UCHANU Final Blog

EAP 2010 has been an otherworldly experience. I don't know how to begin describing what has happened to me here in Vietnam. So rather than fail to give my experience in Vietnam justice, I will focus on a few examples to convey the gravity of these past four months.


The experiences I’ve had this semester in UCHANU and Vietnam have undoubtedly changed my life. I’ve learned several things that have been integrated into my worldview. Gaining so many friends who have become like family to me has really changed the nature of EAP. UC and Hanu alike, I have grown attached to this group of people. Vietnam will not be the same when I come back without UCHANU 2010. Other experiences have also changed my life. For example, living as a foreigner in Vietnam has been extremely strange. I lived my whole life in America practically invisible. When I walked down the street, ordered food, shopped at restaurants, etc, my presence was so natural and taken for granted. In Vietnam, it’s been the opposite. No matter where I go or what I do, I’m always being observed and judged by Vietnamese people. Though I’m not held to their standards and norms, I’m still bothered constantly by mainly friendly curiosity. At first I thought of it like being a celebrity, but it quickly became a great annoyance. So much so, that I have difficulty shopping for anything by myself. I have a hard time shopping as it is, but when I have someone following me around constantly pointing out items in the store that they want me to buy, I absolutely cannot do it. This experience has given me insight into how minorities in all parts of the world must feel. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it, but the experience has been integrated into my worldview. There are countless more experiences that have been integrated into the fabric of my life, but they are far too personal and complex to put words to here.

To comprehensively address the second question is as equally impossible as the first question so again, I’ll keep it simple and straightforward. Some of the obvious ways I’ll take Vietnam with me are my new language and my girlfriend. I will master Vietnamese, no matter how long it takes me. I want to become fluent. But already, I have the skills necessary to do so many things. Ican use my new language skills in America, or when I come back. Without getting to personal, my first girlfriend is here in Hanoi. What better way to take Vietnam with me than become a part of it. I was in love with Hanoi after the first week’s “scavenger hunt”, but now I have to come back. I don’t want to talk about this personal topic in any more detail, but I will end off with this: “Home is where the heart is.” Toi yeu Vietnam.

Relections on UCHANU group project

Project Kiem An has been almost entirely driven my small groups that have been, bit by bit, nibbling off chunks of work for the monstrous task Gerard as set before our class of mapping out how people make a living in Vietnam. The way our small groups operate has been largely left up to each group's individual discretion. This was a wise decision because it allows for people to maximize their own unique potential. My group has bee strange. At first, we tried to meet in person frequently and act collectively, but recently we have been doing everything individually. I don't like this change because I don't know how well we are doing. I no long have the pulse of our group. It's difficult to gauge anything, including how much work I am doing in comparison to other members. I have frequently asked the Vietnamese-speaking members of my group to let me handle all the tasks that are possible for English speakers, yet I still feel like I'm not contributing enough. I just hope the final product is high enough quality to contribute our class's goal.

Because I have not been able to do any interviews, I have been doing mainly English language grammar and spelling corrections for the translated transcript of the the interviews. My group is friendly with each other and works well together, but sometimes I feel like they resent me for not being able to speak Vietnamese. I wish I could help out more with the interviews, but there's not much more I can do but go to the interviews, take pictures, record video, smile at the interviewee, etc.

Freewrite Blog Entry

The semester is winding down and as expected things are moving faster than ever before. Besides the heavy projects and assignments in my history and UCHANU classes, I have to also juggle an increasingly more complex and involved personal life here in Hanoi. There are still so many things I want to do and see before the end of EAP. From getting new glasses made to taking a road trip to discover more of Vietnam, I have so much to do... and that's just in the net month. I could spend a lifetime in this country. There is so much history and beautiful nature to discover. The "developing" economy is so destructive and has implications for almost all aspects of Vietnam. I came here to study the economic and political aspects of Vietnam, but have learned so much more. I know I will come back to Vietnam after graduating from college. I don't know how long I will be here or what I will do, but for the short-term I have a solid plan to fulfill and concrete goals to accomplish.

