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<body> <font SIZE="6"> <p ALIGN="CENTER">Boat People</p> </font> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><b><font size="4">Ethno-Culture of the Vietnamese Refugees, 1985-6</font></b></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">Hugh M. Lewis</p> <font FACE="Times" SIZE="4"> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> </font><b><font FACE="Times"> <p ALIGN="CENTER">Copyright © 1986 by Hugh M. Lewis<br> 02/19/00</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">(Portions of this text may be printed and copied for research or educational purposes only. Use of reference material in this e-publication is covered by "Fair Use Policy")</p> </font></b><font FACE="Book Antiqua"> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> </font><b><font FACE="Times"> <p ALIGN="CENTER">This e-publication is produced by:</p> </font></b> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a HREF="http://www.omniprise.net/Publishing.htm"><font FACE="Book Antiqua" SIZE="5">Lewis Micro-Publishing</font></a></p> <b><font FACE="Times"> <p ALIGN="CENTER">For further information about this or any other Lewis Publications,</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">Please contact:</p> </font></b> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a HREF="mailto:publishing@www.omniprise.net"><font FACE="Book Antiqua">Lewis Micro-Publishing</font></a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><img SRC="line5.gif" WIDTH="475" HEIGHT="12"></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a HREF="http://www.omniprise.net/EthnoVietnameseness.htm#one"><font SIZE="4">Introduction <p ALIGN="CENTER">Ethno-Vietnamese Identity: How and Why</p> </font></a> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a HREF="http://www.omniprise.net/EthnoVietnameseness.htm#two"><font SIZE="4">CHAPTER 1 <p ALIGN="CENTER">VIETNAMIZATION ETHNO-HISTORICALLY</p> </font></a> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> <a HREF="http://www.omniprise.net/EthnoVietnameseness.htm#three">SECTION 1:i PREHISTORY AND INDIANIZATION</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a HREF="http://www.omniprise.net/EthnoVietnameseness.htm#four">SECTION 1:ii SINIZATION AND SINICIZATION</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a HREF="http://www.omniprise.net/EthnoVietnameseness.htm#five">SECTION:1:iii WESTERNIZATION AND FRENCHIFICATION</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a HREF="http://www.omniprise.net/EthnoVietnameseness.htm#six">SECTION: 1:iv AMERICANIZATION</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a HREF="http://www.omniprise.net/EthnoVietnameseness.htm#seven"><font SIZE="4">CHAPTER 11 <p ALIGN="CENTER">CULTURE AND CHARACTER IN TRADITONAL VIETNAM</p> </font></a> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a HREF="http://www.omniprise.net/EthnoVietnameseness.htm#eight">SECTION 2:i MAGICAL MOUNTAINS; ANCESTRAL ABODES</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a HREF="http://www.omniprise.net/EthnoVietnameseness.htm#nine">SECTION: 2:ii RIVERS OF LIFE; STREAMS OF CULTURE</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a HREF="http://www.omniprise.net/EthnoVietnameseness.htm#ten">SECTION 2:iii THE ECOLOGY OF VIETNAMESENESS; THE CULTURE OF RICE AND FISH</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a HREF="http://www.omniprise.net/EthnoVietnameseness.htm#eleven">SECTION 2:iv LANGUAGE OF LOGIC; LOGIC OF LOVE</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a HREF="http://www.omniprise.net/EthnoVietnameseness.htm#twelve"><font SIZE="4">CHAPTER III <p ALIGN="CENTER">FLIGHT AND PLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX PEOPLE</p> </font></a> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a HREF="http://www.omniprise.net/EthnoVietnameseness.htm#thirteen">SECTION 3:I CHOLON DIASPORA AND THE CHINESE CONNECTION</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a HREF="http://www.omniprise.net/EthnoVietnameseness.htm#fourteen">SECTION 3:ii THE LONG, DARK PASSAGE TO FREEDOM</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a HREF="http://www.omniprise.net/EthnoVietnameseness.htm#fifteen">SECTION 3: iii LITTLE SAIGON: A VIVESECTION</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a HREF="http://www.omniprise.net/EthnoVietnameseness.htm#sixteen">SECTION 3:iv THE MAKING OF THE MODERN MANDARIN</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a HREF="http://www.omniprise.net/EthnoVietnameseness.htm#seventeen"><font SIZE="4">CHAPTER IV <p ALIGN="CENTER">LOTUS LOVE UNDER THE PHOENIX WING</p> </font></a> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a HREF="http://www.omniprise.net/EthnoVietnameseness.htm#eighteen">SECTION 4:i NETWORKS OF NEED: SURROGATE FAMILIES AND ADOPTED KINFOLK</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a HREF="http://www.omniprise.net/EthnoVietnameseness.htm#nineteen">SECTION 4: ii PATTERNS OF POVERTY AND PREJUDICE: <p ALIGN="CENTER">A PROFILE IN STRESS MISMANAGEMENT</p> </a> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><img SRC="line5.gif" WIDTH="468" HEIGHT="12"></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a NAME="one"> <font SIZE="5">Introduction</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">Ethno-Vietnamese Identity: How and Why</p> </font> <p></a> </p> <p>This work is divided into four chapters, each treating succinctly a particular facet of ethnological comprehension of Vietnamese ethnoculture. Each of these facets is distinctly different, involving a different ethnological model, and yet all are interrelated and inseparable in a holistic comprehension of Vietnamese refugee identity, or, "what it means to be a Vietnamese refugee." In order of presentation, these facets are: 1) Ethnohistory, dealing with prehistoric and historic processes in relation to the Vietnamese people, in order to elucidate a driving dynamic that provides a recursive continuity to our comprehension of ethnohistorical processes; 2) Ethnoculture is a facet of ethnological inquiry that deals primarily with the focal patternings of a cultural orientation of a particular group of people, in terms of its own cultural idiom; 3) Ethnography of existential ethnicity refers to relatively non-ethnocentric description of the emergent being of the ethnic Vietnamese by identity, affiliation, reference, ascription and classification within an American socio-structural context, giving essential comprehension for the commonly shared motivations, evaluations, expectations and purposes of the existential ethnicity of Vietnamese identity; 4) The last facet deals existentially with my own relationships with a small open ended network of Vietnamese families, a piece of the existential fabric of ethnic Vietnamese identity, focusing especially upon my own intimate relationship with a single "nuclear" family of a single mother and her children. In order to operationalize my key terminology for heuristic purposes, I define ethnology as the study of ethnoculture in relation to a particular grouping of people—past, present and future.</p> <p>This work deals with several ethnological models attempting to delineate structural interrelationships and symbolism in both an "emic" and an "etic" manner. "Emic" refers to subjective "evaluations" from within a cultural milieu, while "etic" refers to "objective" descriptions from outside of a culture. This work recognizes no clear-cut rational boundary between any of the rational dichotomies thus implied- "ideal vs. real", "etic vs. emic", "objective vs. subjective" or "description vs. Evaluation." It is beyond the immediate scope of this work to elucidate all the problematic philosophical ramifications of the anthropological jargon of "etic" and "emic" but only to mention in passing that such rationalistic dichotomization of human reality has no worthwhile place within ethnological comprehension. The only problem is to get out of the habit of doing it.</p> <p>"Vietnameseness" refers to "the sense of being Vietnamese." I myself am not a Vietnamese and until just recently had no acquaintance of being Vietnamese whatsoever except for my own preconceptions relating to the American involvement in the Vietnam War. Of course, what is a Vietnamese? He or she is most obviously a human being and so in all naturalness cannot be too different in the barest essentials from you or me, and yet there must be something more as well, something distinct that makes a "Vietnamese" separate and distinct from a "Japanese" or a "Chinese" or a "German" or even just a plain old "American." And yet, as an Vietnamese person will readily warn you, no two Vietnamese are exactly alike, and more often than not quite remarkably dissimilar from one another, and so we must be careful not to be satisfied with a "national character" stereotype. Now we are put upon the horns of a dilemma—Vietnamese by definition are all the same and yet al different. The objective of this work is to resolve this most basic of human paradoxes.</p> <p>"Ethno" has many connotations, not the least of which are "race," "people," "pre-literate" and "primitive." From this root which stems from the ancient Greeks "ethnos" which means "nation" there are several compound derivatives not the least of which is "ethnocentrism", defined as the "emotional attitude" that one’s own race, nation or culture is superior to all others. The Greek peoples had a simple ethnocentrism, for they did not question the given of their civilization, compared to which all other people’s were barbarian. Ignorance is bliss. Today our ethnocentrism, inherited from the Greeks, is neither so simple nor so innocent. In its sophisticated modern form it has "evolved" into paradigmatic prejudice we dare not question because to do so would mean repudiation of our own civilization.</p> <p>"Ethnology" another derivative of "ethno," is succinctly defined "the branch of anthropology that deals with the comparative cultures of various peoples, including their distribution, folkways, etc."(Webster’s Dict. 1983) Ethnology is, by inference, a study of ethnocentrism, our own and other peoples, for in order to claim comparative comprehension of difference and similarities between cultures, we must escape by dialectical questioning and answering the attitudes of inherent or cultural superiority. The attitude must commonly associated with the "emotion of ethnocentrism" is arrogant pride. All human beings take pride in their own heritage, and it is healthy as long as it isn’t attached to attitudes of intrinsic superiority or used comparatively to denigrate others. The hubris of Greek Civilization had its nemesis.</p> <p>Ethnography, defined as "the branch of anthropology that deals descriptively with specific cultures, especially those of primitive peoples or groups" (Webster’s Dict. 1983), has a seemingly unavoidable connotation of "primitiveness" as well as a necessary implication of methodological relativism. "Primitive" is an original ethnocentrism, which, like its ancient precursor "barbarian" is an expression of differential evaluative distance between others and ourselves. Ethnographic description stands in an uneasy relationship with ethnological comparison in terms of methodological relativism. In order to describe another people’s cultural orientation in terms of its own cultural idiom we must at least temporarily forgo our own ethnocentrism, while to compare different people’s cultural orientation requires some at least tacit standard of group comparison; i.e., value judgments. Such a standard of group comparison must necessarily be one of equality-equally shared by all groups, otherwise the judgment would not be fair, i.e., ethnocentric. In anthropological terminology, we are thus searching for "universals" of human culture and human nature.</p> <p>The rationale behind the organization of this work is that in order to achieve an ethnological comprehension of the meaning of being Vietnamese we must necessarily come to terms with the embedded quality of this sense of being in both the past and present contexts of structural and environmental interrelationships which delimit and help to define the particular <u>ethos.</u> (Greek, <u>ethos</u>—and accustomed place or habitation: hence, habit, custom, character, defined as "the characteristic and distinguishing attitudes, habits, etc., of a racial, political, occupational, or other group." Webster’s Dict. 1983)</p> <p>Ethos and ethnos are the key organizational metaphors behind the mythology of ethnological comprehension that is to be distinguished from the actual reality of being Vietnamese. Ethnology involves a metalogical form of mythology that enables us to transcend not only the ethnocentrism rooted in our own cultural orientations, but as well the ethnocentrism of the people whom we purport to ethnologically comprehend, through a dialectical synthesis between an "etic" other and an "emic" self.</p> <p>Beyond the attempt to ethnologically comprehend the meaning of Vietnamese ethnoculture, the overarching theme of this work is to attempt to demonstrate to the skeptical-minded reader that there may actually exist an essential most common sense about the reality of being Vietnamese, one that pre-existed independently from, co-exists along side of, and functions in spite of our ethnological comprehension of that reality, with which it may or may not at any particular moment coincide. In its essence it is the focal orientation which gives contextual " contiguity" to our comprehension of ethnocultural patterning.</p> <p>There is a living, on-going ethnological understanding behind Vietnamese ethnoculture that provides the Vietnamese people with a sense of coherence and order between the processes of the Past, the patternings of the Present, and the purposes of the Future, approximated through our ethnological comprehension. Synergism is not a formal rational ideal of the "super-organic," it is rather the ever changing and on-going existential reality of the moment, a shared symbolic reality common to a grouping of people, made meaningful in relation to the sense of the past, present and future. The synergism of Vietnamese ethnoculture is a synthesis of a cyclical dialectic of contraposed and complementary symbolism that are in essence the male-principle and the female-principle occurring within the primary setting of the family. The family is the key synthetic metaphor of Vietnamese ethnoculture, underlying and structuring its history, culture and existential emergence. To enter into an ethnological comprehension of the reality of Vietnamese ethnoculture is to enter into the great circle of being Vietnamese, between the dialectical extremes of male- and female- principles and ending and beginning again and again with the metaphor of the Vietnamese family.</p> <p>The Vietnam conflict still looms large on the ever-receding horizon, connected to the present by a steady stream of "boat-people", its living legacy. This war was characteristically "Vietnamese" with roots much deeper in Vietnamese History and Culture than any American reason or rationale or motivation can ever hope to account for. Far too many innocent people did a dirty duty and paid the ultimate sacrifice without the least comprehension of the how and why of Vietnamese ethnoculture. And the game of living and dying goes on, for the Vietnamese as well.</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><img SRC="line5.gif" WIDTH="468" HEIGHT="12"></p> <p> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a NAME="two">CHAPTER 1</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">VIETNAMIZATION ETHNO-HISTORICALLY</a></p> <font SIZE="2"> <p> </p> <p>Southeast Asia has never been in any sense an isolated or self-contained unit.…the story of the successive waves of cultural and commercial influence which have swept over it in a dual process of destruction and creation, and of the repeated challenge to the peoples of Southeast Asia to relearn, to readapt, and to reinterpret. (Harrison 1967:x)</p> <p> </p> </font> <p>Much has gone into the making of the people now known as the Vietnamese, though the name itself is of fairly recent origin, the memory of the Vietnamese as a distinct people, both as it is written by them and about them, stretches back many millenium to the remotest traces of primordial times.</p> <p>The correct metaphor to name this idiom of conceptualization of Vietnamese ethnohistory is "Vietnamization," the ethnohistorical process of identification, reinforcement and reinterpretation and reorientation of cultural group identity through the mythological and ideological creation, manipulation and recreation of cultural/historical symbolism.</p> <p>The "objective" of ethnohistory is to penetrate and explore the separate reality of "being Vietnamese"—"Vietnameseness." It is to search for a synthetic comprehension of how and why and reasons behind such a synthesizing cultural complex, the meaning systems of various kinds of symbolism as they are employed indigenously in many different ways at many different times upon many different levels of articulation and expression. It is to find these in terms analogous to the kind of idiomatic "rationality" or "ethos" that originally conceived and created (and in turn was conceived by and created within them) and brought this "system" into being in the first place, and that continually reconstructs and recreates its own symbolic reality, everyday and every year of its on-going emergence.</p> <p>The ethnology of the developmental processes underlying the making of Vietnamese Civilization, or Vietnamization, by implication refers to the notion of a peculiar and unique form of "cultural synergism" that cannot be comprehended from an analytical, anatomical dissection of the many diverse "aspects" or organic social functioning of Vietnamese culture. This particular cultural synergism occurs in Vietnamese cultural interactions within an environmental and historical setting, or structural context, and it is a living, changing, developing, and even "evolving" phenomena of the combined processes of "Vietnamization," or the development of "Vietnamese Civilization." This peculiar synergism has a vast multitude of alternative facets of interpretation and expression, all of which more-or-less organize themselves into a loosely structured, cyclical kind of "coherent order" or "systemic organization," providing a meaningfulness inherent and intrinsic to the Culture itself, and inseparable from it.</p> <p>The subjective structure of the reality of Vietnamese ethnoculture is symbolic. Mythology is both the beginning and end of Vietnamese ethnohistory, not only because the origin myths of Au Co and Lac Long Quan, or the heroic court legends of the T’rung Sisters, King An Duong, Ong Giong or Nhat La Trach "were remembered by the Vietnamese because they expressed their earliest identity as a people" (Taylor, 1983) but also because ethno-history itself is a brand of mythology which has been literally turned inside-out and straight jacketed by the imperative of chronology. All of history is mythological (as is all of culture)—"ethno" is merely an appendage delineating the cultural boundaries, and hence symbolic content, of this form of mythology.</p> <p>Ethnohistory is a kind of mirror of mythology—a mythical reflection of the present—but more importantly and paradoxically, it is a mythology about a mythology, with only an ever-receding appearance of objective reality. Once engaged within the never ending historical dialectic, there is no longer any distinguishing clearly between the historical study of myth and the mythological study of history. History and mythology merge, compound and confound one another until there can only be confusion between subject and object, past and present.</p> <p>Symbols, in their analogical form and metaphorical function, in their contextual significance, meaningful content and social structure, is the atom of mythological reality. Mythology might be called a kind of synergism of the human mind. Culture and history are the mythological synergism of the symbolism of humankind. By mentioning a unique kind of synergism of history and culture, I am not merely referring to the "super-organic" analogy which is a "logic" of misplaced concretization, the reification of the organic analogy. It is a relatively easy matter to review history and to see the rise and fall of empires and the evolution of civilization and to imagine the growth and climax of biotic cultures in the agar of a petri dish.</p> <p>The synergism of history find its expression in terms of a thematic continuity of events between past and present, a continuity expressed in dialectical forms—mythological antonyms which arrange themselves in a contrapuntal fashion of question and answer, thesis and antithesis, and finally into a mythological synthesis. The chronology of history serves to express in dialectical terminology the driving mechanism of this historical synergism, its pivotal dynamo by which history turns upon its self in thematic repetition. The chronology of history provides our comprehension of ethno-Vietnamese identity with the provenience of period and place within the mythical realm of the "past" to determine a context, a structure, a rational range, a dynamic continuum, a developmental patterning, and a paradigmatic model, by which to render significant and relatively meaningful the "events" and "epochs" and "episodes" of history.</p> <p>The historical development of Vietnam’s past has not been written in a cultural/historical vacuum of isolation. It could not have been written outside of the larger context of culture-contact and culture change. Vietnamese ethnohistory is properly only defined in the historical relationship that the Vietnamese people have maintained with other cultural groupings. Vietnamization, the process of the development of Vietnamese Civilization, could not have been written outside of a broader continuum of the development of human civilization among the cultural groupings of other people. Instead, the "chapters" of Vietnamese ethnohistory are mainly defined within a context of contact and enduring relationships with differing cultures at different periods of time. The ethno-identity of any cultural-groupings is normally defined by and maintained within a larger frame of reference in the interrelationships of symbolic differences and similarities between other cultural-groupings.</p> <p>Acculturation, defined as "the study of culture-transmission in process" (Herskovits 1947) is a primary metaphor of culture-contact and culture change phenomena. Acculturation, in its many guises and forms, as the ethno-historically defined processes of intercultural connections and structural interrelationships, destroys the myth of the static deterministic cultural boundary, or borderline, of cultural separation and isolation, and also destroys the myth that the internal functional dynamics of cultural processes of change in the eternal ethnographic present is independent of and unrelated to events within the larger, supra-cultural context of human civilization.</p> <p>Acculturation forms the theoretical basis of ethno-history as the comprehension of the cultural and historical processes of how a cultural grouping arrives at, maintains and reinterprets its distinctive identity as a group. Acculturation and ethnohistory are inseparable in meaning and implication—two sides of the same coin—and the process of Vietnamization is only to be comprehended in relation to contraposed processes of acculturation. Vietnamization and the process of acculturation, is divided into "chapters" of Indianization, Westernization and "Francoization" and finally "Americanization," form the mythological dialectic of Vietnamese ethnohistory. Acculturative processes, variously defined, labeled, identified, and the ethnohistorical process of Vietnamization, are mutually interdependent.</p> <p>Whereas the various acculturative processes provide an overarching theme of often destructive diversity and disunity in culture-contact and intercultural contexts in Vietnamese ethnohistory, the contrapuntal theme of Vietnamization provides an underlying theme of symbolic, cultural unification—a typically "Vietnamese" sense of coherence and continuity of culture within changing contexts. Vietnamization is an ethnohistorical process that is the direct result of acculturation. The various and sundry processes were the direct antecedents and consequences in structural interrelation of the ethnohistorical process of Vietnamization.</p> <p>In writing the following "chapters" upon Vietnamese ethno-history the concurrent and contrapuntal dialectics of acculturation and Vietnamization, with each chapter representing the particular "phase" of the process, the phases pile upon one another in a chain of events model—there are few definable boundaries or dates distinguishing when one "phase" begins and another ends. I wish to stress the overlapping and continuous character of the entire ethnohistorical process in dividing the "phases" into "chapters" of "prehistory with a late phase of Hinduization," "Sinization," "Westernization," and "Francoization" and finally "Americanization."