Life in the Village

[KenW]

I entered graduate school filled with excitement and anticipation. A hard working student of some ability, it held no fears for me. After 2 years of standard preparation I felt ready for the world of ideas.

One day early in year 3, the most important year, my professor and Head of Department called me into his office. I knew I was not in harm's way, but had no idea what it was about. Would I like a couple hours a week tutoring (teaching assistantship)?

Bloody oath - or polite words to that effect.

I held out hopes for an academic career, and here its beginnings were being offered to me. How could I refuse.

Tentatively, nervously, I replied that I would be flattered and love it, but was I capable?

The eminent prof sat back in his leather armchair and smiled (he was a lovely gentle man from Kentucky with whom I later became firm friends).

You'll be right, he drawled in his calm southern way, you've got a good bullshit detector.

In the village, when my confidence is down, as it sometimes is, I return to that conversation. If I am suspicious I'm being done down, or taken along, I remember the grand man's words and they bolster me: I knows my bullshit.

For while the village is wonderful, and life is generally very enjoyable, you have to always be on your toes.

This morning I ate a soup round the corner from my house. Someone known to me asked me did I remember a couple who used to rent next door to me? Of course I did. They were serious criminals, fraudsters and shysters.

See that house opposite, the soup eater said, they rented there some time ago, left diddling the owners out of money (rent?).

They were bullshit those people, and known to me. You get that sometimes in the village.

You just have to hope your detector is working.

[KenW]

Duck is one of my favourite foods.

Yesterday I was invited to lunch, to have duck soup the VNese way (as opposed to the Marx brothers way). Chao vit, duck rice gruel. The bird is boiled in a big cauldron of rice and onions, the rice eventually curdling (what is the correct verb?) into this thick soupy version of rice called in English chow. The animal is then carved up and served on a big platter. Each eater helps themself to a bowl of chow, then takes what meat they want.

The VNese ducks are usually big (but not old and tough), their breasts especially full of thick dark meat that is melt in your mouth. Apart from me and one quiet husband, the meal partakers were women, so we didn't drink. It was just a calm gossipy lunch of grand nosh.

This is real village eating.

PS: chow is a loan word in English. As it is in VNese (chao). I think chow is borrowed from one or more of the Chinese languages. We are more familiar with the word as in chicken chow mein, etc. (Warren Zevon's werewolf was gunna get a big dish of beef chow mein.)

[pacman]

Are you sure that the English word for rice gruel is 'chow'? Or even the Chinese word? There's no rice gruel in a plate of Chow Mein whatever it is. Be it chicken, prawn, etc.

And does it actually 'curdle'? I have eaten the Chinese dish Congee many times & all they do is boil the rice till it falls apart. It is my favourite breakfast in Asia & I order it with goong (prawns) in Thailand. I doctor it up with the Thai spices you find in any local Thai place. A spoonful of the chilli in vinegar, a sprinkle of the dry chilli flakes & a touch of the other one. I can't think what it is for the moment, the only one I don't add is the sugar. it is the tastiest breakfast to be found anywhere.

You had my mouth watering with your description of the duck. Cooked properly, it is such a good meal. I know a few places where I can get Roast Duck Soup & Roast Pork Soup. And sometimes I have them together. Not two bowls that is, I order both meats in the one bowl. Bloody lovely.

[rxpharm]

In China this rice gruel or porridge is known as "congee" or "joke" depending on the prevailing dialect. In Thailand it is called "joke" - my favourite Bangkok hotel offers free asian breakfast, so I can go with joke moo, joke kai, joke pla or joke goong (pork, chicken, fish or shrimp).

[KenW]

Are you sure that the English word for rice gruel is 'chow'? Or even the Chinese word? There's no rice gruel in a plate of Chow Mein whatever it is. Be it chicken, prawn, etc.

And does it actually 'curdle'?

OK, well maybe it isn't borrowed from any Chinese language. My Macquarie dictionary does not list it as a loan word for soup. But I know many expats who use it. My dict lists chowder (as in clam chowder) as a French loan word, so perhaps chow is short for chowder. I don't know.

No it doesn't curdle, but I could not think of a word for going all gluggy.