Southern Trip

Last week in the South was a broadening experience for me. My idea about and what I saw in Vietnam was radically changed by my experience in the South. Previously, I knew Vietnam was not a monolithic culture. I knew there were differences in accents and traditions between the different regions. The Vietnam I fell in love with is the North, particularly Hanoi. First of all, Southerners don’t know how to make café sua da. Rather than using sua to sweeten coffee, Southerners use coffee to flavor their condensed sweetened milk- it’s really just liquid candy, not coffee at all. I had so much of it that I lost my obsession with condensed sweetened milk permanently. I know we went to tourist areas, but the South was too Westernized for me. From the way the youth dressed to the music I heard at cafes, the places was just a depressing reminder of the hell I escaped several months ago. I can think of several more differences between the North and the South but when it comes down to it, they are just justifications for a feeling in my heart. Hanoi is my home. “Saigon” is just too American for me.

I enjoyed Phu Quoc- it was a tropical paradise... but the Central trip was far more enjoyable for me.

Factory Trip

Last Saturday the UC students and a few Hanu UCHANU students took a surprise day-long trip to two different factories. The first factory that we went to was a garment factory called Hanosimex. The second was a Yamaha motorbike production plant. Naturally, we weren’t going to be shown factories that “beat their workers”, as Gerard put it. These factories had made sweatshop labor extraction easier on our tender First Worlder eyes.

The Hanosimex factory tour began with a talk around a large executive table about the achievements of the corporation. Ho Chi Minh’s bust cast its gaze downwards on us as we were told about the profits gained by this factory’s exploitative practices. If he could see what had become of his country, I’m sure his disgust and scorn would be as great as mine every time I think about it. The situation was so ironic that I couldn’t take the spokeswoman seriously. I kept imagining if Bac Ho’s bust came to life and started attacking the bourgeois factory owners and their lackeys. After that we went to the massive production line that took pure cotton and polyester and, through a long and capital-intensive process, spun the cotton into spools of thread. This part was interesting because there were only a few workers in the entire complex. Rather than workers laboring, we only heard the mind-numbingly-loud hum of the machines at work. We saw looms that apparently turned the threat into fabric, but we were unable to see that or the color dying part of the process. Next we went to the labor-intensive part of the process, the sewing room. I was blank-faced the entire time as nothing came as surprise to me. I also didn’t feel any worse than I normally do for these people. The fact that the vulgar Liberal hedonist First Worlder shop-a-holics felt “bad” for the workers angered me. Their lifestyle and existence is only made possible by this process. I’m just disappointed that the workers were friendly to us and waved and smiled, rather than trying to kill us as a slave kills his master.

Later in the day we went to a Yamaha production plant. It was interesting to see the assembly line in person, but again I didn’t learn much. It was interesting, however, to see the difference between a Japanese factory and a domestic factory. Everything was highly modernized and the production line was streamlined and efficient. They claimed that the entire process is synchronized so that the precise amount of needed parts for each bike is made simultaneously.

One of the most distasteful parts of the experience was having to hear the thoughts of the First Worlders that were with me. All of them without a doubt go through each day not even considering the fact that their environmentally-unsustainable standard of living exists, not because of their labor, but because of the stolen labor of Third Worlders. They rarely, if ever, think about how 25,000 children die a day from starvation and preventable diseases and that this situation was caused by the same system that affords them their decadent lifestyle. For them, the trip was like visiting a zoo or a museum- it is detached from their everyday lives. They refuse to see the connection between their parasitic existences as First Worlders and the exploitation and oppression of the majority of humanity in the Third World. As beneficiaries of the capitalist-imperialist system, it is not in their material interest to oppose the system as a whole, even if they outwardly express “sympathy” for the victims of ruthless exploitation. It makes more sense that First Worlders would support the system, regardless of how distasteful it seems at times to them. After all, where would they be without their consumer goods, vulgar media, crude worldviews, and Liberal hedonism? They’ll find out when the JDPEN disburses them throughout the Third World, puts them to work, and watches them very closely.