</p> <p>The understanding of Ethnohistory and the processes of acculturation and development of civilization underlying ethnohistory necessitates a study of the labels, and labeling, stereotypes and categorizations, symbolism and symbolization that people and their cultural groupings fashion in relation to one another, and that students of history fashion in relation to an ideal sense of the "Past." These are ethnohistorical metaphors that have as much significance in the present as meaning in the past. Through these formal labeling processes and mythological dialectics they belie, does Vietnamese ethnohistory merge into a single "Vietnamized" synthesis of the living present.</p> <p>Vietnamese ethnohistory formally begins with the labeling process. "Ethno" means "race" and the earliest evidence of human occupation of the territory demarcated on maps today as Vietnam is in the paleo-anthropological form of fossilized remains of "races" of early human beings. There is a paper-thin dividing line between talking in terms of race and racism. Once a label is created it is difficult to disprove but easy to "prove" and reinforce its deception of reality. Labeling has the human "virtue" of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Race and racism are quite interdependent in form and function, not only is racism the ideology of "race" but the theory of "race" is a mythology of racism. Each implies and necessitates the other in symbolic definition and realization. All the connotations of the definitions of race and racism have been applied in the literature in reference to the Vietnamese people, but let’s drop the name-calling and search the ground for evidence of just plan old human beings.</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><img SRC="line5.gif" WIDTH="468" HEIGHT="12"></p> <p> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a NAME="three">SECTION 1:1</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">PREHISTORY AND INDIANIZATION</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"></a></p> <p>Southeast Asia has been an area of relatively continuous human occupation for over a million years. The Southeast Asian peninsula has long been a migratory crossroads and meeting ground for many different human "races". Evidence of earliest human beings in the form of "tool assemblages" bear a distinctive "cultural boundary" between those early peoples of East Asia and those further west in West Asia, Africa and Europe. Symmetrical, bifacially flaked hand-axes of the western acheulian assemblages and mysterious "hand-adzes" of the "Chopper-Chopping" assemblages of the east are the primary representatives of possibly two distinct cultural traditions which may have developed in relative isolation from one another.</p> <p>Another important feature of the earliest Southeast Asian occupation sites is the earliest evidence of the "controlled use of fire". "The social ramifications of the hearth are stunning…the hearth may well have been one of the most important socializing factors in human evolution." (Kennedy 1980) Conjecture suggests that these earliest human beings pursued "broadly based subsistence activities", living in "temporary structures" or in caves, systematically exploiting large herds of animals through group-hunting strategies which enabled the support of the development of larger, less migrant, groupings of human populations.</p> <p>Later paleo-anthropological evidence suggests any number of possible "evolutionary sequences" or migration patterns, depending upon the author. The earliest (41,500 1,000 BP) "Modern Homo Saipiens saipiens" is a "very delicately built female" that " resembled some modern Southeast Asians" and who hailed from Niah Caves on Borneo. Imagination can find any number of "racial" associations in Southeast Asians. Fossil remains found in Vietnam "have been referred, at one time or another, to almost every racial type except that which forms the bulk of the population of Southeast Asia today." (Burling 1965) The modern population of this region is truly a potpourri of many migrations of many "different" peoples. The best description is the shortest and sweetest—people simply moved around from time to time and through the ages mixed it up a lot. Whoever came first, second, third and so on (and whoever wins the "Race"), the important consideration for prehistoric process is cultural, and not "racial", heritage. If there is any real continuity between the remotest prehistoric past and the modern present it must only be found in human cultural development, and not on all the possible biological permutations and recombination among continually diverging and converging "gene pools."</p> <p>More valuable evidence is archaeological. What is evident in this record is continuous, almost direct sequences of cultural development of human civilization, from the remotest "anthropoids" to historical beginnings, in the northern highlands of Vietnam, that may have been the scene of the independent genesis of an agricultural "revolution" as early as 15,000 BP, and of the rise of one of the earliest human civilizations in the world. A botanical "age-area" principle has been employed to trace the origins of the Asian cultivated species of rice <u>O. sativa</u> to the mountain ranges of northern Southeast Asia between 15,000 and 10,000 BP. The "Crystallitic" period is the first recognizable phase of this prehistoric process of civilization, during which distinctive local cultures began to "crystallize" in Southeast Asia, and this is associated with the "Hoa Binhian" culture sequence, that may have achieved the transformation to horticulture in the highlands, domestication of plants and animals like the chicken, pig and the dog, as well as the independent invention of pottery. These earliest highland sites are almost always situated in limestone caves near small streams. There occurred then an "Extensionistic" phase of a major migration trend from the mountain slopes onto the adjacent piedmont, a gradual "fanning out process" which spread the associated "Bac Son" civilization throughout Southeast Asia and even into the Pacific. Bac Sonian cultural sequences are evident in sites scattered throughout Southeast Asia, Southern China, Eastern India and even in some of the Pacific islands. Evidence associated with these sites suggest "rudimentary agricultural development" and rather extensive trade networks--the gradual movement to lower elevations created enough of an environmental difference to lead to a transition in ecological cultural patterning. This culture sequence blends smoothly into the "Phung Nguyen" culture sequence which are located further downstream, reflecting a gradual transition from small "middle-country" sites almost always upstream of tributaries of main river courses, which were only a hectare in area with no more than a few hundred inhabitants, with "broadcasting" rizicultural adaptation, to gradual aggregations of "hamlets" and clans into larger "villages’ with "communal social arrangements" to settlement sites which covered "tens of thousands of square meters and accomodated thousands of inhabitants." (Solheim, April 1972; Higham, April 1984)</p> <p>These later "Phung-Nguyen" sites feature the independent development of Bronze Metallurgy and the practice of tidal rice cultivation upon the flooded river plains. Agricultural development, population increase, and the organization and mobilization of social elements, based upon Bronze Metallurgy, with Bronze drums, arrow heads, bronze plow shares, and the bronze pedi-form axe associated with the centralization of authority. This cultural sequence developed into the "Dong Son" culture complex and civilization, the culmination of this prehistoric process of the development of indigenous civilization before conquest by the Chinese. Dong Son civilization is located downstream and peripheral to the main focus of Phung Nguyen sites, featuring a strong economic base upon which rose a feudalistic system of hierarchical chieftains, a sophisticated exception to the contemporaneous communalistic tribal societies predominating upon the Southeast Asian mainland.</p> <p>The further downstream this early culture sequence spread, the more culture-contact resulted in a kind of "cross stimulus-diffusion" of early civilizations. Linguistic evidence points to the cultural diversity of the mainland—depending upon the linguist there may be anywhere between five and nine major language families upon the mainland. Most enigmatic is the "Mon-Khmer" family, the oldest, autochthonous and most widely dispersed and fragmented family—sustained in small isolated highland pockets. The age-area principle suggests a central area of diffusion and origin in the northern highlands, which corroborates well with the rise of "Hoa Binhian"-"Bac Sonian"-"Phung Nguyen"-"Dong Sonian" cultural sequences. The isolated, fragmented scattering into isolated areas suggests earlier possibly continuous and even distribution throughout the mainland—periodically shattered by the intrusion of other language families. This linguistic pattern of distribution suggests not a pattern of mass migration, but rather of many movements of small influential groups, possibly a princely court and retainers in exile, establishing per force cultural preeminence over another area. This movement of many small groups in many directions is especially apparent upon the alluvial flood plains of the lowland riverine regions where accessibility of culture-contact led a "homogenizing" convergence of linguistic and cultural differences. Political expediency of local peoples shifting their language affiliation in "defiance of stability or historic unity" "could well explain the rest." Vietnamese-Mong, or "Vietnamuong" are cousins associated with the Mon-Khmer family, a little subfamily" whose greatest dialectical variation points to an origin in the highlands of North Vietnam.</p> <p>Folkloric and legendary evidence corroborates well with this patterning of archaeological and linguistic evidence. The legendary Hung kingdom known as Van-lang is traced to the heartland of the Phung Nguyen Culture complex. Dong Son civilization is associated with the legendary "Lac Lords" whose hereditary titles of "Quan Lang" conferred possession of "Lac-fields" based upon tidal irrigation—"Lac" may mean "ditch, canal or waterway". The myth of King An Duong recapitulates the linguistic pattern of "small scale" princely diffusion of languages. The origin mythology of Lac Long Quan, the dragon lord who came from the sea, and of Au Co, the fairy princess from the mountains, reveals a fundamental highland/lowland, mountain/water antagonism that is a recurrent theme in Southeast Asian mythology and which may be indicative of a general pattern of culture-contact. This lowland adaptation goes back to "Quynh Van" cultural sequences, contemporaneous with the Bac-Sonian sequences of the "extensionistic" phase that features a "kitchen-midden" coastal –riverine adaptation to fishing. This adaptation is found all along the coast south and north as far as China and Japan, diffusing from Southeast Asia and suggesting "conversion to agriculture would lead to movements inland, particularly along the rivers". (Fairservice 1959) Carl Sauer proposed a theory of the origin of agriculture with a cradle area along the Southeast Asian coasts associated with fishing and a kind of "planting" of roots, stems or tubers, of the cultigens of the "Yam-Taro-Sago" complex, giving rise to settlements of concentrations of people, and thus civilization.</p> <p>Hinduization of "Father India" had no "historic" beginning, being a trickle of sea faring merchants from "time immemorial" who built early trading settlements on top of ancient Neolithic sites, gradually developing into a major stream of culture-contact eventuating in the "founding of Indian kingdoms practicing the arts, customs and religions of India, and using Sanskrit as their sacred language." (Coedes 1968) Characterized as "stimulus diffusion" this acculturative contact between South and Southeast Asian civilizations may have germinated the early Dong Son flowering. The model of the process of Hinduization is of a small "cultural sub-grouping" of a handful of merchant vessels, perhaps carrying Brahmanic priests or scholars, or passing themselves off as of elite caste status, mixing with and influencing the ruling elite of the local areas, adopting the language and introducing their superior civilization, and especially marrying daughters of well places and powerful leaders, who in turn became the best propaganda agents for the promulgation of Indian civilization. Inheriting land or titles of authority, an Indian or Indianized chief then assembled local peoples into an organization of state:</p> <p>"<font SIZE="2">Often this organization was accompanied by the establishment, on a natural or artificial mountain, of the cult of an Indian divinity intimately associated with the royal person and symbolizing the unity of the kingdom....an example which illustrates the relative parts played by Indian and native elements in the formation of the ancient Indochinese civilizations and the manner in which these two elements interacted." (Coedes 1968:26-27)</p> </font> <p>There are enough parallels between this early Hinduization process and Vietnamese Origin mythology to suggest that the original culture hero, Lac Long Quan, who "came from the sea," may have been an early Indian merchant. The legend of "One Night Marsh," tells of a Hung princess who met a naked man Chu Dong Tu while exploring the delta of the Red River. They married and established a kingdom "near the sea in a palace filled with the luxury wares of sea-borne merchants." <u>Chu</u> was an ethnic denomination by which early Chinese referred to Indian people.</p> <p>In any case Hinduization was by and large a fairly peaceful and constructive process of cultural fusion and integration unscarred by military conquest or colonial exploitation. "Far from being destroyed by the conquerors, the native peoples of Southeast Asia found in Indian society, transplanted and modified, a framework within which their own society could be integrated and developed." (Coedes 1968: 38)</p> <p>In contrast, Sinization proceeded by military conquest and administrative annexation. While "Indianization spread to the limits of merchant’s commercial navigation," Sinization never managed to extend Chinese civilization beyond the boundaries of its imperial conquest. While Indian colonizers had only "ties of tradition" Chinese ties were of political dependency. While Chinese governors administered Chinese commandaries, Indianized kingdoms were governed by "independent sovereigns of native origin or of mixed blood, advised by Indian or Indianized counselors whose activity was chiefly cultural…" (Coedes 1968)</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><img SRC="line5.gif" WIDTH="475" HEIGHT="12"></p> <p> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a NAME="four">SECTION 1:ii</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">SINIZATION AND SINICIZATION</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p>Traditional Vietnamese History formally began with the chapter of "Sinization" and "Sinicization," with the introduction of tax and census records, and covered nearly two millenium neatly split in half between the first sub-phase of "Sinization" and the second sub-phase of "Sinicization" associated with the "Independence Era". The difference between the two sub-phases is analogous to the differences between "Hellenic" and "Hellenistic"—"by" Chinese and "<u>like</u>" Chinese. The overarching ethnohistorical dialectic is referred to as "Sino-Vietnamization".</p> <p>Imperial Chinese history in the colonization of Vietnam was primarily coastal access for a southern sea route—A Southeast Asian entrepot for highly priced exotic merchandise, but interest in the form of tribute and agricultural taxation remained strong. From the beginning Chinese reforms in Vietnam aimed at increasing dividends from taxation. The earliest marriage reforms, introduction of Confucian patriarchal values, ancestor worship, monogamy, were designed to increase the taxable "hearth count" and went hand-in-hand with agricultural reforms like iron plow-shares and hydraulic engineering and techniques of transplantation to increase agricultural productivity to insure a generous surplus to make the enterprise profitable for everyone except the peasant.</p> <p>From the beginning Chinese conquest opened the doors for southward Chinese migration that was part of a continuous impulse of southward oriented expansionism and imperialism against a backlash of Nan Yueh "Barbarians" rooted in the dynamics of Chinese Civilization, made up mostly of a mixed lot of males who frequently married local women. This was never a "mass migration" but one of a dominant minority that appropriated for itself the special prerogative and sumptuary privileges that come with authority. Few in number but great in magnitude, whose foreign presence exerted enough decisive influence upon the delicate and precarious metabolism of the indigenous social system to create repeated, cyclical reverberations which clearly led to locally catastrophic consequences, their regular intermarriage into the local ruling elite for mutual advantage created a distinctive "Sino-Vietnamese" ruling class whose interests were ambivalently both local and imperial. It also created a "middle class" caught between the Chinese blade and the Vietnamese grindstone—frequently both gaining and losing in the process of mediation between local and foreign interests.</p> <p>The entire dialectic of "Sino-Vietnamization" was fueled by an inherent trait of the Chinese colonial apparatus, tutelage of political domination and dependency and peonage of extraction created local conditions ripe for exploitation, a pernicious corruption in the form of graft, blackmail, usury, bribery, extortion, embezzlement and nepotism. Corruption was an inherent and endemic weakness of the "semi-feudal" social system, legitimated and ideologically reinforced by the whole Confucian ethical code and providing a substrate for cyclically recurring pattern of Sino-Vietnamization of inexorable local rebellion and foreign conquest.</p> <p>"Filial" corruption provoked local unrest and political turmoil, which in turn provoked re-conquest from the North inevitably entailing, in its turn, administrative reform-- a temporary purging of local administration of corrupt and inefficient people and practices. With reform there would ensue a prolonged period of local peace and prosperity which would fuel demographic growth. With demographic increase there would also occur a concurrent growth in new local corruption, pressure for land, and nepotism. Land and opportunity would soon be foreclosed in the interests of the few and for the disadvantage of the many. Eventually this cancerous growth of local population pressure and corruption would result in another occurrence of "revitalization"—rebellions, upheaval, feudal bouts for over-lordship, foreign invasion of a local social economy ripe for the picking, piracy, etc. This would again provoke a northern response and a new reconquest with a new train of immigration of people seeking renewed opportunity in the south when none is available in the north.</p> <p>As this dialectic between north and south accelerated and grew in dimensions of scope and complexity, with periods of peace and prosperity becoming shorter, rebellions and corruption and reconquest more frequent, China and Vietnam stood in contrapuntal structural interrelationship. When the North was weak, corrupted, over populated, the South was strong, prosperous, united and gambling for local independence. When the North was strong, the South would be weak. From this Sino-Vietnamese dialectic emerged a gradual development of political centralization in Vietnam, culminating in an Independent, but domestically divide, Vietnamese country.</p> <p>This entire two millenium of Sino-Vietnamization demonstrated a remarkable synergism of process and patterning, conservative and continuous in character, stable in its dynamic repetition in spite of periodic imbalances and chaos, that bespeaks a remarkable degree of symbolic integration—actors performing in relation to one another in coherent symbolic structures within a very consistent external framework. If this Great Cycle was fueled by the greed of local land lords and the sweat and blood of peasants and "landless" vagabonds, then it also had an internal dynamic motor embedded in the social structure of Sino-Vietnamese civilization, driving this whole ethnohistorical process and conferring its tremendous synergistic momentum. Then there must not be forgotten the many complex motivations—the human energy source of this engine. This dialectic refers us to rational ideals like the stable stereotype of the conservative "Peasant" and his family, of the "Peasant Village" with its autonomous conservatism, of a conservative "semi-feudal" social economy and a dynamic continuum of a regal-ritual/administrative city-state political centralization.</p> <p>The fundamental structural relationship was the social relationship between many human beings and the fixed, finite land—environmental/social circumscription and constriction of resources. Wet-rice cultural adaptation favors intensification of the agricultural process—a labor intensification favoring rapid and excessive growth of high local densities of local over population, growing inevitably beyond the optimum local range of resource-to-human interrelationships to diminishing returns from the amount of labor invested. There is a predominant tendency for local land-holdings to subdivide and diminish in net returns. This favors a growing tendency of familial "atomization" and of closed familial "hoarding units" who struggle divisively and desperately against misfortune and competition not just to retain their small land holdings, but to increase the size and number of their holdings. Excess population of "landless laborers" was only partially able to be mobilized within the local economy, many peasants are driven by poverty into debt peonage and land tenancy. A few large landowners emerge from the fateful competition from many essentially "land less" peasants, and the population pressures are driven to the breaking point.</p> <p>Patrimonial inheritance, a form of mobilization of the land, or of structurally defining the human social relationship to the land, encouraged the aggregation of land within familial hoarding units. To reinforce centralization of authority, later Emperors encoded laws that made inheritance of prebendal domain illegal or which encouraged equal subdivision among both sons and daughters in order to increase the already predominating divisive tendencies among small land holdings and to break down the development of large landed estates.</p> <p>Ancestor worship, patriarchal ethical values, and patrimonial inheritance combined with prebendal domain, official embezzlement, usury and tenancy, and communal village land, to counteract and stabilize these divisive tendencies in land holdings, and counterbalance this process and aggravate its resonating consequences by encouraging and perpetuating the growth of a few disproportionately large land-holdings for the profit of the few and the expense of the many. A worldview of limited good, a zero sum model in which one’s gains are unavoidably another’s losses (in land holding) and a just Confucian world order made this entire social system quite conservative in the renowned pessimism and resignation of the "Peasant". Though communal village land for the poor and disinherited mitigated somewhat the overall tendencies of this entire process, nevertheless the essential mechanism generated inexorable social pressures which could only be alleviated by expansionism and acquisition of new land through imperialism, or through "revitalization" in political rebellion and warfare.