In China this rice gruel or porridge is known as "congee" or "joke" depending on the prevailing dialect. In Thailand it is called "joke" - my favourite Bangkok hotel offers free asian breakfast, so I can go with joke moo, joke kai, joke pla or joke goong (pork, chicken, fish or shrimp).

OK.

[KenW]

I live in Vietnam, as many of you know, and have done so for the past 8 years.

Heading off to Phnom Penh shortly for a bit of different scenery and LB action makes me ponder. Gives me some distance. Gets me thinking. Why am I here? Why do I love my village so? Why VN? (When Thailand and even Cambodia have more LBs to the square kilometre than here by a country mile, and friends such as williethepimp suggest I am made for Pattaya.)

Here's why.

I am an old man now, but in the 1960s I was young, and Vietnam was my war.

True it wasn't anything the big deal it was in the USA. But for those who don't know, the then Australian government committed to going "All the way with LBJ." We, along with Philippines, South Korea, New Zealand, and maybe others, constituted what would now be called, post Dubya, a coalition of the willing. We fought here. Lives were lost. Others were maimed.

But unlike the US, the only people who seemed to care in Oz, a few concerned mothers apart, were us, we young lads who were inveigled by legislation. When it came time for me to be drafted, my father was busy dying while my mother was worn to a tatter ministering to that. What the boy was doing was immaterial. My big brothers were getting on with their lives.

I recall filling out my draft papers, as the law required every 19 year old to do, at my uncle & aunt's place following my father's death. The plan had been to try to give my worn out mother some R&R in the countryside. As I spread forms over their kitchen table, not one adult in the household ever looked over my shoulder and asked: what are you doing there son?

No one cared. It was my generation's war. For the oldies, it wasn't even on the radar. (My uncle had fought the Japanese in WWII, so no doubt like many others of his years, VN was never a real war.)

Time passes. We grow old.

The question that has stayed with me for nearly 40 years is this: how did they do it? How did this "pissant little country" as LBJ called it in his White House basement war room, defeat the mightiest powers of the 20th century? Serially: French, USA, China (plus add in the minnow Khmer Rouge, and a couple of post 1945 garrison forces - Japanese & British).

What is it about VNese culture that gives it this strength? This will? This purpose?

Or was it all just luck? American hubris? French pomp?

I wanted to know. And have sought that answer for the past decades. I now seek it in my village.

A lucky life I have lived, and was able to pursue the questions for a while being paid to do so, as a university academic. Now as an old fart on The Scrapheap they fascinate me none the less.

Which is why, despite squillions of LBs and bars and boys and glitter and gals, a country like Thailand holds no cultural interest for me. Or little anyhow. Sure I can visit and enjoy Sunee or soi 6 like anybody else. But for an old fart of my type and vintage, my village and its inhabitants - bastards or benign as they might be - are where it's at.

This is my home. It's where I live. It's where the answers might one day come to me through the blur and maze of jizz and booze and zest for life that abounds here.

[SiamSam]

:happy0065: Wow, truly well versed my friend!!! I read it 3 times with the last two feeling exactly like the first. I totally GET it.

[Quietguy]

Interesting KenW. Fortunately the British Government declined LBJ's invitation to join the party, or I might have been drafted too.I don't think I would have made a good soldier though. Instead I took part in the huge anti-war marches in London, which helped to shape my political outlook for the rest of my life. Previously I had been pretty conservative in my views.

So did you actually go to Vietnam during the war Ken?

[KenW]

So did you actually go to Vietnam during the war Ken?

Fortunately no, Qg. I am such a clumsy oaf I know I'd have been the one to stand on the landmine, blowing not only myself to bits, but all those within 75 metres of me; or trip over a buttress root and falling, pump a burst of bullets into the back of the nearest patrolman walking 10 yards ahead of me. Thank you, Ken.

But I had mates and colleagues who did serve here. None killed or maimed thank goodness.

Later I did as you did. Joined enthusiastically into demos against the war, taking to the streets and the lawns of our campus. I was never pro the war, but like all peer group pressured conforming 19 year olds, I did what I was told. Later at university I learned you didn't have to just do that. You've got a mind, use it. So I became a protestor. (In a strange way, now that I think about it, that's another form of conformity, isn't it. O well, in a good cause anyhow.)

