is faced with in any given day. at least, i believe that one would have a less authentic existence.

the world is, i believe, becoming less and less black and white and more and more grey. things are slowly blending together and, for me, that creates confusion, frustration. it’s a pain that lies somewhere above my stomach. it’s a dull pain that never goes away. there are moments when it is suppressed a bit, a funny situation, extreme joy, sadness, but the pain, when nothing distracts me, is constant.

why you should come here and be a tourist:

it’s time for all of us to escape from our american lives. it’s time for all of us to head across the vast pacific ocean and visit a fascinating country that has much to offer. come to vietnam and experience its history, its culture and its people.

your trip to vietnam should start in the north, in hanoi, the capital. there you will find ancient beauty and smiling faces. after a quick drive from the airport to your hotel snugly situated around the beautiful hoan kiem lake, take a rest and a shower. after your break, you’ll be ready to explore the city. take a three-wheeled cyclo ride around town. walk around the lake and enjoy a cup of vietnam’s world famous coffee. stop at a rode side stand and enjoy a bowl of steaming pho. take a moment out of your schedule to see uncle ho chi minh’s mausoleum and the temple of literature. hanoi has much to offer you in terms of history and beauty.

after your stay in hanoi, you should move down to the central, more mountainous region of vietnam. there you will find thriving cities and an abundance of culture. stop off and visit an ethnic minority group whose traditions have been preserved through the ages. stop off at one of the many costal beach towns and enjoy a few days lying in the sun and playing in the warm waters of the east sea.

your break in the center of vietnam should have revitalized you and now you’re probably going to be ready for bustling, ho chi minh city. ho chi minh city is a mixture of east and west and has something to offer everyone. there are a number of museums and the night life is always exciting. make sure to stop off at the ben thanh market and see what deals you can get on famous vietnamese fabrics and coffee bought in bulk. also, outside the market there is a stand that sells sugar cane juice mixed with strawberries. outside of ho chi minh city, there are a number of very interesting tourist sights. visit vung tau for another relaxing break by the ocean. visit the cu chi tunnels for a window into the struggle against the american occupiers.

head further south and experience the rural community of the mekong delta. you should spend a couple of days in can tho city. there, if you wake up early enough, you’ll find a fascinating floating market. from can tho, travel west to long xuyen. long xuyen is the birthplace of vietnam’s second leader after uncle ho, uncle ton. head off to tiger island, a small island in the middle of the mekong river and see his original home and a museum dedicated to his life.

from long xuyen, you might want to travel to chau doc or maybe tri ton where you can see rural vietnamese life in full swing. watch farmers work in lush green paddies. watch families fishing in the many branches of the mekong river. spend some time walking up cam, sam and many other mountains that stick out of the flat mekong and make for wonderful photo opportunities.

all in all, your trip to vietnam will be fruitful and exciting. escape from the monotony of your life and see another place. you owe it to yourself.

there is a pile of dirt outside. the pile of dirt is in large clumps and people hunch over it. i have no idea what they’re doing.

the leader of the group came up to my room the other day and asked if i could help them. i was doing nothing except grading tests and i said i could. the pile of dirt needed to be chopped up into smaller pieces.

the dirt ends up coming form the river. they said that they bought the dirt from a company that specializes in bringing river dirt to land. they said that the river dirt was special. they were using it for an experiment involving a certain kind of flower. if the flower grew well in the river dirt, they would tell farmers and the farmers would have a greater yield.

six students and one teacher from the agriculture department sat around the dirt with machete’s. they chopped the dirt into smaller pieces. i grabbed an extra machete and began to hack away at the large pieces of dirt. the dirt was like rock. it was grey and brown. if you hacked at it with a machete for long enough it would become like dust. it took a long time to make one grey-brown clump dust.

here were six students and one member of the agriculture department hacking away at the ground. i asked them how long it would take to make all of the dirt into dust and they said about five days. these seven people would spend the next five days chopping and smashing dirt. i couldn’t believe they didn’t have anything else to make the dirt into smaller pieces. if you drove over the dirt with a car, you’d have smaller pieces in, oh, probably a day. there had to be a different way to finish the job.

the smithonian came to little ‘ol long xuyen today. they had been working with an giang university for the past couple of years on collecting data about six different ethnic groups in the mekong delta. they opened their traveling museum this morning and i was pleased to have been invited.

there were speeches by everyone who was important and who had something to say and then we were all free to mill though the exhibits. there were exhibits dealing with a number of different aspects of mekong life. there were exhibits that talked about chinese, cambodian, cham and vietnmese people. there was a girl there weaving on an ancient, hand loom. there were men there working on wood cuttings hammering away at chisels as wood splinters flew into the air. there were old ladies there making old, ceramic stoves for cooking rice. instead of spinning them on a wheel, they would beat the clay using flat sticks. they walked around their brown creations constantly slap, slap, slapping. there was a small machine that was used to make thread. it used a bicycle tire.

inside the museum, there were a number of giant, color photos depicting mekong delta life. it felt like i was in an america museum walking around and looking at exhibits from a far away land, imagining what life there would be like when, in reality, everything was gathered from my current home. for some reason that made everything strange.

the girls dress one of three ways in long xuyen. when i say ‘the girls’, i’m not just talking about the majority. i’m talking about every girl except maybe 2. i can’t figure out why they don’t deviate from these styles even in the slightest. here they are:

evening wear:
a lot of working girls, girls that work in the market, sell fruit or work behind small, mobile stands, wear pajamas all day. i say they are pajamas for two reasons. 1) people wear them to bed. and 2) they look just like pajamas should look. they are always two pieced and made from the same material. the pants almost always run to the ground but i have been noticing that a few people have been cutting the pants higher. the material is always strange. it is normally a very difficult to look at pastel pattern.

men’s wear:
on a normal school day, about 80% of the girls will come to class dressed in a very masculine way. they will have charcoal, brown or navy dress pants, a belt, a tucked in shirt and dress shoes. the men come to class wearing the same thing except for a few sizes larger. this is not my favorite style and i do not fully understand it.

ao dai:
this is, of course, the traditional dress of vietnamese women. even though ever part of the body is covered except for the hands, face and a small slit at the top of the neck, it is still one of the most elegant things i have ever seen a women wear. women who wear ao dai change dramatically. older women look wise. younger women look older. ao dai, while i have heard it is incredibly uncomfortable, is by far my favorite.

accessories:
the women who sell things will always (usually) have a gold chain around their neck with a little jade something or other at the bottom. they will usually have on a number of thin, gold bracelets that barely fit over their hand. the bracelets, i have been told, are never to be removed. the women who wear a man’s uniform wear bucket hats. these are hats that characters on gilligan’s island would have worn. they are tacky, pastel and make their men’s uniform even more difficult to stomach. women wearing ao dai sometimes will wear a necklace and sometimes bracelets. they don’t need to accessorize because the beauty is in the modesty.

i do not understand why there is no middle ground between ao dai and men’s wear.