</p> <p>Found within this patternings are a key set of socialization tendencies and enculturation practices and formal educational systems which fostered and perpetuated the symbolism associated with the great Confucianist Circle of Conservatism and Traditionalism which reinforced and fueled this entire process. Archetypal character "configurations" embodied within the ethos of the culture polarized about the dynamic extremes of peasant and mandarin, soldier and scholar. Good times followed bad, polluted emperors followed the heels of pure emperors, in a perpetual "misery-go-round" quickening in tempo and intensity as Sino-Vietnamization developed in structural complexity and in centralization of authority. Greater highs of power and prosperity were followed by greater lows of depravity and depression. In all this there was an extraordinarily strong familial ethic from peasant to emperor, which made nepotism, favoritism, domestic hoarding and strife, justified within a strict Confucian straightjacket. Personal psychological identification was completely with the success or misfortune of the family—big families were not only happy but fortunate in the eyes of their ancestors. Misfortune and poverty were contemptible not so much because of personal deprivation and suffering but because these processes inevitably meant the destruction and disintegration of the family—psycho-social atomization and anomie were the consequences of the state of abject familial poverty. A strong prosperous family tied to large land-holdings was the only guarantee of social and personal security. Strong parent-child identification meant that if parents were successful, children would be spoilt and corrupt while children of poor hard working peasants, though often abused, imbibed values of hard work and obedience and shrewdness in not getting caught. There is built within this social order a proclivity and predisposition to gamble obsessively for higher stakes, a compulsion toward achieving success and security that was social and familial in character. Life is a never ending poker game of gambit and ruse, where control of critical information can make or break a person’s chance for success and fortune—bluffing and deception are socially sanctioned, being discovered, getting caught the penalty and the crime—calling another’s bluff as obsessive social preoccupation.</p> <p>Chinese civilization impacted upon all levels of articulation, and yet became assimilated into Vietnamese culture as a permanent overlay only selectively along central aspects of politico-religious and socio-economic symbolism, ideologies and structure, like a Chinese superego over a Vietnamese id, resulting in an inherently divided "Sino-Vietnamese" traditional ego—a cultural and character "ethos" both alike and unlike Chinese and Southeast Asia. The period of sinicization witnessed the same fundamental patternings in the development of Sino-Vietnamization as occurred during "Sinization," only that there was a crucial and critical symbolic reversal of forms acquired from the Chinese. A threat and a permanent nuisance persistently externalized became internalized as a basic, inherent social conflict, an intrinsic contradiction within the Vietnamization process. In usurping traditional patriarchal authority from the North, the Vietnamese "National Character" developed an "Oedipus Complex" which became obsessive compulsive in symbolically resurrecting things Chinese, while simultaneously needing to reaffirm an independent political-religious identity in relation to China. The structural metalogic of Vietnamization survived, but not unchanged.</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><img SRC="line5.gif" WIDTH="575" HEIGHT="11"></p> <p> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a NAME="five">SECTION:1:iii</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">WESTERNIZATION AND FRENCHIFICATION</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p>Westernization permanently transformed Vietnamese worldview. Beginning with early efforts of "merchant-missionaries" and "missionary merchants" and culminating four hundred years later in the Indo-Chinese wars, this chapter has been somewhat euphemistically referred to as "the modern era of Western penetration into Vietnam." But until the mid-nineteenth century this was a process of "penetration in reverse"—a dribble at the faucet of western acculturation Vietnamese emperors sought to shut off completely. In this early phase of the process it was often impossible to distinguish between the activities and policies of merchants and missionaries—they were heads and tails of the same coin of colonial capitalism. Trafficking in Christian souls became inseparable from the trade in exotic oriental goods. Missionaries and merchants merged in form and function.</p> <p>Invidious cut throat trade warfare between competing merchant groups "chastizing with both whips and scorpions" turned the mandarin’s nose against any social innovations from the West. Vietnamese interests to the exclusive military form of gunpowder, weapons, expertise and mercenaries. The mandarins were well equipped with both military might and political diplomacy to underplay the best and worst intentions of the merchant missionaries. These early missionary merchants were regularly outlawed and persecuted for interfering and threatening the values of their culture and their political order. The mandarins soon found Catholicism, with its denunciation of ancestor worship as a form of paganistic idolatry, clearly a threat to the political- religious social order of traditional Vietnamese culture.</p> <p>Catholicism was officially viewed as a "foreign" and hence illegal political power, leading directly to the persecution of its members that in turn provoked French military intervention ostensibly "on behalf of the lives of the missionaries." Western Europe, caught in the internal throes of industrialization, was frantically searching abroad for markets and resources. The ideological rationale for "humanitarian" intervention which led to military colonization of Vietnam by the French was only a rationalization, a myth of the "White Man’s burden" for disguising real motivations unambiguously economic and political in character, quite in keeping with general colonialist/capitalist interests.</p> <p>In 1847 two French ships of war bombarded for seventy minutes the harbor of Tourane, under false provocation and erroneous premises, claiming over 10,000 Vietnamese lives—"a hundred times more lives than all the Vietnamese governments in two centuries of religious persecution." (Buttinger 1959) It was bombarded twice more, with only a total two French casualities.</p> <p>"Assimilation" made a clean sweep of all native institutions, transformed forever virtually overnight the social structure of a traditional Vietnamese society which took thousands of years to develop, was the rationale of the French style of "Colonial Paternalism" and "Cultural Imperialism" which attempted to turn the Vietnamese into "little brown Frenchmen" who could want little more than a "jug of wine and a loaf of bread" at the hands of benevolent "French Masters." French Indochine became but another province of the Grand Union of French Civilization with its Parisian metropole at its hub.</p> <p>French colonial authorities administered harsh repressive doses of assimilationism which from the beginning fed a fire of growing social foment and dissatisfaction warming Vietnamese reactionaries and revolutionaries alike. All revitalization movements spawned and fueled French colonialism had in common a burning desire for National Independence and freedom from the French yoke, and "apocalyptic–milleniarian" orientations predicated upon an inevitable destruction of the existing social order and the coming of the new order. French political persecution and repression fostered their secretive, independent underground survival and prevented them from becoming cooptated out of existence by "nationalization" or "politicization" or "associationism."</p> <p>French colonial "paternalism" was premised upon a tacit racist ideology of the superiority of French civilization. French cultural imperialism and snobbery has world renown and ridicule. "The taproot of French imperialism in the Far East from first to last was national pride—pride of culture, reputation, prestige, and influence." (Cady, 1954)</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>  …It may prove to be one of the tragedies of the decline of Western influence in Asia that France could not admit the possibility of cultural or political equality with herself, much less the outright surrender of colonial possessions, without seeming to repudiate not only her position as a world power, but also the very rationale of her role in world affairs. (Cady 1954:296)</p> <p></font>A cancerous, explosive growth of lazy, inefficient, over paid French bureaucrats, who habitually left burdensome work loads upon underpaid native clerks, who frequently humiliated traditional customs of "natives," whose "ignorance and apathy" of "native culture" translated forcefully into effrontery, indignity, and attitudes of prejudicial superiority and paternalism by the "resident" toward the "native," whose primary interests were in "getting rich quick" speculative enterprising, coupled with feelings of incompetence, racial and cultural inferiority, and structural dependency by the "native" in relation to the "resident." Insufficient pay, lack of advancement opportunities, lack of respect, inferior education drove many capable Vietnamese into the "pitfall of rugged individualism" undermined their "oriental milieu" "with all its cases of neglected parents and unfeeling sons and daughters".</p> <p>But "the administrative picture of the Indo-Chinese Union was not entirely blurred by hostilities between natives and whites, taxation evasions, financial disorganization, stubborn legal problems, and rapid growth of French personnel…(Ennis 1973) But, "heads I win, tails you lose", the economic coin of French colonialism in Indochina was certainly most imbalanced in favor of the "residents." The ancient saying "money is the root of all evil" is more than just a trite’ cliché’—it explains France’s main "raison d’etre" for creating the colony of the "Indo-Chinese Union" in the first place. Political policies and religious programs always were secondary and supportive adjuncts in service of the primary colonialist and capitalist role of exploitation of the entire region.</p> <p>Rice mono-culture, sericulture, rubber, tobacco, cotton, tea, exotic hard woods, "minerals"—these in essence constituted the "astonishing" economic improvements under the French thumb. Vietnam was "agrarianized" at a "primitive stage in which it grows and exports agricultural products and raw materials, and imports manufactured products…the colonial economy was characterized by the restriction of the number of production items, on the one hand, and the intensification of the output of these items, on the other, regardless of the living conditions of the people or the impact on the economy as a whole." (Do Van Minh 1963:92) In spite of dire poverty and enforced impoverishment, Vietnam was a dependent consumer society of French manufacture—serving simultaneously as a "zone of exploitation" and a "dumping ground" for the French economy.</p> <p>French colonial capitalism proved to be short-sighted, long term failure, inducing passive resistance amounting cumulatively to active resistance, the impoverishment and mal-nourishment underlying the "tropical lethargy" of the "lazy native" and eventual economic depression of French Indochina. Per capita rice consumption steadily fell, "Flood, bad crop and famine recurred often," poor nutrition aggravated vulnerability to disease infection and reduced resistance and recuperation, allowing less energy for physical work, resulting in high infant mortality and infamous "tropical lethargy." The only "palpable" benefits of French colonial paternalism, "Medicine, Labor and Education," were "too few and too French"—"paid for by oppressive taxation and ruthless exploitation of the former royal monopolies of salt, opium and alcohol…"</p> <p>The rural majority had no more opportunities than plantation corvee labor, or working in anthracite mines or cotton mills, of whom 75% were women and children between the ages of 10 and 18. Immunization combined with "improvements" of extensive transportation and communication networks of railroads, roadways, telegraphs and telephone lines, to produce a major population explosion, fueling a growing exodus of rural opportunists to over-crowded, unsanitary slums. Doctors were fewest and furthest in between than any other Southeast Asian colony, mortality rates were the highest. "Quality schooling in Southeast Asia is still the prerogative of the few". Only 1.1 percent of the children received even a secondary education—prerequisite for entering one university with a total enrollment of 631 students designed primarily for pharmacists, clerks, interpreters and petty bureaucrats for "French business and governments." 80% of the rural population relapsed into a condition of abject illiteracy. "By 1942, the monopolies provided 16.8 per cent of government revenues, with more than half derived from the sale of opium, reflecting a growing addiction throughout the country."</p> <p>The debits far out weigh the credits when we balance the social costs and economic "benefits" of France’s "civilizing mission" in Indochina. Censorship, repression, persecution, slavery—plantations were developed "at a terrible cost to human life." An inevitable revolution of Rising Expectations and of "Equality" was built into the very style and framework of French colonial paternalism. The more that "Natives" are given the promise of the carrot, "the more do they agitate against these self same masters."</p> <p><font SIZE="2">…With this in mind, the West should remember that colonies cannot be "held" forever within the vicious cycle, composed of armed force, large doses of assimilation, and promises of association. (Ennis 1973:10)</p> <p></font>Vietnam today, war-torn, poverty-stricken, embittered "international pariah," is struggling with a colonial legacy it cannot completely shake off—"agrarianization," "mushroom growth" of "parasitic" slums, gulfs of development between "core" and "periphery" widening to unbridgeable and destabilizing proportions in a process of "cumulative causation", epidemic underemployment and unemployment, phenomenal population growth with remains a veritable "time bomb." The price paid for France’s economic development has been Vietnam’s "underdevelopment." "Death control" takes predominance over "birth control" and "revolution" in Vietnamese is a young mother who realizes her baby’s starvation is not a natural, necessary fate. "Politically and economically they became mere appendages of Europe, one section of that great belt of tropical slums—the Third World—whose exploitation provided part of the basis for the greatly increased well-being of the peoples of the West." (Buchanan 1967:24)</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><img SRC="line5.gif" WIDTH="512" HEIGHT="10"></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a NAME="six">SECTION: 1:iv</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">AMERICANIZATION</a></p> <font SIZE="2"> <p> </p> <p>….And what is too often overlooked is the extension of these disintegrative tendencies into the realm of idea systems and images. There has been a breakdown not only of social institutions but of the shared symbols necessary to ordered existence—symbols defining the rhythms of life and death, group loyalties and the nature of reality. This "desymbolization" reaches deeply into the individual mental life and undermines collective efforts of all kinds including that of fighting a war. Whatever success Communism has had as a cohesive social force in the North or in the South has resulted from its capacity to provide new images and symbols or to revitalize old ones. (Lifton, March 1968)</p> </font> <p>"Americanization" is the saddest and most tragic "chapter" in all Vietnamese ethnohistory, the Vietnamese holocaust is a portent of things to come, an apocalyptic vision without parallel in all of human history. As both a veteran and a child of the 60’s, it is impossible to feign neutrality or pseudo-objectivity. It is the most difficult chapter to write when its living memory malingers in the lost heart, fractured spirits, fragmented minds, amputated limbs, incinerated bodies and missing souls of all its innocent victims. It cannot be genuinely written about or sincerely read without bringing tears to one’s eyes.</p> <p>The disillusionment and disbelief, the malingering incredulity between official policy and front-line reporting, between "lifers" and conscripted "rank and file," between leaders and protestors, if nothing else, the really real case of the way it really was with the Vietnam conflict will prove to be a timeless study in the pornographic power of modern propaganda machines. It was a demonstration the power to delude and deceive a mass audience of Joe and Jane Public Television, and the power to use the same media to persuade the American people against the war.</p> <p>For the first time in human history Americans at war became a popular evening past-time. American friends and families together at home could watch their young sons and brothers and cousins and neighbors kill and be killed during the many continuing episodes of the unfolding docu-drama of the Vietnam conflict. From Alexander Haig to Ho Chi Minh, from John Wayne to Jane Fonda, from cluster-bombs to booby-traps, from B-52’s to ponji sticks, from My Lai to Haiphong, from children’s atrocity stories to official body counts, from Walter Cronkite to Con Son tiger cages. It is extremely difficult to separate fact from fancy while the question remains to be answered—"Where the Hell was Vietnam?"</p> <p><font SIZE="2">On April the 19<sup>th</sup>, at 14:02 (my Rolex froze at that moment), while shooting for <u>Time</u>, my ‘Nam blew to a standstill....The next year they installed a plastic lid and for the next twelve months my mind dwelt on the enormity of having being there. The focus was pushed and pulled until the light became pin sharp. The sufferings had dimmed; there had been no reality, only a shared sense of nostalgia. (Page 1983:98)</p> </font> <p>Witness the ecology of modern electronic warfare—the systematic ecocide of the Vietnamese experiment in modern devastation. Anti-communist ideology and the metaphysics of MAD (e.g., guaranteed nuclear holocaust, or "Mutually Assured Destruction") combined to form a convenient group-think, double speak strategical system of defensive rationalization (DOD, or Department of "Defense") for the bourgeoisie engineers of the most deadly arsenal of World Terrorization in World History, reconfirmed by an Official Mandate from Washington D.C. to establish a permanent Pax America for the children of the world. The United States operated on the "Model of Devastatiion" in Vietnam, a hybrid bastardization of the Model of Korea, the Philippine Model, and the Malaya Model, (it has been nicknamed the "Malaya-gone-amok-Model"), combining a program of "forced-draft" urbanization ("without commensurate industrialization"), of deliberate systematic eco-cide, and blatant devastation of a paper tiger—a mysterious, magical and mythical enemy:</p> <p>…<font SIZE="2">Counter-insurgency is a pseudo-science which has limited its vision to such a degree that it has created paper creature lurking in a triple-canopy jargon jungle.…The very fracturing of worldview that makes possible the invention of bombers and electronic-sweat-sniffers has, to a great extent, directed America’s weaponry to tasks of mindless, repetitive destruction. In the Indochina war we see science gone mad, metaphorically acting out aggressions and unable to respond to the real world. (Lewallen 1971:16-17)</p> </font> <p>Americanization was an underhanded brand of "neo-colonialism/capitalism" suffering many of the same deceptions as "Frenchification." The first American presence was "aide" of weapons given to Ho Chin Minh’s Viet Minh forces in resistance to Japanese occupation. By 1950, however, the U.S. branded Uncle Ho as part of the "red menace" and switched allegiance to the besieged French forces, eventually underwriting the whole debacle at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, footing more than half the French bill of fare for the first Indochina War. There prevailed officially at this time a paranoid fear of Communist aggression, especially the strange "yellow" brand of Chi-Commie-ism. Of course, the American neo-capitalists are part of a long progressive tradition of an enlightened mission to salvage their savage yellow brethren for the sake of Western Civilization, so the American presence in Vietnam was all very humanitarian.</p> <p>"In order <u>to defend peace</u>, it may be necessary to use the Atomic Bomb." ("It became necessary to destroy the town to save it"—U.S. major in Vietnam) It would be almost certain that President Truman would have had "not the slightest (regrets) in the world" about having done so—after all he had done it twice before. In fact, use of the bomb to save the French at Dien Bien Phu was even contemplated by the Americans who had underwritten the French war. In 1954 Vice President Richard Nixon (of Watergate fame) stated unequivocally that he would make the "unpopular" decision of sending "American boys" into Cambodia. When President Nixon was courting communist Chinese Panda bears in Beijing, he was also bombing Northern Vietnam "back to the stone age." And now, after the poetic justice of his War Crimes, his fait accompli of Watergate, he resides sumptuously exonerated of his political misdeeds, while "American boys" he sent to hell in Vietnam are still propping up white marble grave-stones. Meanwhile, "Red China" has become a less menacing "Pink," thanks to Tricky Dicky’s opening of the bamboo curtain. President Eisenhower orchestrated the theme of the domino threat of communist expansion. Loss of Indochina would spell the "loss of valuable deposits of tin and prodigious supplies of rubber and rice…..And if Indochina fell, not only Thailand but Burma and Malaya would be threatened, with added risks to East Pakistan and South Asia as well as to all Indonesia" and so on.</p> <p>As early as 1954 American psy-ops stimulated the southward exodus of 860,000 refugees from North Vietnam—assisted by the U.S. seventh fleet. (The same team was working at it again behind the scenes in 1975) From 1955Eik held CIA "covert" operations in Vietnam continuously until 1961. Until 1956 the CIA financed cadre programs to win support for Diem. After 1956 American policy shifted toward conventional combat forces. By 1961 Americans were experimenting with Defoliation—"leaf abscission"—by the end of that year Diem had fully implemented the anti-crop program. Kennedy sent his pet "Green Berets" via Georgia to Vietnam during that year and the first U.S. casualty was killed by sniper fire. By 1963 the U.S. had completely taken over the defoliation program. Diem’s assassination threw South Vietnam into turmoil, and the NFL made substantial gains razing "strategic hamlets" while "American advisors flocked to Vietnam and pacification programs blossomed."</p> <p>The first major U.S. military action since Korea began with the bombing of Laos in May, 1964, with the dissent of only two congressmen. "No President had the right to send American boys to their death on a battlefield in the absence of a declaration of war. But one thing I do know, and that is we are going to be bogged down in Southeast Asia for years to come if we follow this course of action, and we’re going to kill thousands of American boys until finally, let me say, the American people are going to say what the French people finally said: "We’ve had enough!" (Sen. Wayne Morris 1964) By 1965 he NFL was about to win when U.S. Marines stormed the beaches to save the day at Da Nang (new Tourane) to a reception of flower bearing school girls in Ao Dai’s. Prior to this, the North Vietnamese had not sent regular troops across the DMZ but soon "dispatched divisions to fight in the South." Meanwhile, back at the White House, LBJ muttered this truly remarkable comment: "I do not believe it is pleasing in the sight of God for men to separate morality from their might. (June 6, 1965) Bernard Fall, killed two years later by a land mine, wrote of the meaning of American Operations in Vietnam in Dec. 1965 (Ramparts Feb.1966:69)</p> <p>  <font SIZE="2">Looking back at the Vietnam I left, I can see the means only too clearly, and so can everyone else who is not altogether blind. But I cannot say that I have found anyone who seems to have a clear idea of the end—of the "war aims"—and if the end is clearly not defined, are we justified to use any means to attain it?