Viet-Kieu Blues

In Vietnam, the concept of "saving face" is extremely important. The simplest way I can explain it is that saving face mean to retain honor, prestige and status. For example, in complicated situations, you must save face by maintaining your cool, and restore status quo / come up with a solution without leaving a bad impression.

Recently, that has not been the case for me. I'm experiencing something that I'll call the "Viet-Kieu blues." Let me first explain how I got here:

As I noted before, it's not quite easy being a Viet-Kieu womyn. Yet, even with its challenges, I've been able to maintain a positive mindset and enjoy the fact that I indeed have the awesome opportunity to reconnect with my roots and learn about the culture and family that I've been missing the first quarter-century of my life.

However, this past weekend, my friend Jenelle got her purse stolen. In it were her wallet -- including important forms of identification, credit/debit cards, 500.000 dong, etc. -- her phone, her water bottle, and my camera. The incident was extremely disappointing, considering how we both have come to trust the areas we usually frequent in Hue, and that the event had caused us to reevaluate the trust that we seemed to have mistakenly granted to these places, as well as the general trust we have in people when traveling. Though most of these items can be replaced, it's still a pain to do so.

Toward the end of a wonderful weekend of traveling with my Fulbright homie Jefferson -- which consisted of visiting my relatives in Da Nang for my ba noi's death anniversary, watching "Les Miserables," and hanging out with Khoai -- I received a phone call from Jenelle's phone. I thought this was odd, given that her phone had been stolen, so I figured that the person was calling me to let me know that they found her purse, and me especially since I had texted the phone earlier in Vietnamese, saying that I think he mistakenly took my friend's purse, and that we would like it back. The person on the other end of the line was a Vietnamese man, who repeatedly claimed, "No English, no English." I assured him I understood Vietnamese, then he continued on in Vietnamese, using words I wasn't quite familiar with. The general concept I understood was that he found Jenelle's purse; he knew of its contents, and had taken Jenelle's SIM card to contact me so she could retrieve her items.

I breathed a sigh of relief and I anxiously asked him where I could retrieve the items. He said he left the items with his friend who lived in Hue; he was just a traveler. He gave me his friend's number, then I called the friend. The friend said he knew nothing about the purse and its contents. He just had a wallet with papers and cards in it. Frustratedly, I told him that his friend noted that he had everything, and we continued arguing back and forth until he agreed to meet with me at the location I was at. At this point in time, Jefferson and I were standing by my motorbike in a bookstore parking lot, intending to spend the next few hours traveling around Hue before Jefferson had to catch his flight.

Minutes later, he appeared with a friend on the back of his motorbike. They quickly noted that I was not the person on the ID in the wallet, so they asked if I knew the name of the owner. (A move I actually admire, now that I think about it.) I gave her full name, and they popped open the motorbike compartment to hand me a purple wallet with all its contents except for the 500.000 dong. (Of course.) "Where's everything else?" I asked in Vietnamese.

The man proceeded to tell me that he knew nothing about the other items, and he continually insisted that I call back his traveling friend to ask him. They argued, I scowled, Jefferson waited, and finally it came to the point that it was no use. These jerks and his friend were not going to give me a straight answer, and yet they insisted that I should be thankful that I got my friend's wallet back. I got on my bike, thanked him half-heartedly, and set off to show Jefferson the rest of Hue.

I had intended to take Jefferson to Dong Ba market, which is full of delicious Hue food and goodies he could bring back to Ben Tre. But once I arrived to the parking lot my Vietnamese friends usually use, I was waved off by a elderly Vietnamese man. I asked him why I couldn't park there and pointed out the other Vietnamese people who were driving in and parking there, and he didn't even have the decency to respond in Vietnamese, as though I were some random foreigner who didn't deserve the time of day. I looked around in a confused fashion, then looked down at my shirt, which read "SOUTHEAST ASIAN" in bold, yellow letters. Apparently, claiming it doesn't mean that I really am Southeast Asian.

At that point, I gave up. I told Jefferson that I'd rather go to Thien Mu pagoda, when the reality was that I just needed to go on a long drive. I felt myself holding back tears of anger about my inadequacies. I couldn't bargain with the thieves who stole our items because I didn't have the Vietnamese language skill set. I don't look Vietnamese enough to park in an unofficially Vietnamese-designated parking lot. Everywhere I go, I can't blend in. And yet, I'm not American-looking enough to receive the special treatment that foreigners get. I was half-everything, and fully nothing.

Since then, I've been having trouble being able to hold technical conversations in Vietnamese. From trying to purchase a phone with Jenelle to asking different departments in my school about the books I need to teach this week, I find myself losing face, which is evident in the way the people I talk to react to me during our conversation. I lose patience, they lose patience, I lose my honor, and I walk away.

The most feasible solution I have for myself at this point in time is to find a way to regain the confidence and energy to engage with other Vietnamese folks. I'll probably need a "Tay Day" to recover to get to that point. Until then, I'll drown myself in music, get a good amount of sleep, and worry more so about the new set of students I will begin teaching tomorrow.