Việt Kiều Ngoài Phố

I'm now on my third week of school at HANU. It's quite interesting to be a part of the 5% males at a school with 95% females. I am currently enrolled in four classes: 1) Vietnamese 2) Globalization 3) Contemporary Viet Nam 4) Viet Nam History Seminar. The workload is not so bad. I find myself learning not just simply in the classroom, but outside of it: cruising down the streets of Ha Noi on my green bike, every time I try to bargain with the vendor, comparing and contrasting different parts of "traditional" village dwellings of Ha Noi versus the "modern" (sub)urban parts, and analyzing the material culture among the youth--Ha Noi has their own hipsters too!

I've also been thinking a lot about identity, especially in terms of what tangibly makes me me Before my trip here, I had been thinking a lot about how I mentally perceive Vietnamese-ness; that is, the meanings I attach to let's say Vietnamese food and language. When I was a child, I used to see other Vietnamese people, especially elders, to be a part of my family though they may not be related to me--filial connection to those even outside the family. There is something about how such words are spoken, the mannerisms, the way they smell, the way they convey humor, love, and affection. It's that something that I've held onto for so long. While I'm here I'm trying to understand what that something really is. People in Ha Noi remind me so much of my own family with exceptions of the Northern accent.

Yesterday was Viet Nam's Independence Day. I prepared for it by researching Viet Nam's national history. Just like the story between the Dragon and Angel, Viet Nam was and still is quite polarized, split, if not fragmented due to political and cultural factions. North/South, these people versus these people, French colonialism, Chinese colonialism, Japanese colonialism, American imperialism, and now in contemporary times, globalization, neo-liberalism and lifting of borders for trade. The "Vietnamese" national identity was a struggle in itself to solidify. By drawing borders on the map and claiming a certain territory, and then proclaiming a nation of people of Vietnamese own it in a effect marginalizes those who do not identify as Vietnamese or practice "Vietnamese culture."

This story of nation-state building reminds me so much of why ethnic minorities or people of color in the United States historically have been disenfranchised. During that day to celebrate freedom, I could not help but to think the relativity of freedom; what about those who fall in the periphery of the nation and national identity? There is a lot of irony, but indeed though there is a lot of setbacks to nationalism and nation-state building, the country did kick a lot of ass when imperialists and colonialists tried to get a piece, if not most of the pie.

If it hadn't been for America interfering with Viet Nam's what-could-have-been-simply-a-civil-war, my family and I perhaps would not have left. I could have stayed in Viet Nam and who knows how much different I could have turned out. It's mind-boggling to try to play around with history in the light of self-discovery and self-knowledge.

In case you don't like reading my long passages, here are some pictures I've taken that I hope captures at least a dimension of my experience here. I'll be here until December, but getting back in January. I miss you all.

in case you are wondering what the title means, it's "oversees Vietnamese from outside the streets." That's how I often when interacting with locals here. I'm always in-between, in limbo, in-formation, in-transition, in-and-out, or even to an extent in-decisive. I am Việt Kiều.