[KenW]

The question that has stayed with me for nearly 40 years is this: how did they do it?

What is it about VNese culture that gives it this strength?

I wanted to know. And have sought that answer for the past decades...

... the answers might one day come to me ...

If you think I'm a bit slow, taking 40 years or so to cum up with answers to such an apparently simple question, then you wouldn't be far off the mark.

There's something they teach you in cricket, the game I used to play. It's this: see it early, play it late.

What does that mean (my American pals scratching their stubble)?

You bat in cricket, something like you bat in baseball. A bowler (read: pitcher) hurls this leather cased pill down at you from 20m away. You have about a tenth of a second to decide what shot to play. You must watch the ball in his hand, try to see what he's intending (pitch it short, swing it in the air, etc.). Watch him release. That's seeing it early.

Then as this projectile rushes at your face or your groin or wherever, you must try to leave it as late as possible to play. That results in timing if you get it right, and as the ball creams off your bat you make runs (aim of the game). That's playing it late. Of course, too late and he's bowled you, so the judgment of when to play is crucial.

My life's pretty much been summed up like that.

I tend to see things early, get the point, ask the right question. But I am often committed to playing late, responding sluggishly, being a bit of a dull old twerp.

So it's no surprise it might take me 40 years to answer a question I came up with that long ago.

Well, here we go. Here's some of the answers I have come to feel happy with over the years.

First, the ones I didn't think up: the well known text book ones. These involve the US, for they're American answers in American text books.

1) US foreign policy circa 1950s.

Following the rise of the Soviet Union and the conflict on the Korean peninsula, the Americans became paranoid about the sweep of world communism. Right about the time Uncle Ho and the commies were coming into American purview.

First big mistake that played into VNese hands. US policy makers failed to see early that VN was an individual case, with deeply individual context and genre. It was no instance of a general pattern, the so-called domino pattern, that the blinkered Americans saw.

This would cost many lives and take many years, but it set in train a VNese victory down the track.

Uncle Ho was pleading with US leaders to help him establish a democratic (sort of) post-colonial country. His pleas fell on ears deafened by the roar of fierce anti-communist rhetoric.

2) US military policy, particularly 1964-68 on Westmoreland's watch.

Westmoreland, the four star in command for those 4 years, was, like his underlings, trained to fight a war on the plains and in the forests of Western Europe (against the Nazis first, then, so they thought, the Soviets).

General W found a world of war totally foreign, and was lost for response. So he and his brains trust invented things like the body count, publishing regularly how many commies they had killed in that battle, that week, that month. How many communist villages destroyed, how many villains napalmed, etc. All these stats showed the US winning, making progress as they used to say.

Stupidity. For as Uncle Ho told LBJ (yes, he was still pleading for American reason): you will kill 10 of my men for every 1 of yours I kill. And I will still win.

Has there ever been a more ruthless, cold blooded summation of war strategy?

He was right of course. 2 million (estimated) VNese died, 50,000 Americans.The mightiest army the world had ever known went home with its helicopter tails between its legs and its reputation in tatters.

Westmoreland was replaced after the Tet offensive of 1968.

But his policies had helped set up the VNese victory.

3) The VNese in US politics after 1968.

The VNese played the tiny country being bullied and butchered scenario perfectly. American protest forced the end of LBJ's presidency ("I will not seek, nor will I accept, the nomination of my party to continue as your president...") and eventually the war.

to be continued...

[KenW]

...the answers might one day come to me...(continued)

Here are 3 other answers. The first 2, like the 3 in the earlier post, have been gleaned from study. Though these 2 are not so well known as the previous 3, and required knowing a more esoteric literature: what was relevant, where to find it. Only the final one, number 6 here, is my original, having come from research over the long haul.

4) Important for this topic as it is for LBs, I'll call it The VNese Rear.

I got this from a superb analysis by the French revolutionary and scholar Regis Debray. In a little known book called in English A Critique of Arms.

He describes how in revolutionary war you need not only the vanguard, the front line fighters, but you need a supportive rear. This provides a safe haven for R&R, but more crucially a support base of men and materiele, for political backing, for traininjg, for supply and re-supply.