</p> <p> </font> By 1967 the Vietcong controlled an estimated 3978 strategic hamlets while Saigon controlled only 168. The rest were contested. At its peak in 1969, the U.S. fielded more than half a million men, with 700,000 allies, "with total command of the air (and) sea, backed by huge resources and the most modern weapons, are unable to secure even a single city from the attacks of an enemy whose total strength is about 250,000." (Sen. Robert Kennedy, Feb 19, 1968) Since Nixon’s presidency until 1972 about 40,000 "sweeps" of battalion size and up occurred. "The total number of hamlets destroyed in South Vietnam was 3,000 out of which 1,600 were completely demolished." (Forman 1972:110) Between 1965 and 1972 there were more than half a million desertions from the U.S. forces. "In 1971 alone 79,000 men the equivalent of six divisions, deserted the army." (U.S. Office of Manpower and Reserve)</p> <p>Secret Agents Orange, Blue, White and Purple: Vietnam, once a plastic proving ground of American military-industrial technocracy—systematically reduced to an other-wordly moonscape of eerie dimensionality, now a haunting "desecrated" specter at the edge of oblivion. If all experts could shut their mouths and open their eyes, if all parties to the crime of war against humanity could put aside their ideological rhetoric—then it would become quite obvious that one set of undeniable facts speak silently but all too eloquently for themselves. The Verdict of the "Vietnam Conflict" is the Verdict of War itself—nothing good ever came from war, but especially not from the Vietnam War. The Verdict of waging a War in Vietnam that wasn’t a "War" may be succinctly summarized in three words: ecocide, genocide, and ethnocide.</p> <p>The Vietnam Conflict is a unique episode in the History of Human Civilization in that in involved for the first time a qualitatively different kind of militarism than anything experienced or known to humankind ever before. This is what made it at one and the same time so shocking, so protested, so bizarre, so murderous. It was the debut of the totality of modern warfare, a reflection of the nuclear threshold at the point of no return, beyond which we cannot proceed because there can be no end in war, no strategy, no victory, no justice, beyond which there is no war itself but only holocaust and extinction.</p> <p>Twenty years of Americanization accomplished what two millenium of sinization and Sinicization and 300 years of Westernization, and one hundred years of francoization could not—the near total dissolution and destruction of traditional Vietnamese civilization. Modern warfare occurs as a result of administrative perversion. "The types and sources of such perversions are complex…."</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>In some cases, the psychopathology of administrative personnel is evidently responsible (the case of Nazi Germany is the best example of this type). In other cases responsible and intelligent administrators attempting to act in the best long term interests of their society are precipitated by misinformation, communication failures, and a rigid, poorly designed system of decision making into unnecessarily mobilizing the society for war. (Wallace 1967)</p> </font> <p>There is no longer any need to declare War by an act of Congress or letters of marque in our push –button electronic Nuclear Space Age. "Strange indeed is this undeclared war! For how can an aggressor declare a war since he cannot admit to his own purposes." (Tran 1969) Vietnam was a war without front or rear, without specific targets, without final objectives. The enemy was faceless, clad in civilian clothes, women and children. He was everywhere and nowhere. And yet it was enclosed "in a circle of deception. Distorted perceptions, false interpretations, and misguided actions have been reinforcing one another in a self-defeating process." (Lifton, March 1968) The moral reality of modern warfare is the limit beyond which war becomes hell, self-evidently unjust, beyond the limit of mutual consent. "….not to have tried to see through the whole apparatus of mystification—was already criminal….For being in a position to know and nevertheless shunning knowledge creates direct responsibility for the consequences—from the very beginning." (Albert Speer, Memories)</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>….And it is irrelevant to propose that undeluded, non-hating, freely loving young people be raised and nourished, for they will be the best fighters of all. If the last century has taught us anything about human nature, it is that good persons can do impersonal evil and that war does not require hate. (Wallace 1967)</p> </font> <p>I have not written a history of Vietnam. Others have done so, and others before them have made that history a reality. I have written an ethnohistory about the histories that have been written of the past of Vietnam. A "history of history" is necessary if we are ever to step outside the ever-widening circles of historical rationality beyond the purview of claims to the "past" reality.</p> <p>In conclusion I wish to reiterate several lessons to be learned from Vietnamese ethnohistory in general. It is mainly a history of culture-contact and culture-change. It has at least four successive phases of acculturation and Vietnamization, each phase qualitatively distinct and structurally different, yet each subsequent phase seemingly became more destructive in its consequence for indigenous Vietnamese culture, and yet each time elevating the Vietnamese civilization to a higher level of structural articulation. A hypothetical model can be used to interpret these phases within a framework of types of acculturation. The initial process of development of Southeast Asian civilization and Indianization in the prehistoric period was very gradual in influence, but also relatively peaceful and constructive, a symbol creating phase possibly termed "assimilation" with varieties of "multiculturalism" and cultural "pluralism" with a "live and let live" value orientation. The second phase of Sinization and Sinicization was both destructive and constructive, defined as "integration with varieties of "melting pot" and "pressure cooker" acculturation process." The third phase of Westernization with its brand of "colonialism/capitalism" was even more disruptive, but not necessarily destructive, involving process of "Rejection" with varieties of "withdrawal" and "segregation". The fourth and final phase of "Americanization" was clearly, totally, destructive, involving as it did "deculturation" in terms of enforced "marginality" and "ethnocide."</p> <p>In its theme of diversity is to be found it s unity, its strength for survival. Unity in diversity is the central theme of Vietnamese ethnohistory. To be seen in these acculturation experiences is a lesson of adaptation and survival in the face of changes. It is a lesson of survival from people who have become survival artists in the face of adversity. "….No theme is more consistent in Vietnamese history than the theme of resistance to foreign aggression." It is this spirit of resistance and survival that teaches us the errors of our own ways.</p> <p>Vietnamese people, in spite of their culture contacts with many "advanced" civilizations, have always remained close to Nature. Those who live amidst the mythology and ideology of the developmental, progressive civilization of consumption, are unable to see clearly its own grand illusion. I suggest simply that an alternative possibility of human social development other than what our own contemporary human civilization may allow, <u>must exist for human cultural survival</u>.</p> <p><font SIZE="2">….The birth of Vietnam was the birth of a spirit of resistance to the universal claims of Chinese power. It represented the collective decision of a society to risk danger for the sake of preserving its heritage. Vietnamese independence is the result of commitments made by successive generations. (Taylor 19983:302)</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> <img SRC="line5.gif" WIDTH="531" HEIGHT="10"></p> <p> </p> </font> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a NAME="seven">CHAPTER 11</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">CULTURE AND CHARACTER IN TRADITONAL VIETNAMESENESS</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p><font SIZE="2">For their part, the Vietnamese retained their own language and with it, memories of their pre-Chinese civilization....The Vietnamese never lost their taste for local heroes, such as the Trung sisters, Lady Trieu, Trieu Quang Phuc and Phung Hung. What China had to say to them was bent through the prism of their own language and culture. (Taylor 1893:301)</p> </font> <p>"Ethnoculture" is a notion of the distinctive symbolic identity shared and elaborated by a particular cultural grouping of people. Both ethnoculture and ethnohistory share a common conceptual ground in the notion of a cultural "base-line." A base-line is a hypothetically ideal paradigm, or exemplary model, serving as a point of departure and final reference in our conceptualization of the group identity and symbolism of a people, and forming the mythological boundaries of our ethnological comprehension, beyond which we are not supposed to stray. It is the groundwork and floor plan, the blueprint upon which we are supposed to reconstruct the structure of a cultural-grouping.</p> <p>For the student of ethnohistory, this base-line is the ideal "Past" as the source, point of origin, and fossilized remnant, from which the cultural-grouping has subsequently drifted in the course of time. For the student of ethnoculture this hypothetical base-line is found within the ideal "Eternal Present"—as that theoretical core of cultural continuity that has supposedly remained unchanged time immemorial, and remains unalterable within the fundamental patterning of socio-cultural patterning. The model of the base line is presupposed and largely implicit as an ideal rational horizon upon which we project our ethnological comprehension, and from which we are supposed to infer the meaning of ethnological experience.</p> <p>The ideal metaphor of the base line is the myth of the ethnologist--a metalogical myth which determined the parameters of ethnological consciousness. Ultimately, it is derived from the sense of being "traditional" or a "traditional" sense of being. It is part of the myth of our personal consciousness, our apperceptive awareness of ourselves as of a particular cultural character, or characteristic culture.</p> <p>Much lip service has been paid to the notion of "traditional Vietnamese culture" in the literature, though it has never clearly or conclusively explained. What this hypothetical model is supposed to be like is largely taken for granted and only tacitly presupposed to be realistic or true or to have some actual existence somewhere in reality. Then we refer to equally presumptuous preconceptions like stereotypes of the Vietnamese "peasant" or the "Vietnamese village" as at least implicit embodiments of Vietnamese cultural tradition and traditional character.</p> <p>The motivation underlying the writing of this chapter is the systematic description of a formal model of "traditional Vietnamese culture," of an ideal base-line of ethnocultural Vietnamese identity, in order to provide ethnological comprehension of the symbolic reality of the characteristic sense of being "Vietnamese."</p> <p>An ethnohistorical base-line demonstrates remarkable continuity of Vietnamese traditional culture from time immemorial—a direct developmental cultural sequence of Vietnamese civilization centered in Northern Vietnam from the remotest prehistoric period all the way to the present, without having been transplanted to another region or supplanted by another culture. There is a remarkable degree of corresponding cultural contiguity within a similar environmental context of its North Vietnamese heartland, as when it originally came into being. Thus the sense of its cultural relationships being deeply rooted, and its symbolic embeddedness to the natural environment, is very deep. The roots of a Vietnamese cultural synergism remain deeply implanted in the physical setting of North Vietnam. This deep rootedness has strong implications for the character of traditional Vietnamese culture.</p> <p>Cultural "focus" refers to the heart of a culture, a sense of center that in the attention it receives becomes highly elaborated, and in its elaboration, receives a wide latitude and variability for its symbolic expression. Herskovits defined <u>cultural focus</u> as "the tendency of every culture to exhibit greater complexity, greater variation in the institutions of some of its aspects than in others. So striking is this tendency to develop certain phases of life….these focal aspects are often used to characterize whole cultures." (1947:542)</p> <p>Greater variation of aspects of culture focal to the interests of a people suggests these aspects undergo greater development and change than other aspects of culture—what Herskovits referred to as "cultural drift". To the extent that a culture is well-rooted, then the extent of cultural drift will be confined by context and characterized by conservatism—what Herskovits called "resistance to change"—and referred instead to "cultural involution" or an extreme symbolic "intensification" of cultural life. To the extent that a culture is well-anchored to a particular environmental context, then a fairly coherent and consistent base-line can be inferred which is both strongly conservative and extremely elaborate and flexible in its accommodation of external pressures for change, manifesting strong, fairly well defined and articulated cultural focus.</p> <p>"Focus" gives a culture its particular "flavor" and refers to the symbolic integration of culture forming the basis for our conceptualization of the meaning of "culture"—allowing us to refer to a theoretical "unity" of culture from which interrelated "aspects" may be inferred. Cultural aspects comprise variable cultural <u>forms</u> which different cultural groupings may assume under varying conditions and circumstances. Together, within their appropriate context, these aspects for collectivities around which a culture is "patterned"—achieving an identifiable characteristic "cultural orientation." Cultural orientation about focal aspects describes distinctive patternings that Herskovits defined as "the designs taken by the elements of a culture, which, as consensus of the individual behavior patterns manifest by members of a society, give to this way of life coherence, continuity and distinctive form." (1947:202) "Regularized form" refers to "describable limits" of recognizable behavior patterns and social sanctions. Cultural patterning constitutes a "model" for behavior with "its outline and contours flexible and alterable, permitting experience to fall into meaningful forms despite the changes that continuously mark its expression." (Herskovits 1947:207)</p> <p>Julian Steward defined "cultural core" as "the constellation of features which are mostly closely related to subsistence activities and economic arrangements." (1955:37) We are thus put on the horns of a dilemma in our basic understanding of the meaning of culture. On one hand we have "cultural focus" defining patterning of focal aspects in terms of "describable limits" of forms of human behavior and social sanctions, and on the other hand we have "cultural core" defining those central "primary" aspects which are determined by human ecological adaptation to the physical environment. For Alfred Kroeber this constituted the "basic" aspects of culture which involved practical problems of subsistence—"reality culture" which "faces" the reality of cultural survival, as opposed to "secondary" value culture" which "faces" values in the expression of creativity and playfulness. "Every society exists in a conditioning environment, and its members have basic psychological necessities to satisfy. It is only after this that free stylization of culture can begin." (Kroeber 1957:102)</p> <p>Kroeber’s understanding of culture incorporates, but does not synthetically transcend, a basic dichotomy prevailing in the conceptualization of "culture" between a materialistic or "realist" definition of culture as an observable "something" describable in terms of manifest behavior patterning, trait lists, material life, organization of "resources" and the "idealist" definition of culture in terms of interpretations of the "culture bearer’s ideas of societal values and norms," from which culture is to be inferred. The idealist definition of culture is an inescapable conclusion of comprehending the conceptualization of "culture" itself as an ideal "model" which may or may not approximate human cultural reality. "Idealist" culture is "an organization of conventional understandings" and "the man made part of the environment" and the Human is preeminently a myth- maker.</p> <p>A synthetic definition of culture transcends this rational dialectic and defines real and ideal dimensions as interrelated and interdependent in the comprehension of culture—the organization and utilization of symbols that have both primary real referents and functions and secondary ideal forms and associations. In the symbolic comprehension of culture everything real or ideal has metaphorical significance defined within a cultural context—even the food we eat or the air we breath takes on symbolic significance. Symbolization is "culture" in as much as symbols and culture both mediate the same "mind/body" dilemmas that it is the special lot of humankind to suffer. "The essential nature of culture must resolve a series of seeming paradoxes that are not to be ignored." In mediating the rational dichotomization of human reality, symbolization provides synthetic, coherent meaning, or a sense of "symbolic reality" to our culture. Culture is a universal human phenomenon—its universality is "an attribute of human existence." "The fact that man is often spoken of as a "culture building" animal is a recognition of the universality of culture; that it is an as attribute of living may be ordered…."(Herskovits 1947:19)</p> <p>A <u>culture</u> is a repertoire of symbols that has accumulated as human beings have tried to cope with their environment….(Pandian 19982:1) "That class of things and events dependent upon symboling, products of symboling, considered in an extra-somatic context." (White 1959a:1) Cultural reality is social, a group reality in terms of shared symbol systems irreducible to psychological explanation. Symboling, on the other hand, "inter-integrates" social and psychological reality, "self and other", such that character becomes cultural and culture becomes character. A sphere of culture refers to the symbolic integration of human reality, with either a group or individual at its point of origin, "emically", and which are composed of interwoven cultural "chains" of interconnected symbolism or groupings of particular kind of order which reflect a coherence upon a certain facet of human reality. A cultural complex is composed by one or more symbolic complexes which interconnect with one another and that is shared by a cultural grouping of people providing a paradigmatic "ethos" or a "Web of Meaning" for cultural reality.</p> <p>The symbolic integration of a cultural complex confers a cultural synergism upon a cultural grouping, "a life of its own," which can only be validly comprehended from within the focal origin of the metalogical idiom of that particular cultural sphere itself, in how it confers a sense of comprehensive meaningfulness and order to those who share it. The fact that human beings are symbolic creatures and that symbolic culture is a human universal, means that the bound of our symbolic cultural complexes are only relative spheres of culture overlap, and it is possible to leave one sense of cultural order of symbolic reality and adopt another.</p> <p>"….Perhaps the best thumbnail description of Vietnam is that of a Vietnamese intellectual, who likens his country to a surrealist painting 'with many different shapes and colors in it….'" (Tran Xuan Ly Culture itself is an extension of natural processes. The Vietnamese had never lost an essential sense of being rooted to nature, a deep sense of relatedness with the natural landscape characterizing and defining relationships which Vietnamese maintain with other people, with their context, and themselves. Strong bonds of spiritual and affective communion with Nature are not merely "animistic superstition" but are "invested with beauty and poetry. The Vietnamese are fond of flowers that are a symbol of beauty and femininity. This love for flowers is reflected in the custom of naming girls after the names of beautiful and fragrant flowers. "Nature in its manifold aspects has a great appeal to the heart, the mind and the senses of the Vietnamese….nature is viewed with love and sensitivity. This attitude seems to be the result of a successful adaptation of the Vietnamese to the natural environment." (Pham 1983:82-83)</p> <p>Nature is the spring of aesthetic sensitivity and sensibility, in turn the deep affective spring of human meaning, values and goodness. A sense of relationship to nature that is characteristically "Vietnamese" provides a basic context for the comprehension of the diverse symbolism related to the meaning of being "Vietnamese."</p> <p>We can refer to a characteristic sense of harmony, of respect, and of cultural moderation and caution with which the Vietnamese characteristically relate themselves to others in the world around them and to the natural environment. Harmony is achieved by acceptance of life and the way it is, through moderation and caution in avoiding extremes. Modesty, "moral probity" and "self control" are values much esteemed by Vietnamese. "One of the most important features of Vietnamese culture is the expression of respect paid to other people in society….We may say without fear of error that respect is the cornerstone of interpersonal relationships in Vietnamese society…." (Pham 1983:43)</p> <p>The many mountains, rivers, lowlands and the ocean, the monsoon seasons and the rains they bring, all provide a very elemental symbolic structure to the cultural ethos of traditional Vietnamese ethnoculture. The relationship of the Vietnamese to the land, aquatic and climatic environment as a whole is of direct consequence in structuring and conditioning cultural aspects, and of focusing customs and sanctions of behavior people will adopt. For Vietnamese culture, which can directly trace in its mythological memory autochthonous origins in the realm it yet occupies, the lineaments of the physio-graphic setting must be considered the main, deepest taproot of the development and elaboration of symbolic culture.</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><img SRC="line5.gif" WIDTH="531" HEIGHT="10"></p> <p> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a NAME="eight">SECTION 2:I</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">MAGICAL MOUNTAINS</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">ANCESTRAL ABODES</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p>The mountains are the most prominent physical features underlying the rich symbolic heritage of traditional Vietnamese culture, providing not only the main back drop of the Vietnamese stage, but the scenery for the entire Southeast Asian theater. Distinctions between highlander and lowlander are the most common cultural theme throughout Southeast Asia, and these often subtle and dramatic differences of cultural patterning are primarily differences of environmental setting. Mountain chains serve not only as permanent cultural barriers separating distinctive culture areas of Southeast Asia, but their north south alignment also determines as well the prevailing directionality of culture-contact and culture-change—facilitating the flow of culture, commerce and communication north and south. "In the past all commercial traffic and population movements flowed in a north south direction."