Sa Pa Trip

Last weekend I went to Sa Pa with a group of UC students. Originally, I hadn’t intended on going because the pictures I had seen on google images weren’t that impressive and because I had heard that it was a tourist trap. Though my second assumption was true, the natural beauty of Sa Pa surpassed all my highest hopes. The town, built by the French colonialists, was reminiscent of a European mountain château town. The older buildings, stone walls, and cobblestone paths were covered in ivy. The small lake in the center of town and the heavy fog set a romantic atmosphere. In all directions, the outlines of spiring mountains wrapped in clouds could be traced. While many Hanu students may feel Sa Pa is too cold, I think during Autumn it is the perfect temperature for me (though during this particular trip I was wearing sandals, shorts, and a t-shirt and was sick the whole time, so the cold wasn’t very pleasant). The café sua da in Sa Pa had a distinctly different taste than in Hanoi. I’m not sure which I prefer, but it was nice to experience the variety. The tourist industry has totally corrupted and commodified the local culture. I had no illusions when dealing with that reality. I was sad to see peddlers masquerading around in ethnic minority clothes selling their “authentic” bags to tourists. But while I was sad to see yet another tragic effect of global capitalism-imperialism, I was not surprised. Like what I wrote earlier, I wouldn’t have expected anything else. The major reason why I could never live in this seemingly perfect town was the people- both the locals and the tourists. Nothing is genuine or honest in a tourist town.

The trip to Heaven’s Gate was spectacular. The view of the town and the surrounding areas was majestic. Besides the leeches that left bleeding holes in my and a few other UC students’ feet, the climb to Heaven’s Gate was very fun and we took a lot of pictures. The next day we trekked for 5-7 hours to Ban Ho village. This village was not the Hmong ethnicity that Sa Pa town is riddled with. I’m not sure what we were supposed to learn from our overnight stay in Ban Ho, but it was nevertheless a great hike for me. Unfortunately, other students didn’t have as great a time as I did. From Carol’s accident to Kristine’s betrayal, the trek was clearly laced with deceptions at every turn.

Before we got on the train in Lao Cai to head back to Hanoi, Anh Thai took us to the border between Vietnam and the People’s Republic of China. Despite the dismantlement of socialism in China, I was still mesmerized to see the mightiest nation on the planet today.

I don’t know why I changed my mind and decided to go on the trip at the last minute, but it was a great choice. While I would love to go back to Sa Pa again before the end of the EAP program, I think if I have the chance to travel that far North again I will try to find a less-touristy region or town.

Freewrite

The 1000 years celebration of the founding of Hanoi was an interesting time for me as a political science and history student. The rabid Vietnamese nationalism that the UC students and others aligned with imperialism expected to see was not nearly as prevalent as predicted. This did not surprise me because the WWII-era Asian nationalism and anti-Western imperialism that served to combat the spread of the capitalist-imperialist system has been largely sidelined as Asia integrates into the global capitalist-imperialist system. What remains is not a cultural pride and hatred for vulgar uncultured philistine Western Liberal hedonism; rather the nationalism that I see is a crude form of racial chauvinism. It makes sense to me that this would be the case among Vietnamese who want to emulate Western culture, politics, economy, etc. So to conclude, my experience with the 1000 years celebration was in part a lesson in (or more accurately a confirmation of what I already knew about) Western cultural imperialism.

My unapproachable political-philosophical musing aside, I had a great time during the 10 day celebration. Walking around Ho Hoan Kiem at night was a remarkable experience. The lights, people, and music contributed to an atmosphere of positive energy and good will. The food festival at the Ho Tay waterpark was equally enjoyable for me, despite the fact that there was very little vegetarian food for me to eat. I went to the festival two days in a row because I enjoyed it so much. I was really happy when a grizzled American War veteran grabbed my shoulder, pointed, and said in a low, powerful voice “get out”. After he repeated himself a couple times and I began to understand what he was feeling, I smiled and said I agreed with his sentiment. It’s so sad for me to see all the revolutionary ideals that his generation fought and died to protect sold out by the comprador and national bourgeoisie. This old man’s generation may have sent the imperialists home in body bags, but the imperialist system eventually won out. I feel like crying when think about this great comrade’s life. He was a true patriot and genuine human being. The generations that followed and sold Vietnam out to the West are traitors to the spirit of anti-imperialism and national liberation. They are traitors to their culture and to their ancestors. While I was happy to see a comrade in person, the reality of the global situation caused it to be a moment underscored by sorrow for me.

Lastly, I want to say that I was really annoyed by the negative attitudes that the UC students displayed toward the celebration, granted I wouldn’t expect them to behave any other way. For imperialist citizens to say such things on Vietnamese soil really ticks me off.