For the communists China and the more distant Soviet Union, provided the rear they needed. These then commie allies brought the VNese case to the table, repeatedly. Propaganda was essential. They were also crucial in supplying arms to the fighters and things like medical supplies to the cause.

In a sense the US was never able to isolate VN. There was always this shadowy lurking backup rear.

Westmoreland and other leaders pined for a flat open battlefield where American fire power would prevail. Some, such as Air Force general Le May wanted to be released to "bomb them back to the Stone Age." He wanted to do to Hanoi what they would eventually do to Baghdad, and what in his younger days they had done to Berlin and Dresden. Level their hospitals, their suburbs, their schools.

This would have worked for a week, but the VNese resolve and political skills on the world stage would have prevailed. Johnson and his closest advisers knew hell to pay would be the outcome for the US as a respected super power. Calm heads prevailed, and in being reasonable, a VNese victory was one step closer.

The rear had proven crucial.

5) People's war, people's army.

Taken from the title of General Vo Nguyen Giap's most famous work. Giap, pronounced Zap - is that not the greatest name you've ever heard for a military commander? - was Ho's Defence Minister and Commander in Chief of the People's Army. It was he who drew up the strategy that would confuse and fluster US tactics. Who was the goddamed enemy? A non-uniformed guerilla force hard to identify, difficult to see, impossible to fight against. In the South especially. The so-called Viet Cong outpoliticked the US and Saigon forces, organised superbly, worked relentlessly, conducted a citizen's campaign..

Every time the US bombed an innocent village, fired haphazard interdiction artillery, napalmed more kids, created collateral damage, non partisans went over to the communists. The enemy was everywhere.

They won the politics of the people ("hearts & minds") and they won the war.

to be continued...

[SiamSam]

Very interesting read Mr. Ken. I appreciate it.

[KenW]

Thanks Sam.

[KenW]

...the answers might one day come to me... (continued)

So to:

6) VNese Ruthlessness.

I guess one way or another I have been a student of VNese culture for about 20 years.

In my judgment there are certain key attributes of VNese culture that make it unique in the 20th century history of conflicts, factors which certainly gave it an edge when push came to shove. I will for reasons of shortness and simplicity label it all under the rubric ruthlessness.

The Americans and others never learned this, though individuals like their great general John Vann did, but he was outpoliticked by the thick who slagged it as terrorism and barbarism, never attempting to understand complexity.

Not now, but in olden times, cultures often survived in the main by ruthlessness at the individual level. Aged eskimos (Inuit & others) walked off into the snow to die if there was not enough food to go round, the young being given higher priority. Among many ancient cultures infanticide was common in times of stress (drought, etc.). Those who needed to live had to live.

Uncle Ho's dreadful chilling 10 of mine quote (earlier post) gives us insight into VNese ruthlessness.

He was prepared to sacrifice a million village grandmas as long as it drove the survivors to the communist side. It did too. While propaganda succesfully painted the Americans as the barbarians.

Whatever it takes. That's a modern political take on ruthlessness. Ask the Watergate crowd.

That's the VNese attitude too.

They currently don't need war to define their lives. But once they did, to protect the nation, the cultural identity. But they remain ruthless bastards. Tough motherfuckers. Gentle people all nowadays. But - my advice - don't ever mess with a VNese. It's all face and smiles, but they've got your number, then late at wee hours it's a visit from four very fit lads armed with iron bars. Holy Shit. I have witnessed the after effects of this. Not on foreigners, on locals.

Prostitution is very big in VN, as all you LB lovers know it is in Thailand and elsewhere. Daughters for sale.

The drivers of prostitution, as every Feminist knows, are men and capitalist power. Scuse me, but the drivers of the sex industry in modern VN are mum, grandma and auntie, o and big sister too. Get out there girl, it's your turn to support the family. Bring home the loot to mother.

VNese practise a philosophy not based on our kind of morals. On theirs alone.

When I was a kid, my mother always grilled us: where did you get that? Who gave it to you? Did you steal it? (mortification) Give it back.