</p> <p>Vietnamese saw in the varying shapes and undulating flows of the hills and ridges manifestations of "dragons". The dragon is a dominant symbol for the land of Vietnam itself, a male political symbol conferring a sense of Vietnamese identity inherent in their relationship to the environment, an emblem of group identity in a common country legitimating power and authority over the land. It is the totemic emblem of Vietnam itself, symbolizing power, immortality and imperial sovereignty, and thus defining the territorial integrity of the Vietnamese people. A special emblem worn by the emperor, "Vietnamese legend has it that the dragon was the procreator of the ethnic Vietnamese stock." (Whitfield 1976:158)</p> <p>The dragon in Vietnamese mythology is a synthesis of often antagonistic elements of water and earth—these disparate, dialectical elements compose a common theme not only of Vietnamese mythology, but of mythology throughout Southeast Asia, and merge into a single symbolic synthesis in the form of the Dragon. It represented the fertile lowland plains, the product of union between mountains and waters, and thus symbolized the synthesis of lowland civilization. In Vietnamese folklore, this synthesis became known as "<u>Long-do</u>" or "Dragon’s belly". This was the popular name for the geographical and spiritual center of the Vietnamese realm, near Hanoi. It connoted the realm’s spiritual center of gravity." The seat of political stability, its theme was well elaborated by emperors in a special spirit cult. "Coiled Dragon" was also "geomancer’s shorthand for the spiritual powers of the earth." It is only fitting that the dwelling places of Gods and culture heroes apotheosized by legend and myth, should also be the burial abode of the people’s ancestors, who can watch over their descendants activities from the neighboring heights. Geomancers, "experts in studying terrain t apprehend its spiritual nature….believed that supernatural power originated in the highlands of Tibet and flowed down along mountain ranges through 'dragon’s veins.'" (Taylor 1983:290) These dragon veins branched out carrying spiritual energy to all parts of the earth. Its energy was not evenly distributed, but collected in certain locations marked by the peculiarity of the local terrain, where spirits dwelled. If a person buried one’s ancestors in such a spot, that person "could obtain special powers in pursuing his ambitions." The spiritual powers of the earth influence human events for benevolent or malevolent ends. "If one would benefit from these powers one must understand and respect them….a society can flourish only if it is in harmony with the elemental forces of the land." (Taylor 1983:284-5)</p> <p>"Magic landscaping" or <u>Feng Shui</u> ("Wind and Water"), or "the art of divining earth-lines and (earth) rays," employed a geomantic compass to indicate the direction of two main "winds", the Beneficient Blue Dragon Wind and the Pernicious White Tiger Wind, for locating important sites, "in order to receive the breath of the universe properly from all sides" to make them propitious for certain events. Geomancy "is characteristic of the Asian world deeply impregnated by metaphysical beliefs" which are deeply rooted in the earth and natural order."</p> <p>Important things for consideration are the dragon’s den, alluvial formations, and water courses. The dragon is "represented by the brink of a stream flowing round the grave and the configuration and outlines of the hills that surround the burial ground. The dragon’s den is the grave pit into which the coffin is lowered. He brooks and streams near by are called water courses, and the land bordering these are called alluvial formations." (Yang 1945:88) Mountains are "the underpasses of dragons, and a good <u>feng shui</u> expert will weigh the state of change of the universe and decide which range of hills the dragon spirit is moving through and how far he has reached." (Bloodworth 1966:215)</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>The closer one gets to the mouth of the Dragon, the move favorable the site. But it is absolutely necessary to ascertain that the Blue Dragon current flows on the left and the White Tiger current flows on the right of the privileged site. (Sully 1967:67)</p> </font> <p>Besides placating disturbed spirits, geomantic beliefs allow individual cosmological reorientation corresponding to "the stars and constellations governing the world" in relation to the physical surroundings in order to attract favorable influences. "Build (or dig) there, and fortune is yours dead or alive, for there is nothing luckier than to be on top of a dragon and his lair." (Bloodsworth 1966:215)</p> <p>The prosperity of descendants, the future rise or fall of a family group, is directly dependent upon the nature of the ancestral burial site, its peacefulness for the ancestors, for "the prosperity of a family is dependent not more upon the efforts of the living than upon the goodwill of the dead." (Soothill 1951:164)</p> <p>Since all families want their ancestors to be buried in a good spot and want their children to be prosperous, they all listen to the geomancer’s words as if they were listening to an oracle, and as a consequence, his directions are always followed very punctiliously. (Yang 1945:88) Vietnamese generals viewed military strategy as related to geomancy—the favorable location of an encampment or fort, an auspicious or inauspicious day to engage in combat. Even Vietnamese emperors regularly placed much importance in geomancy—"dangerous tombs" would be officially disinterred for fear that the deceased’s descendants might accumulate magical power to challenge imperial authority. The ancestral tombs of criminals were regularly desecrated as a common form of punishment. Most Vietnamese "villagers make an effort to orient their houses and kitchens in the prescribed manner," (Hickey 1964:40) and those too poor to hire a geomancer did not hesitate to purchase a talisman to ward off evil spirits and to follow basic geomantic precepts.</p> <p><font SIZE="2">The geomancers pretend that when a family’s graveyard is surrounded by water courses and hills wherein a dragon lurks, then all their ancestors buried there will draw from the bowels of the earth a mysterious fecundity which will be transmitted to their descendants….(Yang 1945:88)</p> <p></font>The traditional equivalent of a real estate agent, a geomancer fit in well with a cultural and symbolic universe that did not define itself in fixed, finite territorial boundaries with structural continuity over time, rather in terms of "spheres of influence" emanating from certain common sources with relative structural contiguity over distance more apropos in delimiting cultural-groupings, dealing in terms of "people-space." Geomancy served to legitimate and reinforce common, shared symbolic metaphors of political sovereignty and perpetuity of power in relation to land-holdings, in the daily life of the Vietnamese people. Directly related to customary practices and belief’s associated with the cult of ancestor worship and with patrimonial inheritance and land-holdings, in a land were social/environmental conditions created heavy population pressure in relation to the land-holding of a lineage, these associated symbolisms formed a symbolic complex reinforcing patterns of land acquisition and retention "for one’s ancestors" and for one’s descendants where partible inheritance patternings and life’s misfortunes made such retention the exception rather than the rule.</p> <p>Pedagogical Anthropological interpretation is most certainly at its best and its worst in explaining magico-religious belief and practice fairly obvious in functioning of this ceremonial symbolic complex. Immense anxiety is associated with possession or utilization of new land where land is the only guarantee of social security. Eric Wolf’s thesis of an individual and group "coping mechanism" that helps "men to deal with the inevitable and irreducible crisis of life, of failure, of sickness, of death" (1966:96) and "link individual experience to public concern" cannot be discounted, conferring general social significance to "selection pressures" impinging upon an individual household and reinforcing social ties by upholding "right living." "It aids in the management of tensions which arise in the course of transactions between men and reinforces the sentiments upon which social continuity depends." (Wolf 1966:97)</p> <p>Of course, it is important not to question the rituals which provide the structure for our social life, even if the problem may only be "unavoidable" making magico-religious means a last resort, a "just in case" persuasion, or a "couldn’t hurt" reminder. The unavoidable fate to be alleviated by geomancy was the potential loss of "lineage-land" because of "unavoidable" environmental and social circumstances. In its deep roots it may even have been quite sophisticated signaling system, for ritualizing "good" or "sound" intentions or exonerating "wrong" or "poor" intentions unavoidably involved with new land-holdings in a zero-sum universe of limited good, or for regulation of settlement patterns or land distribution in relation to the population, sanctioning "expansionism" and checking cancerous "involution."</p> <p><font SIZE="2">"Peasant societies are based on important but shifting relations between individual units which are households; and the number of such relations between households bulks large in the total number of all relations….Hence we would expect a strong emphasis on supernatural sanctions for behavior in peasant communities in which structural tensions between domesticate groups are often strong and yet must be muted in interest of coalition formation or neighborly coexistence. These communities are, moreover, very conservative in this regard. (Wolf 1966: 99)</p> </font> <p>Science runs deep in trying to understand systems of magic and divination. There is Moore’s explanation (1965:73-74) of divination systems as probabilistic "mixed" or "statistical" strategies of chance optimization, or Klein’s interpretation (April 1983: 156-7) as a kind of alternative "left brain/right brain" concrete socio-cultural calculus employing "appositional transform operators" about ambiguous events or complex relations. "These rules consist of equivalence sets of abstract and concrete terms that are markers of classification categories covering the whole range of traditional Chinese world knowledge. He images and their commentaries encode a structuring of the Chinese universe in terms of naturalistic, social and metaphysical concepts that are derived from the early philosophies as well as from Confucianism and Taoism…." And who can forget Roy Rappaport’s classic analysis (1967: 18) "ritual cycles….play an important part in regulating the relationships of these groups with both the non-human components of their immediate environments and the human components of their less immediate environments….this regulation helps to maintain the biotic communities existing within their territories, redistributes land among people and people over land, and limits the frequency of fighting."</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><img SRC="line5.gif" WIDTH="575" HEIGHT="11"></p> <p> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a NAME="nine">SECTION: 2:ii</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">RIVERS OF LIFE</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">STREAMS OF CULTURE</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><font SIZE="2">Beginning with the small rafts of bamboo or logs of the upriver people in the shallow or the gorges, we find lower down river hollowed out or plank rowboats, then sailboats, motor boats and finally steamers docked at the wharves of the bustling port cities. Technology, agriculture and socio-legal organization also become increasingly complex as we voyage downstream…. (Tweddel and Kimball 1985: 279)</p> </font> <p>The givers and takers of life in Southeast Asia, setting the tempo of living in their seasonal ebbing and flooding, the Rivers are another characteristic feature of the physio-graphy of being Vietnamese. The one most important in regard to Vietnamese culture is the Red River, so named because of "the mass of red silt it carries." (According to Vietnamese folklore "the red color of the river is caused by the blood of its guardian dragon") Known by the Vietnamese as the Great River, it is important not only because upon its alluvial plains it supports one of the densest and most rice intensive populations in the world, but also because it is one of the most dangerous, swiftest and unpredictable rivers in the whole world. It was indeed the prime mover of Vietnamese hydraulic civilization incorporating multivariate factors, its sheer force, the tremendous pressures exerted by the "extremely large rate of flow" of thick concentrations of silt carried down from the barren highlands, create periodic flooding of the alluvial plains with which the Vietnamese were long ago forced to confront in order to survive.</p> <p>In the dry season its level drops to low to be utilizable for irrigation, leading to drought and famine. In the wet season its level rises way over the elevation of the entire plain, threatening to wash away the entire plain if the Vietnamese had not long ago constructed a truly monumental system of dikes and canals and dams with which to harness and temper its violent powers for wet rice cultivation. Vast inundations often recurred, sometimes several times a season, in spite of this elaborate network of flood control, rapidly and without notice, the cause of "perennial death and destruction through severe and sudden floods." After each flood, the relief map of the entire delta would need to be redrawn, the major course altering, "with cones of alluvium indicating the place of rupture of the old river bed. Such cones around Hanoi rise to 7 meters above sea level." (Holmgren 1980: 25)</p> <p>What better "prime mover" for corporate solidarity than the "Promethean struggle against the elemental forces of life and death of the "Great River." The singularly noteworthy achievement of the Vietnamese in their early collective efforts of rising from the earth itself an elaborate and massive network of ramparts against ruthless and relentless forces of Mother Nature was born from a collective need for survival in the face of natural adversity and calamity.</p> <p>These are unquestionably noble stakes in allowing one’s freedom to be co-opted for the "survival" of "civilization," and then the children do not ask to be born into the adverse vicissitudes in which their parent conceived them in, and excessive population which perennially accumulates (excessive only when there is not enough food because there is too little or too much water) do not often ask for their freedom back, but always demand to be fed. Whether one chooses the Hen or her Egg, one cannot but help marvel about the miraculous synergism that exists in human culture as well as in Mother Nature. Nor can one help but sometimes wonder about the achievements of Human civilization. "It would be hard to say whether the people of the Red River Valley have suffered more from the armies of invasion that have descended on them….or from the furious waters of the Red River in the many seasons of excessive rainfall, often followed by an equally murderous period of drought." (Buttinger 1959; 46-48)</p> <p>"For the general conditions of human existence as determined by geography, nothing is more important than a country’s climate." A land of tropical monsoons, a biannual fluctuation of wet and dry seasons bringing 40 to 80 inches of monsoon rains on "monsoon Winds" all of life in Southeast Asia is governed by the coming and going of the rains, making the water element in the form of rain the most decisive factor of life and death in Southeast Asia.</p> <p>All Southeast Asian peoples depend upon the plentiful monsoon rains to fall in just the right amounts at the right times to assure an abundant surplus of rice. Agricultural cycles are tied to seasonal cycles of precipitation—too little or too much will upset a delicate ecological balance the Southeast Asians have struck with Mother Nature over many centuries of transplanting and harvesting.</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p></font>The annually renewed fertility that rainwater brought to the land is unsurprisingly associated with the fertility of the female, and this fertility is associated with the power of giving or of taking life. In Vietnamese culture feminine symbolism for complex "chains" of metaphorical associations. Ultimately, the water element is the primary referent of the female principle, or <u>yin</u> or <u>am</u>. Early Chinese conquerors were awarded the title of "Peaceful Sea Military Governor" or "Wave Calming General", symbolizing "in particular a reduction of female power in Yueh society." (Holmgren 1980: 17-21) Early Dong Son Drums, politico religious symbols of chiefly authority, are associated with female power. Design motifs on these drums feature important symbolic chains of female symbolism, a water chain linking frogs and fish, rivers and female river Goddesses, rain making, water animals and the dragon, and a "ship motif" associated with the ship of the dead, with death by drowning and drowning sacrifices to female river deities. These have been described by Holmgren (1980:17-21) as "female water darkness" chains. The "Water Kingdom" is an important netherworld in Vietnamese mythology associated with fertility, death and the female principle of am, or darkness. It is often confused with Hell in popular folklore. Often the way to the Underworld and Hell is through the Water Kingdom—the great womb of Vietnamese mythology from which its many culture heroes issue with their mandate to rule. "in mythology snakes are the Water King’s children and announce floods and deluges to come." It is associated with magical amulets and talismans.</p> <p>The "sacred" animals of Vietnamese mythology, or "<u>Tu-Linh</u>" are all associated with the water element and the feminine principle. Representing "virtue, grace, peace and concord," the Phoenix is the symbol of "womanhood and female virtue and was used as the principal emblem of queens and other female royalty as the dragons was used by the emperors." (Whitfield 1976:229) Characterized by "pride, nobility and grace of movement" (respect/modesty/moderation-harmony) its songs included all five notes of the traditional music scale and its feathers included the five basic colors. Symbolizing intelligence, goodness, and gentleness, the Unicorn is associated with female virtue and purity. "Women are involved in creating every generation….Those with a sacred task are themselves considered sacred, and efforts are made to keep them pure in order to keep the group pure." (Pandian 1982:14) The Tortoise was associated with the water element, symbolizing longevity and perfection, "it is usually found with a coral branch in the mouth and a crane on its back." The crane usually has a lotus in its mouth, a Buddhist religious symbolism associated with both the water element and the female principle. It is the symbol of the female principle par excellence for the Vietnamese people—"the most popular flower in Vietnam." It is associated with the florescence of Buddhism in Vietnam, which became associated with the art of rain making, and spirit cults of Buddhas of "clouds, rain, thunder and lightning" and of the worship of trees and aquatic powers. Buddhism became widespread among the common Vietnamese people as "a new method of controlling the vagaries of nature in the interests of agriculture." (Taylor 1983:83) Many villages found Buddhist temples for guardian spirits of agricultural fertility.</p> <p>With numerous, often unpredictable water courses there is little wonder that death by drowning is "a particularly horrible death" for Vietnamese "peasants" which has received much cultural focus and symbolic elaboration. Death, drowning and darkness are associated with the water element and with the female principle. There are a host of water-spirits posses ambivalent forms of power—"some are inherently wicked, and some occasionally wicked, and others capricious or benevolent." <u>Ba-Thuy</u>, the "Water Goddess", is most frequently associated with <u>Noi</u>, "an irresistible urge to plunge one’s face into water" which can cause the drowning of whole families. "Some drowned in earthen water jars, one man cursed with noi is supposed to have drowned in a cup of water, and one villager cited the case of a man who stumbled in the road, and, because he was cursed with noi, his face was fatally drawn into water that had seeped into a buffalo footprint." (Hickey 1964:77) Death by drowning was not only a symbolic preoccupation of "peasants," but was recurrent theme of regicide as well. The T’rung Sisters, "the Rain Maidens," after their defeat, drown themselves in the "Hat-Giang River". Lady Trieu rode her elephant into the sea. The Thuch family overthrew the last king of the old dynasty who "threw himself into a well", and Thuc Phan himself, defeated by the Chinese, "walked into the ocean" while his son also jumped into a well. "The last of the Tran rulers, Buy Khoach, jumped into the sea from the boat that took him to China; etc." (Buttinger 1959:113) Many Vietnamese culture heroes and heroines alike returned to the watery realm in apotheosis, from which their mandate originally came.</p> <p>Another symbolism is the moon, associated with yin, it is a symbol in the Vietnamese language of femininity and beauty—"moon face beauty" and "Fairy of the Moon" (Hang Nga). One of the most popular subjects of Vietnamese poetry and folklore, "the moon has a special attraction for the Vietnamese and occupies a special place in his heart." (Pham 1983:67) The calendar, and especially the lunar calendar, used still for holidays, festivals and anniversaries of the dead, is another female symbolism, associated with the agricultural cycle and with renewal of fertility. The moon is commemorated during the "Moon watching festival", a holiday especially for young boys and girls. Annual renewal ceremonies are closely connected with the lunar calendar, which is in turn tied up with other systems of divination like the <u>I-Ching</u>, with Chinese Cosmology, with Chinese Medicine, between all of which the correspondences between geographical directions, seasons, elements, tastes, colors, musical notes, the fluids, tissues, emotions, orifices, viscera, flavors, climates, qualities and foods, internal organs and planets run thick.</p> <p>There are few clear cut dividing lines where one form of symbolism leaves off and another begins, all inter-linking into "cultural chains" in a vast pantheon of myriad elements, a continuous networks of symbolic associations and metaphorical meanings, forming a mythological universe, with cycles within cycles. As a symbolic cultural universe, it is a synthesizing cultural complex of an indigenous cultural idiom that originally conceived, created and is itself created by and brought into being in conjunction with this complex. Its comprehension from within translates back into the everyday existential concerns of so-called "average" Vietnamese villagers.</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>For the Chinese "the ancestral soil is, at one and the same time, his history, memory, and recollection. He can no more deny it than he can deny himself. "For Chinese philosophy, Heaven and Earth, the unfolding of the Universe, and the life of mankind, ethics, and the normal course of nature, form a <u>closed and single</u> system. "….For them, all things are linked….He is not an isolated element but part of the whole, an extension of the soil from which he derives his force and knowledge. (de Poncins 1957:135-6)</p> <p></font>The symbolic complexes which help to regulate and reorient the life of the individual and the group, in relationship to the symbolic universe. Just as an individual will perform certain prescribed rituals to avoid "<u>Tam tai,</u>" or the "three misfortunes" of "fatal accidents, sickness, and loss of good fortune" which may be caused by inauspicious circumstances, "bad yeas", or the light of the star showing brightly at one’s birth being hidden, so will a grouping perform certain prescribed rituals, feasting, sacrificial food offerings, and communal prayer gatherings, to avoid three classes of disasters that are most feared—"diseases and epidemics, drought and too much rain, and banditry and war Spirits and gods are the main source of protection from practically all these troubles. The yearly cycle of life in the community consists largely of periodic offerings to the spirits and gods….(Hsu 1967:21)</p> <p>Foreign invasions, domestic political strife, rebellions and banditry, perennial flooding, droughts, drowning, and famine, disease epidemics, have been endemic to Vietnamese culture since time immemorial. There is little wonder why Vietnamese are insensitive to finer distinctions between political policies and planning and religious customs and ceremonials. To understand the rooted sense of Vietnamese traditional culture to its environment is to understand it s need for survival within that environment. Rootedness to a common environmental heritage and artistry in day-to-day survival and perennial endurance, resistance and resilience are inseparable core adjuncts of traditional Vietnamese "culture and character."</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><img SRC="line5.gif" WIDTH="575" HEIGHT="11"></p> <p> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a NAME="ten">SECTION 2:iii</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">THE ECOLOGY OF VIETNAMESENESS</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">THE CULTURE OF RICE AND FISH</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p>To understand focal patternings of the ecology of being Vietnamese is simply to understand how Vietnamese culture articulates with and is adapted within the web of life particularly in terms of its "food getting economies." Described as a "Vegetarian Civilization" with a 98% vegetarian diet, cotton clothes, wooden and bamboo houses, its vegetarian culture enables many more people to be supported on an acre of cultivated land than could be nourished on a mixed diet. (Gourou 1958:124) Vegetarianism is thus correlated with high population densities. Vietnamese culture has also been referred to as a "bamboo culture" with the plant having a wide variety of uses from a food source to cooking pot. But most preeminently, Vietnamese culture is a culture of rice. <u>Man ist was Man isst</u>. This is doubly true for the cultures of rice. Rice is the center of focus of Vietnamese cultural ecology: the rice bowl is the heart of its cornucopia.