Last Sunday the UC class and several Hanu students traveled to a nearby village to harvest a rice field. We left early in the morning and worked for several hours until we has cut, transported, and threshed the whole field. Though the field was not very large, it was somewhat difficult because the ground had not dried by that time and every step taken found us sunk almost a foot into the wet earth. I was happy to “experience” the daily labor of peasants, though I was naturally aware that the village we were at was not the typical poverty- stricken Third World village.
After lunch we talked to several villagers about the socioeconomic status of various jobs.
Many of us were surprised that the villagers did not consider jobs like construction worker as a very low-class job. In fact, I heard that people from other villages travel to this village to work as construction workers because the pay is better. I was confident that it was no ordinary village; it was clearly a lower-middle class community. In addition, I heard that some of the villagers were paying to have their houses remodeled for absurdly-high prices. There was no way average Vietnamese people could afford the kind of decadence I saw in this village. My prediction is that this village is going to be absorbed into the larger consumerist culture and economy of Vietnamese cities and become a suburb of Hanoi. While this may disappoint many, I'm just sad that still have yet to see a real Third World village.
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