The VNese never ask that. Never inquire into where the money came from. To bring money home to mother makes a VNese girl or boy or LB honourable (have kama). Where the money came from is never asked. To help mother is to do good. To steal or whore or cheat or pickpocket is totally irrelevant. Mother takes the money and child is valued.

Ruthlessness.

A key feature of VNese culture the Americans (in the main) never understood.

They would stop at nothing. By 1968 the brass in Hanoi, Giap, Ho and all the others, were mounting the Tet offensive. The most significant military and political action in determining the outcome of the war. It absolutely and forever trashed American morale (they were inside the perimeter of the American Embassy in Saigon, an accomplishment simply not believable in Washington) and more importantly completely undermined public opinion stateside.The war was won and lost right there, in all but details of time.

But the cost was devastating. The entire Viet Cong infrastructure in the South was lost, all killed. They were sacrificed to the greater cause. Ruthless. It didn't matter to Hanoi. They simply moved the People's army south, division by division, and won what now became a far more conventional war. (The American revisionist boast: we won every battle, is shown at this time to be such empirical rubbish). The battle for the Central Coast, the battle of the Southern Highlands, the battle for Saigon. All won by the Glorious Youth Brigades of the People's Army.

Ruthless. The B52s had no chance of stopping VNese ruthlessness. They were simply unstoppable. Totally ruthless. You will all die - like the field commanders on the Somme knew when they went over the top - but go on, go on. Slaughter. You will all be prostitutes. Go on, go on. VNese ruthlessness.

Whatever it takes.

The hapless Yanks had no chance.

[pacman]

As a high school student with the threat of conscription hanging over my head, the Vietnam war loomed large in my younger days. I have read many reports on the war, seen the Fog of War three times & have worked & socialised with many guys who were called up to do their two years National Service in Nam, so I can claim to understand a bit about it.

But I have never read a better analysis than this. It only took you 40 years but it was worth the wait. You have given me more insight than I ever expected to learn. I feel as though I have been waiting for something like this for a long time. Take a bow Ken, it hasn't been posted in vain.

As you know, Australia has many Vietnamese integrated into our communities & for the most part, quite successfully. But I know what you mean when you refer to their ruthlessness. I do business with some, I have a friend (not a close friend but someone I bump into regularly) married to one & I meet others on a regular basis.

I mention these connections to give some credibility to my thoughts about them. I don't have the time to report individual anecdotes but the bottom line is, they will always be Vietnamese first, everything else second. I can't think how to express my concerns without coming across as racist & I don't wish to vilify them or anybody else.

But OMG! When it comes to questions of money or face, I just walk away before it gets awkward. The menace they exude is palpable. My friend's wife knows that I know what she is all about & she hasn't spoken to me in 5 years. She tried to publicly humiliate me once but when that didn't work, she "un-friended" me. I don't know how else to express it but I am glad she doesn't know 4 fit lads with iron bars.

[SiamSam]

Ken,

Is it possible to trust this culture in the way we understand trust in the west or is their practice of trust on a whole other dimensional plane completely that needs to be learned and mastered like any new language or discipline?

Have you found a level of trust with them in a real and meaningful way?

[KenW]

... I have never read a better analysis than this. It only took you 40 years but it was worth the wait. You have given me more insight than I ever expected to learn. I feel as though I have been waiting for something like this for a long time. Take a bow Ken, it hasn't been posted in vain.

... they will always be Vietnamese first, everything else second.

Thank you pacman.

Of course the 40 year wait, like that of Joshua and Caleb in the wilderness, is somewhat apocryphal. I have been a student, as I said, and have accumulated snippets over the long haul. But it is only recently at home in Saigon, after a particular vendetta of ruthlessness was inflicted upon me, that I sat down to think through how do they do it? I realised immediately that all - or almost all - of the attributes I loathe about VNese were the very same attributes that allowed them to win their wars against bewildered enemies.

Write it down, the voices in my ear cooed at me, like so many gentle doves urging me to cross the River Jordan to find peace with myself. But where?

I am not a historian by trade. Anyhow, even if I was (were?), as a Scrapheaper I would be of no interest to publishers or editors. One HAS to have a university department address, you see, to get into the formal literature. Also, this was a deeply personal analysis, all the major points well known to historians.