</p> <p> </p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>One crop, grown once a year, feeds an entire village and is <u>the</u> staple, three times a day. Rice is central not only to diet but the entire spiritual relationship between the people and the natural world. If a Vietnamese has not eaten rice, even though they may have eaten other food stuffs that day, they consider themselves not to have eaten at all. During the eating hours of the day, Vietnamese often greet each other with the expression "An Com Chua", literally, "Eat cooked rice yet?" (Weisberg, Schell 1979:25)</p> </font> <p>Compared to the importance of rice, all other features of Vietnamese culture shrink to diminutive importance. Not only has Vietnamese culture been for more than two millenia adapted to the environment principally as a culture of rice, but rice itself has long been ecologically adapted to being cultivated. "An amazingly adaptable plant" rice can be profitably cultivated in a wide diversity of environments "almost unparalleled in the plant kingdom". (Swaminathan Jan. 1984:82) Its adaptability is explained by its efficient system of air passage from "shoot to root". The adaptability of the rice plant in turn explains the adaptability of riziculture and of the Vietnamese culture of rice. "Without the magnificent adaptability of rice and its responsiveness to man’s nurturing, certain tropical civilizations….based as they were on riziculture, could never have come into being." (Hanks 1972:23) In general there are four modes of riziculture "eco-types"—gathering, shifting, broadcasting and transplanting. These modes rest upon several cultural ecological factors and represent no necessary order of succession. "Rather than stages in development or evolution, these modes of cultivation are manners of adapting to a changing environment." (Hanks 1972:66) The introduction of a certain technique depends most importantly upon a certain density of population. (Boserup 1965:65)</p> <p>There are certain important characteristics associated with riziculture, especially wet-rice transplanting. In "earth-bound" riziculture societies, land attachment is strong because rice, with its high output of food per unit area is a "factor of density", with the resulting concentration of "many men on little land". As a form of agricultural subsistence, it has an unusually "intensive" character—"it aims at the largest possible output by multiplying harvests, if necessary at the cost of diminishing returns per harvest; with shortage of food always at its elbow the peasant must produce <u>regardless of cost</u>." (Buchanan 1975:69) Wet rice cultivation is demanding of labor intensive capital for relatively short periods of the year. "So heavy are the demands at harvest time that even densely populated areas may find they have no surplus labor. In areas with a highly seasonal rainfall regime and lacking the facillities for dry season irrigation the dry season is a period of enforced inactivity….(Buchanan 1967:71)</p> <p>Riziculture lends itself to agricultural sendarism, in a process of "intensification" that Clifford Geertz has described as "agricultural involution"—"its marked tendency (and ability) to respond to a rising population through intensification; that is, through absorbing increased numbers of cultivators on a unit of cultivated land." (Geertz 1963:32) Either as a result of population pressure, or the concentration of land-holdings within the hands of a few, there occurs a break down of the individual size of "proletarian owners" land-holdings to a size "completely inadequate to support them at a reasonable level of living." Buchanan 1967:67) The distinctive feature of wet rice land-holdings is their small fragmented size—most under an acre—with a consequence of under nutrition. "Nothing is real to us but hunger." Much land is wasted just on dividing balks and pathways. With the mal-utilization of land there is also a mal-utilization of available labor. Rice transplanting calls for heavy inputs of labor at comparatively low per-capita yields only at definite periods of the agricultural cycle, requiring the availability of an excess human labor resource pool which is characterized as "underemployed proletariat" or "landless laborers" the rest of the year. Rice can produce year after year, sometimes twice a year, "a virtually undiminished yield". Thus with the labor intensive, per unit land area high productivity of rice, there are associations of high population densities, underemployment, poverty and under-nutrition. Peasant income tends to be low, population densities high.</p> <p>The rice machine is delicately tuned and delicately balanced, in spite of its apparent stability and adaptability and productivity. Its correlation with high population densities, underemployment and poverty and malnutrition is the source of its periodic disruption whenever any unpredictable extrinsic forces affect this balance.</p> <p>But rice is only part of the story of the ecology of being Vietnamese. In the dialectics of diet both carbohydrates and protein make the complete story, and in the case of traditional Vietnamese ethnoculture, riziculture was necessarily complemented by pisciculture—fish farming. While a good source of readily assimilated protein, rice is lacking in some of the essential amino acids that can only be supplied by meat or fish. For a long time, pisci-culture, taking advantage of all the natural and man-made waterways, the flooded paddy fields and ponds, has been a reliable source of income as well as food. Fish is the primary source of essential proteins for the Vietnamese. Rearing of carp in the paddy fields "never results in the reduction of the rice crop." "The Cochin Chinese are great consumers of fish: and their seas, rivers, lakes, canals, and even brooks afford a great supply. The fisheries indeed exhibit almost the only active display of industry which is to be seen among them." (Crawford 1830) Fishing is intensely pursued as a major preoccupation by many Vietnamese people, employing a wide variety of techniques. Then there is a well developed fishing industry.</p> <p>The Vietnamese have traditionally exploited a very broad range of food resources available in their riziculture environment, and have elaborated their diet to an extreme degree. They especially exploit a very broad range of protein resources, in many ways deemed unpalatable by Western standards and tastes. Chickens, ducks and their eggs abound. Pork, cattle, oxen, buffalo, goats, sheep are common though scarce. They regularly partake of a wider range of animal parts and viscera normally eschewed by Westerners—tongue, tripe, tendon, shank, oxtails, brains, intestines, hearts, ears, maws, uterus, neck bones, hock, feet, of beef and pork all make common complements of rice or soup. Dog meat was highly esteemed, rats, vermin, mice, frogs, lizards, snakes, crocodiles, turtles were commonly eaten. Gourou (1936) cited consumption of insects of all sorts, silk worms, water bugs, grasshoppers, locusts, crickets, mole-crickets, cicada, ephemera, bees, ant eggs, batata worms, bamboo worms, palolo and grubs. What emerged from this pattern of broad based protein subsistence complementary to rice monoculture is an endemic protein malnutrition characteristic of the ecology of being Vietnamese, occurring most prevalently among the poor and the landless. Fish and eggs were highly valued as "balanced sources" of essential proteins. There occurred a common and widespread culture based chronic deficiency in both protein and fatty materials—diversification of protein sources is an adaptation to population pressure and protein deprivation.</p> <p>The patterning is not one of starvation or even chronic hunger—but of endemic, pernicious insufficiency of high quality proteins associated with nitrogen requirements, which is a function of "balance" "essential" versus "nonessential" amino acids, and "high density" versus low density protein sources, and their relative availability. Diversification of dietary protein sources was an adaptive strategy to these imbalances of "protein calorie" malnutrition, which is common in areas of moisture demanding crops like rice where there is a threat of famine from local overpopulation, drought, flooding, "or years of irregular patterns of precipitation". "One aspect of a procurement system that may affect the nutritional level of the diet is the diversity of the plants and animals obtained. The greater this diversity is, the greater the chances are of including in the diet the full range of necessary chemical molecules in ratios suitable for optimum nutrition." (Odum 1971:121) Mixed diets are "preventive or remedial" recipes for scarcity of food and malnutrition. "Protein calorie" malnutrition is clearly associated with population pressure in tropical areas, and afflicts adults as well as children. It is a "constantly sapping" form of under-nutrition that can occur "as a kind of epidemic among populations under stress." It is also strongly correlated with the occurrence of infectious diseases.</p> <p> </p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>The variety of nature’s original habitats provided man with many foods when he was part of the system. Later when his agriculture was concentrated on a few plants and replaced nature with a greater net yield of food, his carrying capacity increased but some of the energy converted to increased yield was at the expanse of the former diversification. To supply the nutritional diversity again requires an energy expenditure for diversity, either through transportation of products from elsewhere or through local rediversification. (Odum 1971:121)</p> </font> <p>Eaten alone, rice does not provide enough protein for sufficient growth and maintenance of the human body. Practical difficulties arise in consumption of sufficient quantities of low density proteins. The Vietnamese tend to be comparatively small and gracile—never obese—both a reflection of efficient adaptation to nutritional stress and a byproduct of inadequate nutrition. Reduction in body size is a distinctive adaptation to protein deficiency. The body can reutilize protein it stores within, and can adapt to lowered protein intake, after a period of negative nitrogen balance, by restoration of equilibrium at a lower level of intake/loss, through reduced loss and increased absorption and utilization. This level can be reduced repeatedly. Thus it can be seen that there are diminishing returns of efficiency in terms of protein intake. "If rice and its substitutes meet the country’s need in a general way, yet there is no doubt that the production of fatty and nitrogenous materials is altogether insufficient…." (Gourou 1936)</p> <p>Studies have documented a wide variety of nutritional disorders in Vietnam, especially nitrogen edema and deficiency which early French officials called "Boiffisure d" Annam." Kwashiorkor is the result of a vicious cycle of interrelated factors. The case of relative protein malnutrition is well documented in Vietnam, even in most recent times.</p> <p>Certain distinctive cultural patternings can be seen as related to this protein deprivation. Protein requirements of pregnant and nursing mother and children are proportionately higher than normal adult needs—thus an increasing population adds to pressure for total protein requirements. Malnutrition, illness, injury, disease can aggravate the protein requirements. "Nutritional requirements of dense concentrations of people usually exceed the carrying capacity of locally available resources…." Pregnant Vietnamese women have their diet severely circumscribed by dietary taboos almost exclusively focused on the prohibition of protein and drugs and medicines, "lest the fetus becomes too heavy" and fall out. "Fish and meat are said to generate poisons in the child." (May 1961:95) These taboos were seen by American observers as precipitating factors in nutritional diseases, resulting in premature infant death and "unending misery of many mothers." "If you want food, be prepared to give your husband and children away." Two settlement patterns predominating in Vietnam are related to local availability of food, "the linear growth of settlements along a river and its tributaries, and a dispersed pattern with a regularity of distance between the sites of different size and function."</p> <p>"Population pressure is a prime cause of a lack disequilibrium in an adapted subsistence system." A society may adopt two strategies in response to resource deprivation, either by diversification through extending its area of exploitation through trade, tribute or taxation, cultivating knowledge "of the fullest expanse of resource alternatives within their territory through alliance, sociability, exchange, or warfare with neighboring groups." (Laughlin, Brody 1978:27) or through decreasing nutrient requirements by introducing population control mechanisms " for stabilizing or reintroducing equilibrium".</p> <p>In general there exists five levels of population control, distinguished in terms of cost in resources and loss of flexibility. Social and spatial mobilization altering group size and structure through courtship, taboos, marriage regulations, migrations are the least costly and most flexible strategies. Contraception, artificial and natural, sexual taboos, resulting in spacing of children is least costly and flexible. Abortion, infanticide, pregnancy proscriptions increasing frequency of miscarriage and still birth and low birth weight babies "who will not survive" is costly in terms of nutrient investment of reproduction but flexible "since within months, the female can become pregnant again." Control of growth and socialization , "benign neglect" resulting in "short-for-age" or "thin-for-height" children "permite" death. This is still more costly in nutrient investment and less flexible in replacement time. Manipulation of longevity and mortality, starvation, disease, warfare, homicide, suicide, senilicide or geronticide is most costly and least flexible "since reproductive capacities are lost as well as productive potentials."</p> <p>"Totemism with food taboos" is positively correlated with societies which have relatively low per capita intake of protein and which "tend toward food production." Patterns of sexual differential nutrition are more intense in agrarian societies than in hunting gathering societies. It can be seen that the dialectics of diet turns on the issue of uneven availability of protein and unequal status between males and females. The dominant "working" male typically receives the lion’s share of the best protein, often "to the jeopardy of his family". In such a situation women are typically weaker, smaller, lethargic, malnourished, prone to disease and disorder, and shorter-lived. The infants suffer most during the fetal and nursing periods. Abortion was almost universally rejected by Vietnamese, contraception was ignored. Children were desired and the postpartum sexual taboo was only one to three months. Weaning began the first month, and was usually completed within a year, "but may remain on the breast as long as four or five years." Women return to normal work routines within a couple days of birthing. "God created the elephant and he created grass."</p> <p>Eating is a highly elaborated and focal concern in Vietnamese culture. Vietnamese cuisine is among the best and most varied in the world. Patterns of feasting and social eating help to center and provide a center of balance of basic socialization and social patterning in Vietnamese culture—it can very aptly be described as "oral" in focal orientation. There is much delight in eating and feasting, all of the time. Taking a meal and breaking bread socially is more than mere nutritional fulfillment or gustatory gratification for Vietnamese—it is a predominant mode of exchange, a leveling mechanism for redistributing basic food resources, a predominant means of social communication and coordination of social relationships. Feasting and food sharing is a wide, open ended network of exchange which reduces the social stress of deprivation—hoarding, even under conditions of stress and famine, of food reserves, was never a common pattern in Vietnam. As a result the danger of famine was minimized, except for the "isolated" family unit, for which starvation was "not rare". Food and eating in and of itself takes on central importance in the daily life of the Vietnamese, and accretes much symbolism, becoming a social mechanism for garnering status, creating obligation, a means of reciprocation and solidifying friendships. The social significance surrounding the focal feasting/food sharing patterns lies at the heart of the ritual religious ceremonial complex. For the Vietnamese, eating lies not only at the heart of "reality culture" which faces subsistence survival, but also becomes the focal concern of "value culture" which faces entertainment and play activities of the Vietnamese.</p> <p>Societies faced with "recursive" and predictable resource deprivation will incorporate into its social structure sanctions, values, norms, beliefs, rituals or a cosmology that defines social cooperation. "The degree to which strategic goods and services flow through the network of interpersonal relationships in the primary social domain of a given population—and which are increasingly attended under more stress." The reciprocal sharing of food has long been recognized as a primary strategy of adaptation to deprivation. Sharing is the "essence of social contract and collective endurance in society." In the face of increased deprivation sharing networks become extended to include many remote persons or groups that are distant. In both times of scarcity and in ordinary circumstances, "the sphere of generalized exchange of food may be even wider than the sphere of generalized exchange for other kinds of things". The universal characteristic of diets is that they are culture specific and sometimes specific to individuals. Nouc mam, or "fish water," and soy sauces, "is added to all soups and dishes and is found on all tables at all times….Approximately 50 grams of this substance is consumed per capita per day in Vietnam." It is a ready source of salt and amino acids and is evenly distributed through trade and is a basic component of all meals, just like rice.</p> <p>In the focus upon feasting/food sharing as a reciprocal exchange network what becomes clear is the particular social economy of being traditional Vietnamese, "faced" with both the reality of survival and the value of social eating. And social eating patterns inevitably beget cultural patterns of social discourse, with an exclusive and super-ordinate elaboration upon talking as an essential, focal aspect of Vietnamese traditional culture and character. Talking and eating are not mere means to some other diffuse end like nutrition or social cooperation, but these past-time activities are as much an end in themselves as a pleasurable means of entertainment and "relaxation."</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><img SRC="line5.gif" WIDTH="512" HEIGHT="10"></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a NAME="eleven">SECTION 2:iv</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">LANGUAGE OF LOGIC</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">LOGIC OF LOVE</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p>It makes sense to refer to the language of Vietnamese, conferring a sense of meaning to Vietnamese identity that is not to be resurrected in the cultural idiom of another language. Sense of meaning and structure of a language are inseparable and interdependent within a cultural context, and we can never think outside of some cultural idiom to prove whether or not this is so. No doubt the Vietnamese language makes it easier to think in some ways, about some things, in some senses, than in others. There are thoughts and feelings peculiarly Vietnamese which are only best expressed through its natural idiom, and no doubt there are some thoughts and feelings expressed within other cultural idioms which are virtually inaccessible to native Vietnamese speakers.</p> <p>A native language is the heart and soul, as well as the mind, of a culture—it is paradigmatic expression of the logos and ethos of the Vietnamese ethnoculture that cannot be found within any other cultural idiom. There is more than a mere communicative or signaling function as well, in which language and culture cannot be sundered without mutual destruction. Language embodies in its everyday usage a rich symbolic heritage, of many subtle nuances and innuendo of meaning which transcend signaling functions. The relative difficult of translating a simple poem is a case in point—take any Vietnamese poem and compare alternative translations, of which there are many—and it is quite apparent that the subtle symbolic nuances of the original are quite lost, or at best, only partially captured. The doctrine of linguistic relativity states that a language, as a culture specific idiom, like diet which is universally culture specific, simply makes it "easier to conceptualize the world in a certain way than in other possible ways, while a similar sort of conceptioning may be more difficult in terms of another language." While it is possible to "think" out of a cultural idiom in some other idiom, the native language we are brought up with acquires a tremendous degree of "concreteness." Different cultural orientations are embodied and intrinsic to different cultural idioms, with a differential focus and elaboration.</p> <p>"Thus the system of logic used by most Vietnamese sometimes bear little relation to that found in the West. Even when translated into French or possibly English by an educated person, this logic retains the influence of the Vietnamese language in which it was first expressed." (Hammer 1966:29) While habits of diet and customs of cuisine lend a particular distinctive "flavor" to Vietnamese culture, closely related patterns of language and literature lend as well a certain characteristic "tonality" as well. The sonorous tonal quality <font SIZE="2">Vietnamese language lends itself admirably to complex harmonic play. "….It is enough to combine these tones and modulate certain words to turn a sentence into a verse and plain speech into a song. How to render plain speech into a toneless language this music of tones that evokes so many feelings in the hearts of the Vietnamese readers?....Almost the whole of this music….disappears from even the best translations. (Sully 1967:321-2)</p> </font> <p>This tonality of the Vietnamese language provides the idiom of "harmonious" expression for poetical ideas and imagination. Vietnamese folk poetry has been called the "spiritual food of the Vietnamese." This tonality gives the language a "sing-song" quality that relates everyday speech and writing to folk poetry and folk songs and to traditional music and literature. "Folk songs are probably never formally composed. They burst forth spontaneously and instinctively from the hearts of the people in a kind of musical excitement, hence their natural simplicity." (Minh 1962:136) Classical poetry is for the Vietnamese "a flower of the finest sentiments, a fruit of profound thoughts."</p> <p><font SIZE="2">The country folk of Vietnam, living near nature and in utter simplicity, transform the popular verses into tunes when their mind sympathizes with the surroundings. This natural adaptation to music does not obey any musical rule. It only obey intuition….(Van Giang ?:2-3)</p> <p></font>"Most Vietnamese at some time in their lives have recourse to sing for one purpose of or another…." (Durand1985:29-31) A kind of "native speaker intuition" operating in Vietnamese fills the gap left by formal syntax, and elaborates this barren structure with infinite richness of subtle "play on words" and innuendo and nuance possible only in Vietnamese. This operation of intuition and the focal elaboration of language is evident in the extreme variation of forms, regional dialectical variations, of language, poems, music and songs. "The richness of Vietnamese folklore is evident from the multiplicity and diversity of folktales…." (Durand 1985:29-31) It is a cultural idiom that is not analyzable by any formal descriptive or prescriptive "grammar" based upon a Western ethnocentrism of "deep structure."</p> <p>The question of linguistic relativism will long remain simply an article of faith that sparks the creative imagination. Science kills imagination. There have been many interpretations upon the "Chinese Mind" in how the Chinese language may structure and express a characteristic Chinese logic. Some logicians believe "while aiming to find out how Chinese logic operates, we shall probably end up with finding how logic operates in Chinese….Rather than affirmation and negation, Chinese logic operates really with truth or falsehood, stated in the form of agreement or disagreement" (Yuen Ren Chao) Others ascertain "Every form of logic….is related to a given form of culture and language. Western logicians assume that theirs is a universal logic of human reason. But it is based upon the structures of the Western languages and therefore not universal. Chinese logic, the logic inherent in the Chinese language, is not, like the Western, based on the subject predicate relationship or on the so called "law of identity." It is what might be called "correlation logic" or "the logic of correlative duality." Its structure is that of relationships….(Chang Tung-Sun) Vietnamese is an inherently consistent universe of symbolisms, made up of minimal, fixed, objective skeleton of signs, "a drastic shorthand to be expanded associatively by each reader. In addition, each symbol in the skeletal symbol chain is a node for traditional, and no doubt, personal associations." (Scharfestein 1974:141)</p> <p>Considerations of the interconnections between language and logic and culture brings us to a consideration of the "logic of love" which is contained in perhaps the finest flowering of "Chinese genius"—its religions. "The Conflation of the Three Teachings"—Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism—is the traditional religious patterning of the Vietnamese as well as the Chinese, both of whom demonstrated a remarkable synthesizing quality of "mind" which is manifested in the marvelous syncretism of their religions. "Every Vietnamese subscribed to some version of this combined religion, which also incorporated many local cults. There was no such thing as "pure" Confucianism, "pure" Taoism, or "pure" Buddhism. Within this conflation, however, wide variation was possible in the relative importance of the three main components…." (Hue Tam 1983:20)</p> <p>This synthesizing character of "mind" brought into being many strange "syncretisms" in the form of nativistic revitalization movements. In all these movements, there is a common dialectical theme of a synthetic political religious orientation which was highly elaborated with many diverse symbolisms. "It is possible that the dialectic in ethnicity is the opposition and synthesis of the symbolic representation of the male and female….(Pandian 1982:9) The political religious dimension of this synthesizing cultural idiom can be seen to be based upon a dialectic between male and female principles, a dialectic as well rooted to "value culture" of "Dragon/Phoenix Symbol Chains, and which forms the "focal" meta-theme around which Vietnamese culture has traditionally oriented itself:</p> <p>In its marvelous syncretism, the mysterious Buu Son Ky Huong religion was an indigenous cultural response to many adverse conditions—"The poem beginning with these four words held a special and mystical significance. Because of their sacred connotation, the words were seldom spoken out loud, and the poem, which could be read both horizontally and vertically, has never been satisfactorily explained." (Hue Tam 1983:2) To enter into the synthesizing cultural complex that is the reality of being traditional Vietnamese, it is necessarily and unavoidably to enter into a great mythological circle, composed of many cycles within cycles, without clear beginning and ending." "Ecosystems follow the oriental penchant for finding cycles in nature….For rice to grow, a multitude of cycles must coincide for a moment of cosmic time….Perhaps as a result of common heritage, the Orient and native Indian America have long recognized the implications of these observations, that harmony must prevail between man, heaven and earth….Even today we may begin to write the rules of natural morality, which once seem more fully, may resemble the reciprocities between neighbors invoked….by Lao Tze. (Hanks 1972:22-24)</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>"All things are divided into their several classes and succeed to one another in the same way, though of different bodily forms. They begin and end as in an unbroken ring, though how it is they do so be not apprehended…." (James Legge 1927: Part III, pp. 143-4)</p> </font> <p>In conclusion it is fitting to review and refine a few common preconceptions about the "culture and character" of traditional Vietnamese identity. Almost without exception and without question traditional Vietnamese culture and character is presumed to be virtually synonymous with stereotypes of the "Vietnamese Village" and the "Vietnamese peasant" with many "folk" implications and "semi-feudal" connotations. These preconceptions have formed the tacit base-line in our ethnological comprehension of traditional Vietnamese culture.</p> <p>It is long overdue to amend this "peasant village" base-line. Culture and character refer to two sides of a single coin of Vietnameseness, both dialectically describing a particular focal orientation which characterizes Vietnamese culture, as well as describing a particular "cultural character" of being "traditional Vietnamese" which is a symbolic model, a mythological metaphor, which Vietnamese may or may not adopt if they so choose. This model of Vietnameseness is highly elaborated incorporating a diversity of symbolisms. Its looseness and flexibility has made Vietnamese culture so adaptable and resilient. This character of Vietnamese culture has a peculiar "flavor" and "tonality" which is both conservative and changing. It incorporates a fundamental human dilemma of being both universal and unique, permanent and changing, in an idiom of a synthesizing cultural complex.</p> <p>An alternative metaphor of comprehending traditional culture and character of Vietnamese identity is the "Vietnamese family"—the metaphor of "family resemblances" between Vietnamese. This is a metaphor of a metaphor, a reflexive metalogic, implied by Vietnamese culture and character. It forms the "base-line" and "atom" of traditional Vietnamese ethnoculture. Ideally it is a "big family," though not quite a "lineage" or "extended family", even though it frequently had many extensions into Vietnamese culture. It just as frequently atomized into the traditional "nuclear family" of a father, mother and children. This family was always changing its composition and content, but never its fundamental "Vietnamese" structure. When extended and large, it made the basis of a corporate, communal solidarity of an integrated social fabric of Vietnamese ethnoculture, when small it turned inwardly upon itself becoming the atom of social disintegration. Rooted in the family structure are both the seeds of creation and the forces of destruction of Vietnamese culture.</p> <p>Within this familial structure, there was a primary dialectical theme of conflict and harmony and synthesis between male and female, expressed symbolically in political-religious idioms. Within the familial framework, the male is either a father, husband or son, but his characteristic male "Vietnameseness" must always be defined by relationship to the sexual counterpart of the mother, wife or daughter. Whatever the social role, whether peasant or mandarin, urban trader or craft specialist, soldier or vagabond, scholar or priest, the characteristic Vietnamese identity is defined in this primary familial context within the idiom of the male-female dialectic. The traditional Vietnamese character does not conceptualize him/herself as an isolated, independent individual in relation to society, but views oneself symbolically as an interdependent family member, whether the family is large or small, nonexistent or potential. "The family is the basic institution developed by the Vietnamese to perpetuate society and provide protection to the individual." (Pham 1983:38) "In Vietnamese culture the individual’s interests and destiny are rarely conceived outside the framework of his immediate and extended families. Anything a Vietnamese does, he usually does out of family consideration rather than for himself." (Pham 1983:29)</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>It is the desire of most villagers to improve their lot, which means having land, a fine house, material comfort, and education for one’s children. One of the dreads of poverty is that the family may disintegrate as members quit the village to seek a livelihood elsewhere. For the villager it is extremely important that the family remain together: in addition to the comfort of having kinfolk about, immortality lies in an undying lineage. (Hickey 1964:277)</p> </font> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> <img SRC="line5.gif" WIDTH="492" HEIGHT="10"></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a NAME="twelve">CHAPTER III</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">FLIGHT AND PLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX PEOPLE</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">VIET REFUGEE CULTURE EXISTENTIALLY</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>I don’t feel that I have lost everything and received nothing. I am unhappy now, but that is nothing to me. I cannot imagine my future. Sometimes I feel very lonely and afraid….My ambition is to be free, and to get back meaning in my life. (Nguyen N. from Hawthorne 1982:312-3)</p> </font> <p>This is a story of the plight and flight of the phoenix people, whom I have so nicknames, because like the phoenix who "appears only in times of peace and prosperity and hides when there is trouble" these people were guided by a "phoenix" spirit to flee their troubled homeland to search for peace, freedom and prosperity abroad. "Freedom" and its elusive pursuit, is the key metaphor of the "phoenix spirit". The present predicament of the plight and flight of the phoenix people represents the last flight of the "fairy spirit" from Vietnam. Deeply embedded in the sui generis "mercurial" ethos of indigenous Southeast Asia, embodied in the <u>Ao Dai</u>, expressed in the soulful, plaintive song of its forlorn refugee youth, it was a romantic creature, the Vietnamese femme fatale, feline and fearful spirit of the forest whose touch could be both creative and dangerous, infecting the buffalo boy who lackadaisically, sleepily demures the responsibility of adulthood. It was as well a nature loving creature, a nurturing mother, loving wife and faithful daughter, the soulful source of fertility and creativity, always seeking greener pastures and brighter horizons, before being ground down to milled rice beneath the hard mill-stone of the Communist economic imperative. This fairy spirit is now undergoing active repression and "reeducation" in Vietnam, systematically rooted out, permanently disappearing, its wounded and tattered remnants, flotsam and jetsam scattered forever upon the high seas, floating to far off places, vowing to return to Vietnam "someday." Under the watchful eyes of Uncle Ho, it will not flourish and must eventually perish. Its echoes and reflections, faint and distant though they are, "survive" existentially in many ethnic "little Saigons" scattered over the globe. First and foremost a free spirit, one more prevalent in the used to be, it is now upon the verge of extinction and "petrification" as an archaic, vestigial anachronism on the edge of existence. "We are the foam floating on the vast ocean. We are the dust wandering in endless space. Our cares are lost in the howling wind." ("One of Many Things" <u>America</u> Oct. 7, 1978)</p> <p>Now, the phoenix people are technically labeled as "refugees," though, like any sticker growing old, its newness is beginning to rub off. "Refugee" is defined: "1. One who flees to a shelter or placeof safety. 2. One who in times of war, political or religious persecution, etc.flees to a foreign power or country…." (Webster’s Dict. 1983) By 1980, there were at least 388, 802 Indochinese "refugees" re-settled in the United States, with at least 300,000 more awaiting resettlement in oversea refugee camps. This number doesn’t take into account the many "refugee" infants born since coming here—the birth rates are very high. This is out of some "16 million refugees adrift in the stormy seas of world politics." (Newland 1981:1)</p> <p>The Eighties has become the "Decade of Refugees." It seems the basic existential dilemma of refugee identity worldwide is to "cease being refugees within a reasonable time." The basic common identity of the "refugee" is one of "homelessness". Many refugees remain uprooted and permanent "exiles" for generations, betwixt and between any "home" of any national power structure. Modern refugees are common citizens of the "Fifth World" who do not even possess a common, comprehensive definition of their own ascriptive label of "refugee." The "fifth world" is a world without homeland, existing in the twilight zone of the marginal interstices of modern civilization—members of the "fifth world", Amerindians and South African Blacks, at least have their own reservations and apartheid. The most the refugees have had were temporary encampments, and eventually, if they got to the U.S., generous federal support.</p> <p>Understanding the significance of the meaning of "refugee" is understanding of the labeling process itself. "Refugee" is an ascriptive grouping, "Vietnamese" is a reference grouping, "Little Saigon" is a cultural grouping, and ethnic Vietnamese identity is an existential grouping. The phoenix people today have been struggling with all these confusing labels to fashion for themselves a new identity, and with it a new sense of belonging, of "home" that combines many of the elements they lost with many of the adaptations and wealth they have gained.</p> <p>An ethnic group is any "subdivision of mankind" as distinguished "by customs, characteristics, language, etc." The Vietnamese in the United States now constitute a large and rapidly growing ethnic minority group, even though they are only "fresh off the boat" and have been here only a little more than a decade. Now the ethnicity of the Vietnamese, as a process of defining an emergent ethnic identity as a distinctive minority, and of creating an existence which is meaningful, is still a new phenomenon of existential emergence. There is a sense of immediacy about this process, as if tomorrow won’t come soon enough and yesterday wasn’t long enough. And yet this immediacy is forever tied to the past and forever looking frantically future ward. It is endowed both with a living memory of the "old country" as well as a new sense of purpose projected into the future, "of making it for one’s children". There is a forward direction momentum of existential emergency, which for so many reasons carried them across vast ocean expanses, and propels them onward in their struggles for survival and newfound success. In the on-going struggle for survival, many are not even allowed to play the game of living, much less to play it fairly, and many more are cast aside in defeat and hopeless desperation. The new ethnic heritage created by the Vietnamese here, the pride of many who have become lucky and successful, has not been achieved without severe cost to many people’s lives.</p> <p>Traditional ethnography deals with "groupings" of people locked in the eternal "ethnographic Present." In other words, ethnography has been inevitably an existential process, in which "existential emic ethnographer" and "existential etic ethnographer" merge and become inseparable in the dialectic of "frame elicitation" and "frame reevaluation," bridging the gaps, however momentarily, between etic and emic, subject and object, self and other, participant and observer, in a creative synthesis, an existential synergism. Thus traditional ethnography is supposed to be concerned with existential "survivals" and "survivors" and in cultural processes of survival. The process of doing ethnography is one of making existential choice, and many subsequent choices, and through them forming commitments, or not, either way, life emerges and proceeds, and makes choices for us. The plight of the people to be comprehended must become one’s own plight, however vicariously and unrealistically, their existential dilemmas and decisions, one’s own through the process of mutual commitment.</p> <p>Ethnicity is the mythology of the existential reality that one attempts to ethnographically recreate. In a sense it is the product of the process of existentiality, for it involves people reevaluating symbolically themselves in relationship to others, and the emergence of common, reciprocal, shared value systems of identity. But this process occurs independently of ethnography itself, and results in ethnic groupings among people who presume no ethnographic pretensions whatsoever.</p> <p>Ethnicity, or "ethnic classification or affiliation" has been defined as "the symbols of cultural boundary" and "ethnic identity systems" as "selective, self-conscious formulations that they create" from these symbols. Frederick Barth employed the notion of "ethnic boundaries" by which ethnic groups are defined by a distinctive social identity, mechanism and forms of "canalizing: social behavior, and community of cultural values. The notion of "boundary", ethnic or cultural, has been criticized for reification. "That is to say, classes do not have some permanent reality. Rather, they are formed, they consolidate themselves, they disintegrate or dis-aggregate and they are re-formed. It is a process of constant movement, and the greatest barrier to understanding their action is reification…." (Wallerstein 1979) Convergence is the central theme for comprehending the emerging existential reality of sub-groupings—convergence of common symbolic elements at a certain time and place, within a particular context, with a wide variety of actors who have a common and collective need for survival and success—who find themselves on the same boat for the duration of the voyage. Ethnicity has been conceived as an "Emblem" of identity and as a "Vessel" of meaning, primarily political in function, which people adopt, wear, or use to their own advantage, and then discard when and where inappropriate—boundaries become more fluid and problematical to circumstances and contexts.</p> <p>As "symbols of people hood" ethnicity is existential in its preeminently emergent character—an immediate sense of "nowness" in relation to social identity—involving distinctive feelings of being, address, behavior, speech, expression, ideology, affiliation, or whatever, involving any or all of these things in some characteristic "ethos" or combination. It is always future directed and past oriented, determined by its choices of possibilities and potentialities defined by past experiences, traditional forms, expressions. Thus the ethnicity of being and becoming always involves the forward projection of a backward reflection—a memory of past becoming. The all-important metaphors in ethnicity are the sense of purpose and expectation providing meaning and reason for ethnicity.</p> <p>It is a group of people poised upon the brink of possible tomorrows with a head full of yesterdays in the today, prepared to take the existential leap of faith across the abyss of meaning. Ethnic purpose provides their group existence with a sense of reality, of immediate credibility. The sense of expectation underlies and reinforces the sense of purpose. The convergence of common social expectations that the high hopes of today will become tomorrow's baser realities gives force to shared purpose. Expectation is some future found reward, the purpose for doing this and that in such and such a manner. Without some sense of common expectation, ethnicity would be an empty vessel, without some sense of shared purpose, it would be meaning without an emblem, content spilled from the vessel.</p> <p>An existential grouping cannot exist in isolation from the broader stream of human reality—indeed ethnicity is a means of defining attachment and relative distance to this broader supra-cultural stream of human civilization. Refugee Vietnamese ethnoculture is a "survival culture"—it is usually make-shift, improvised, jerry-rigged patchwork from the exigencies of group survival from a "lost" cultural heritage, a counterfeit version of the original nonetheless valuable in terms of its existential relevancy and immediate significance. The common need for survival implies that existential groupings are largely defined by relative powerlessness and purposes of power within a larger social framework, under the press of profound structural changes largely beyond their meager means to control. A stress of dramatic and traumatic, always tragic, change felt by all the members, even those most successful at survival.</p> <p>Existential ethnography has no pat formulas, easy recipes, or quick solutions for methodology. Human relationship lies at the heart of ethnographic techniques and thus it is more an art of description whose existential ethical choices lie closer to aesthetic processes of evaluation and creativity than to a science of observation and operationalization in which "facts" are supposed to be hard, "finite" data bits. A slum is only a slum to those who see it from the outside looking in—to the many of those on the inside of the slum looking out, though it is still a slum, it is also <u>home</u>. If nothing else, this is the lesson to be learned from ethnographic existentiality.</p> <p>The dynamics of refugee movements are notably different from other, more normal forms of international migration, which are viewed as less traumatic, and often of a different social cross-section. The whole problem of categorizing the Vietnamese refugee experience needs to be fit within a global framework of international migration. World-wide international migration from under-developed "Third World" peripheral regions to developed "First World" core regions resembles and to some extent recapitulates its domestic analogy of rural-urban migration from underdeveloped peripheral areas into developing core areas, focal regions of national interest and economic investment. (Wallerstein 1979; Vining April 1985) The main motivation for both movements are economic—most migrants are younger, more educated, willing to take risks for economic advantage, often sending money to families at home. Mass media stimulates migration, transportation facilitates the movement, and there is a tendency to follow previous migrants "whom they know and who help them to find jobs." Refugees are apparently at least exceptions to these rules.</p> <p>Kunz (1973) distinguishes between "acute" refugees, who hastily leave their homeland without prior preparation and who suffer sudden shock, and "anticipatory" refugees who have a modicum of preparation, often through education and familiarization with the foster country. Montero (1979) views the Vietnamese refugees ad forming a "third" in between class, merging elements of both "acute" and "anticipatory" classes. As all American model of "Spontaneous International Migration" (SIM) has been offered (Montero, 1978b, 1979) divided into three phases and sub-phases—1) "The Homeland phase; 1a, "Temporary Camps" and 1b, Private Sponsorship; 2) "Ethnic Enclaves," "providing ethnic group solidarity and continuity unavailable in the larger host society," but also fostering a "sojourner orientation" in which most want to return to their native country, and in the long run may "impede or delay socio-economic adaptation;" 3) "Complete socioeconomic adaptation and assimilation into the larger American society" purporting to differentiate between the migration experiences of the Vietnamese from other Asian immigrant groups, notably the Japanese, Chinese, Philippines, Koreans, Indians, as well as from other refugee groups entering the United States, namely Jewish, Hungarian, and Cuban. SIM was a relatively early model conceived in an unstudied, premature optimism reflecting the desires of official policy:</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>We suspect that the Vietnamese will not embrace the ethnic enclave to the degree exhibited by earlier Asian immigrants….Because of this relatively short-lived period of ghettoization, we reason that the Vietnamese language, culture and tradition may be more quickly eroded especially as the Vietnamese adapt socio-economically. Indeed, we suspect that many Vietnamese will not be drawn to the ethnic enclave at all, but upon achieving greater proficiency in the English language will move headlong into Phase 3: complete socioeconomic adaptation and assimilation into the larger American society. (Montero 1979:59-60)</p> </font> <p>Kelly (1977) argued that the Vietnamese were originally refugees who differed from most immigrants in that "when they left their country most believed their departure was temporary; they were not consciously choosing to become part of another society or culture." (Kelly 1977:2) These "refugees" all lived with the "illusion" of returning "some day" to Vietnam (An "illusion" which many Vietnamese "refugees" still live.) But according to Kelly, during their occupation in the relocating camps, their disillusionment turned upon the realization that "they had left Vietnam for good and that their future lives would be shaped by American society." (Kelly 1977:3) Her work purportedly documents the transition of Vietnamese identity from self-styled "refugees" to self-pronounced "immigrants." Motivations underlying "economic immigration" of people who are supposed to seek permanent "accommodations" and "roots" in a new "homeland," are supposed to be different from motivations of refugees, but many immigrants only seek temporary employment in order to carry back success to their lives and families back home. Economic criteria distinguishing "immigrants" from "refugees" are not irrelevant, but at best spurious. People seeking salvation from poverty are no less refugees than those seeking to immigrate to "freedom" from political persecution or religious repression. Motivations underlying migration are usually a mixed bag of socio-political, socio-economic, and socio-religious factors, as well as many personal, existential reasons.