Would readers of LBR be interested, I wondered. Set in the village context, where I still draw such weekly or monthly winces of evidence into VNese war winning. My conjecture: for all the face and the smiles and the hellos from the passing schoolchildren, they are still at war. With foreigners. Any foreigners. Us. It's why we have to get out of the country every 3 months to renew visas. Sheer bastardry. It's why we cannot own property. Mongrelism. It's why we cannot own motor vehicles (biggest that can be owned is motor scooter). Ruthless. It's why we have to maintain signed and stamped Household Books, that the police check and detail regularly. Arseholes. It's why we cannot send our own money out of the country by Western Union. Ruthless overbearing bullies.

Why do they do all this? Because they can.

Simply because they can.

And yes pacman, it's always VNese first, second and penultimate. Others a long last.

VNese kinship is structured in such a way that the family becomes more inclusive as you spread like a cultural ripple away from the centre of your pond. The extended family eventually ends up being all VNese people.

Linguistics match this kinship structure. They use the suffix ta for themselves, in ordinary conversation and in more formal ways. We foreigners are tay (literally: westerners). Many of their classificatory nouns are unique to them. Example: their word for President refers only to one person on the planet. All other presidents, USA, Russia, whatever, are given a different noun. Respectful, but a reminder that they are only second string compared to THE man in Hanoi.

You mention our native land. I exploded the first time I heard VNese migrants in Oz - talking in VNese of course - referring to us, mainstream whitey Ozzies, as "foreigners." I will leave out the colourful gutter talk that streamed forth from my mouth, instead providing a summary that said simply to them in VNese: Excuse me, this is Australia, YOU are the foreigners here.

They are in the main arrogant, ruthless, careless, self-seeking lying cheating swindling bastards.

Ya gotta love um. Ya just hafta luvum.

It's why I still choose to live in my village.

[KenW]

Is it possible to trust this culture in the way we understand trust in the west or is their practice of trust on a whole other dimensional plane completely that needs to be learned and mastered like any new language or discipline?

Have you found a level of trust with them in a real and meaningful way?

Interesting questions Sam.

I don't know that as a generalised culture they can be trusted as we understand that term in Western contexts.

Remember the 1968 Tet offensive was conducted, suddenly, pre-emptively, at the annual holiday time whence in all other war years a week long truce was agreed to by both sides. The US military, with its pants well & truly down, suddenly found lying treachery inside its perimeter, mortars and machine guns disrupting the normal religious and familiar holiday peace and quiet.

An adage I have cum up with over the years: VNese are totally reliable people. You can always rely on them to let you down. (ie be unreliable)

Yes, one does have to learn a whole new way of operating. I guess that's a given for all experienced Thai LB hands anyhow. It's similar. Once you learn to accept and expect their lying, their deviousness, their money grubbing dooyadown tactics, you get on with them, unsurprised at their behaviour.

I have a handful of folks I trust emplicitly. Hence the care one has to take with my wild generalisations. I would trust these few precious people as I would trust my best Western friends. But I would not venture same trust on any stranger or acquaintance.

[williethepimp]

this is a great read Ken....i havent logged into the forum in a while due to circumstances,but the first thing i look up is this thread.......many plus +1's...WTP

[KenW]

Thanx willie. As you can see I haven't been looking at threads for a while also.

 

Lunar New Year Madness & Malady is just in beginning phase here (can we call it foreplay?). People are buying up big, the roads become more frenzied (can you imagine that?), traffic cops start pulling every tenth driver over for trivial reasons merely to exact pre-holiday palm grease from them, some people are already drifting off to the countryside, others talking about it and planning, buying tickets, etc. The real event draws its curtains on 10 february. Thereafter it is real insanity for a few weeks as people pound their brains with rice alcohol, gambling, and noise.

 

Time for a grumpy old cock sucker to do a flying duck: migrate west & south for a month.

 

So it's off to Thailand on Thursday (31/01) and then after GOTC to Australia for cheap wine, legs of lamb, and meat pies.

 

Bye to the village for a month or so. Seeya when a little sense returns and most folks are back at work & study.

 

Forwarding adresses: Sunee Plaza, with one evening at Famous; Pattaya Beer Garden.