</p> <p>The plight of the Phoenix people can be intercepted as a continuation of a domestic process of rural-urban migration begun well before in the French colonial era and enormously accelerated by American policies in Vietnam, involving a combination of economic, political and religious factors.</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>"….All these have tended to bring about a swelling tide of migration from the countryside to the cities and this, in the absence of any large scale opportunities for industrial employment, leads to an excessive inflation of the tertiary sector of the economy." (Buchanan 1967:82)</p> </font> <p>And so on it goes. "Five million piasters, ten thousand students, I need money, I need whiskey, who will buy from me?….For sale, all my land, For sale, all my love, For sale, my friends, For sale, my kind wife; For an extra million, I’ll sell myself." ("Auction" Pham The My) In short the world-wide context in which to frame any modern migration experience, "refugee" or otherwise, is one of attempting to bridge an immense gulf between "underdeveloped" tropical slums and overdeveloped super-cities caught in the dialectics of modernization and urban acculturation (urbanization). The whole world has been witnessing the mass exodus of the majority of the world's exploding population from "tribal" or "folk" rural settings, with the disintegration and destruction of their traditional cultures, to the slum margins of the core regions, in a liminal status of chronic poverty, malnutrition and disease, really nowhere at all, under the capitalist imperative "develop or perish." This migration experience worldwide is the major traumatic experience of modern humankind.</p> <p>This preeminent migration experience needs to be structurally understood in general theoretical framework of "mobility" and "mobilization of resources, human and non-human, both spatially and socially." Overall patternings of such mobilization are determined by differentials of power structure. All forms of movement, from peripatetic circum-ambulations, transhumance, pastoral foraging, slave trading, pilgrimages, imperial conquests, crusades, manifest destiny, to the Big Apple, whether complex or simple, by foot, air, land, or sea, or in a rocket-ship, unidirectional or circular, diffuse or channeled, as well as social demographic patterns of mobility, fit within this framework. Networks and patternings of reciprocity, exchange, trade, tribute, taxation are structurally determined by these differential power relations, as well as patternings of cultural diffusion, linguistic diffusion and of culture-change and language-change. We can refer to "passage" states of migration, mobilization experiences, and to "passing" between group boundaries. In this sense it makes sense to refer to symbolically mediated "passage-ways" or "channels" of "thresholds of crossing" in terms of symbolic boundary identification between groups. Through passing, by intermarriage, miscegenation between group boundaries, or hypergenation, a person may change his/her status, symbolic identity, language affiliation, role, appearance, and relationships in order to garner access to resources or acquire more relative power. Boundaries, between classes, castes, "races," nations, ethnic groups, cultures are never absolutely impassable and rarely fixed.</p> <p>The labeling process, and the stereotypes it creates, is essential to the definition of symbolic boundary identification between groups. Group relations characterized by strong dominant power differentials make crossing boundaries difficult. Group boundaries are reinforced and have a self-fulfilling character (Barth 1969:30) by the labeling process (Lippman 1930) selective perception, categorization, stereotyping, in-group out-group prejudices. (Erhlich 1973; Goffman 1964; Barth 1969; Eidheim 1969; Glassner 1979; Brigham 1973) The labeling process can perpetuate group boundary identification despite "a flow of personnel across them and despite campaigns to demonstrate their inaccuracy or unfairness" (Barth 1969; Erhlich 1973)</p> <p>Symbolism can serve as social distancing mechanisms to reinforce group boundary identification. "Social visibility" is an important relative mechanism or creating social distance—body decoration, costumes, sumptuary symbols, religious icons, etc. Language acquisition is an important social distancing mechanism—secret codes, passwords, argot, jargon, professionalese, piglatin or pidgin, class based pronunciation or dialectical variation—"We are inclined to argue along the lines of "language equals culture" whenever we have to deal with a group that speaks a different language, particularly if that group is in competition with us."</p> <p>Bilingualism often reflects the intermediate state of transition, of passage between two groups. This phenomenon is observable among the phoenix people. Learning the American language is the most important prerequisite to adaptive survival, success and eventual "assimilation" into the American mainstream. Without competence in English the immigrant has little opportunity to find a viable socio-economic role. The formation of ethnic enclaves provides an alternative to the often insurmountable language barrier for the under educated of the first generation. I have met women who have been in the United States from the beginning of the "First Wave" and still did not know a word of English—all their interactions with their host society being mediated by more competent English speaking Vietnamese. The changes over a decade can be evinced within one household—the elders may not need to know a word of English, the parents struggle with correct pronounciation, grammar and dread every telephone call or business contact, and the youngest children under ten speak primarily only English and are rapidly "forgetting" even superfluous Vietnamese, much to the dismay of their Mothers who struggle to teach them Vietnamese at home.</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>….Changes in ethnic identity therefore may appear to be somewhat artificial and external if the changes are assumed after the personality structure has rigidified into the consistent pattern of an adult. ….A sense of identity is, by definition, and by implication, a conscious part of the self rather than the operation of unperceived automatic mechanisms. It is a conscious awareness of what and who one is in relation to the social group. An ethnic identity is developed through time and takes on various meanings in the course of one’s life experience, as one contrasts one’s social group in some measure against the dominant culture and against other groups within it. (De-Vos, Roamnucci-Ross 1975:374-5)</p> <p> </p> </font> <p>Language, symbolism, subtle cues, behavioral customs and costumes, ideology, technical knowledge skills, all help to define and maintain group boundaries and identity. Sharing these things confers upon its constituency a common cultural identity. Culture itself is a form of group boundary—identification process which provides a sense a belonging, order, unity, security to those who share in it. Boundaries are rarely permanent except in relative social or spatial isolation—distance. They are rarely impassable except when a prison wall, or iron curtain, and are usually semi-permeable. Power differentials provide the basic structural gradient for crossing—symbols mediate the passage.</p> <p>Regional variations between North and South Vietnam, in dialect, customs, even in personality stereotypes have been emphasized. The recent conflict between North and South has a long history of precedence that bespeaks a continuity of structural power relations along a North and South axis. Conflict can be seen as a developing "situation of complexity" in which the power domain of the South challenged the traditional authority of the North. North and South have long existed in a "heartlands/hinterlands" relationship, with the south traditionally representing a frontier hinterland region to be dominated by the Northern heartland of Vietnamese civilization. Power domain of the patriarchal North over the bourgeoisie South tended to persist in time despite the actual context in power between the two resource-rich complex societies. In a sense the flight of the phoenix people can be viewed as a continuation of "March South," The ever receding frontier of the "Southern Barbarians" did not end with the South China Sea.</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><img SRC="line5.gif" WIDTH="575" HEIGHT="11"></p> <p> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a NAME="thirteen">SECTION 3:i</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">CHOLON DIASPORA</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">AND THE CHINESE CONNECTION</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p>The North/South structural dialectic was part of a much broader and more diffuse structural patterning of sinicization which began in northern China at the Great Wall and rippled southward down into Southeast Asia in "successive waves" of Chinese invasion, migration and cultural imperialism. Moreover this patterning is well rooted in the basic dynamic structure of the cultural ecology of Classical Chinese Civilization, (Stover 1974) which perennially generated excessive population of "vagabonds, criminals, bandits, beggars and landless laborers" who were dispossessed from the limited fruits of limited land and forced into the "Sink of Death." "Two limited possibilities exist for the Agrarian State to relieve its surplus population without pouring it down the Sink of Death. They are opening up new geographic frontiers or new economic frontiers. The former opportunity was given with colonization of southern China; the latter was given around AD 1000 when a manorial elite moved to the cities and opened up a field of supply and service industries operated by merchants. In time these possibilities were exhausted." (Stover 1974:81) There is an interesting convergence of historical themes in this power structure in terms of the composition of the phoenix people. Ostensibly they present an ethnic front of Vietnameseness, though statistically there is a large proportion of Chinese.</p> <p>It may well be argued that Vietnam itself was populated by Chinese who arrived in successive waves and intermarried with the indigenous peoples to produce a Sino-Vietnamesse Civilization. Chinese immigrants have long been a minority in Vietnam that regularly intermarried with the Vietnamese. They did not become outstanding as a pariah merchant class, however, until Vietnam gained her Independence. They filled a functional "middle-man" slot in the traditional Sino-Vietnamese class structure as merchants who rapidly accumulated independent sources of wealth and power. The "floating Chinese" of Nanyang were soon spread throughout Southeast Asia as a socio-economically predominant alien merchant class. They came to settle in the Cholon and Haiphong areas of Vietnam and captured the local markets in rice. They had a distinctive ethnic and class identity, but they were never until the twentieth century organized into an "ethnic group". There occurred periodically massacres of these "Overseas Chinese" by the indigenous peoples. "If ethnicity was not a prime feature at the outset, it was sure to increase in salience as the situation developed. And in each situation, underlying immediate events were the endemic insecurity and vulnerability that have been the lot of the overseas Chinese, persisting as constants over time throughout the region." (Strauch 1980:1-2)</p> <p>Chinese immigration became especially intense during the French Colonial era, as new opportunities as middlemen and as laborers on the plantations were opened up. The Chinese had virtually a monopoly on the rice production in Vietnam. They frequently came into direct competition with the Vietnamese entrepreneurs and labor. Their success has been attributed to many factors, not the least of which was a common ethnic stereotype of "clannishness"—of banding together to exclude outsiders from competition, and to their remarkable facility and capacity for social organization and social strategy. The colonial setting created a marketplace for ethnic and class group contact, where different groups interacted only for transactions. Group boundaries were largely formed by, or in relation to, and were reinforced by, the Colonial rulers. Ethnic group interrelationships were characterized not by competition but by political interdependency, even though the role of the Chinese may have been to a larger extent exploitative, "each recognized the other as the provider of needed goods and services." Colonial rule "ethnized" economic roles (Hamilton 1978) in order to control and exploit these roles. Post –colonial ruling elite perpetuated this markeet structure to their own advantage—maintaining the Nanyang in a pariah social status, "with limited political rights and privileges", while exploiting its roles in the economy. Nationalism and colonial independence breed racial competition and the formation of ethnic groups from the old cognitive maps of ethnicity. Chinese and indigenous communities began to separate, and intermarriage became less common.</p> <p>The Nanyang of today are caught in the throes of a national identity crisis, or of a double national identity. With the removal of Colonial rule their social visibility became quite prominent as a pariah class. The modern era became the era for "competitive race relations" in a new pluralistic situation of complexity. Relations between ethnic groups is characteristically marked by ambivalence and ambiguity. The Chinese are faced with the problem of a "double identity" (Strauch 1980) in which factors preserving their characteristic ethos of Chineseness came into conflict with factors related to their characteristic pragmatism in social relations and business. They were seen to come into direct competition, as an ethnic group, politically, economically and socially with the indigenous peoples. They have faced an existential choice of redefining their ethnicity either in terms of cultural assimilation with the host society or in terms of systematic exclusion from its political, economic and social life. Despite growing competition, their roles and assets as merchant middlemen are not easily expendable and replaceable within the new retarded economies of the independent nations. "Economic interests viewed <u>in</u> an ethnic framework come to be seen as structured <u>by</u> that ethnic framework. <u>The</u> Shift is so subtle as to be easily overlooked, or ignored. " (Strauch 1980:11)</p> <p>Though ethnicity was not the only factor of the Vietnamese exodus, it was a factor. "That Chinese ethnicity was a prominent factor in this flight cannot be denied (though the specific connection between ethnicity and the decisions that tens of thousands of individuals made to leave their homes and risk their lives at sea is neither simple nor necessarily obvious). (Strauch 1980) "The flight of the boat people then became a disorderly, massive exodus." (Pilger 1981:2)</p> <p>What is the "Chinese Connection" between the "Cholon Diaspora" and the "plight of the phoenix people?" Ethnic Chinese "boat people" and Vietnamese "refugees" by and large present a common front in their new homeland. The boundaries between the two groups are not always clear cut or well defined. There is probably a modicum of "passing" "I would know who is Chinese and who is not, but from comportment rather than from features or race or anything else. The young Chinese are often more Vietnamese than Chinese, and many speak Vietnamese as their first language…" Ethnic Vietnamese often regard their Chinese counterparts here with disdain, though they may themselves be of Chinese descent, a fact often denied, and even though they may frequently come into Contact with the Chinese on a day-to-day basis.</p> <p>The whole broad categorization of ethnic "Vietnamese" itself is suspect of any precise meaningfulness—denoting more a diffuse ideology or identification in existential circumstances, often a matter of simple expediency, rather than for enlightened elucidation of any broad, monothetic, homogeneous reality which it subsumes. The label Vietnamese lends itself to no simple formula, generalization, or pat, stereotypical characterization—it is a broad ethnic metaphor of "family resemblances," between Vietnamese brothers or Chinese cousins. The quality and reality of "Vietnameseness" exists and ranges somewhere between the extremes of "Chinesenesses" and "being Southeast Asian," and real differences are often as not only mythological. "Passing" and its converse "labeling" are central themes of this continuum.</p> <p>The speciousness of this existentiality of the label of "Vietnamese" has until now been unchallenged, though it has long remained an implicit question. "Since the Second World War the Vietnamese have been waging a struggle not merely over the form of their state but over the nature of Vietnamese society and the very identity of the Vietnamese. It is the grandeur of the stakes involved that has made the struggle at once so intense and so opaque to Westerners." (Fitzgerald 1972:17-18) Traditionally, "typical Asians" did not identify with national boundaries or power structures, but in an alternative idiom of a sense of rootedness to tradition, in terms of "civilization" emanating outward from some common core of existential being. Power radiated from central courts in ever "dimmer circles" which overlapped with other circles of power. The conception of national boundaries did not exist before the French. (Hue Tam 1983:8)</p> <p>It is not the existential ethnic identity of Vietnamese or Chinese which is so problematic, rather our own rationalistic conception—such labeling exists in a "loose, rubbery kind of way", flexible with existential circumstances and structural context. Both Chineseness and Vietnameseness alike have a certain "chameleon-ness" in Western eyes. The common elements of the existential ethnicity of the phoenix people exists mainly as a politically well defined ethnic boundary/label in reference to extrinsic "significant others" than for any other well marked internal class differences, namely, in relation to the new American culture as well as to a common identity in relation to the Communist Government of Vietnam, whom for both "Vietnamese" and "Chinese" has become public enemy number one.</p> <p>Consideration of the vagaries of Chinese ethnicity leads to consideration of the other side of the coin of ethnic Vietnamese. If Chineseness presents a retiring, low profile, then its counterpart is the most prominent representative of Vietnamese ethnicity—namely the petit bourgeoisie middle class which had been the ruling elite of South Vietnam and who descended from the colonial administrative class fostered under French tutelage. The high correlation of this class with Catholicism is connected with the obvious advantages Catholicism conferred upon "little brown Frenchmen" within the colonial milieu. The most common ethnocentric ascription and stereotype of this class is one of "corruption." "Many Catholics and landowners occupy teaming positions in government employment and economic life; corruption is rife…."This class is heavily criticized in the literature as a "parasitic group, preoccupied with grabbing such administrative crumbs as were dropped to it from the white man’s table….Such <u>elite</u> groups today constitute one of the heaviest millstones around the necks of some of the emerging Southeast Asian peoples…." (Buchanan 1967: 81) "….Their predicament is to have become the flotsam of greatest consumer society in the world that produced little except dollar millionaires, Coke and drug addicts. When the American left, and pulled the intravenous tubes, which fed that society, their own creation, they left these people with nothing, except a desire to follow." (Pilger 1981: 27) "Corruption shades into virtue and becomes the highest virtue of increasing family wealth." (Lewallen 1972: 50) The corruption of this group was the corruption of Western colonialism and Americanization. It was a consequence of many factors associated with this particular class grouping, but not its cause. One of the main lessons of Vietnamese history is that corruption begins with Chinese conquest, and has been a chronic affliction ever since. Corruption, defined as "immoral, depraved, open to bribery, dishonest, decaying, putrid", is a wholly relative value judgment, one furthermore based upon the relativity of power itself. "Power corrupts, Absolute power corrupts absolutely." There are then, relative degrees of "corruption" locked up in the corruption of the Western Rational mind that cannot think outside of non-relative categorical imperatives of right and wrong. Who is the true hypocrite who does not admit the relativity of values to power when even our own might of a deadly nuclear arsenal makes us right.</p> <p>It seems that a margin of "corruption" was traditionally socially tolerated and maybe even sanctioned within the traditional social structure of Vietnamese society. This refers us to another "ideal-type" continuum that is related directly to the other models of "folk-urban" "core-periphery" and "heartlands/hinterlands" structural differentials. This is the "paternalistic-competitive" continuum. The "paternalistic" type of social structure occurs in rural, pastoral, handicraft, mercantile and large scale plantation economies, such as prevailed in traditional Vietnam throughout most of its history. It features a division of labor between a servile peasant mass and a small ruling elite class, which is fairly homogeneous is social status. Traditional authority prevails in this structure, and a wide, "unbridgable" class differential in terms of "living standards, income, occupations, education, death rates, etc." Status is crystallized and sharply defined by etiquette that is elaborate and rigid, serving as a primary mechanism of social control—a social distancing mechanism in situations of intimate social contact. The class/caste barriers become skewed on the competitive end of the continuum, which is associated with large-scale industrial economies featuring complex division of labor. Labor proficiency becomes the predominating criterion of selection, achieved status becomes as important as ascribed status. Social distancing mechanisms like etiquette breakdown—status and roles are ill defined and ever changing. The most important feature of paternalistic and competitive type social structures is in the kind of prejudice that prevails and is fostered from within that structure. Paternalistic authoritarianism, or paternalism for short, is well integrated with the code of etiquette and the predominating value system, reinforced with religious systems. It is a form of structural prejudice, and a kind of pseudo-tolerance. "Paternalistic master-slave relationships are an extension of the nuclear family situation" and are characterized by "Oedipal" tensions. Competitive prejudice is that which is known as the authoritarian personality with "high F" values, characterized by repressed forms of fear, sexuality, perversity, leading to projection of suspicion, hatred, antagonism leading to certain well-marked in-group/out-group stereotypes of inferiority/superiority.</p> <p>Such "Character" types of authoritarianism are a direct reflection of the prevailing power structures rooted in the existential social context, whether traditional, competitive and pluralistic. Traditional culture and character in Vietnamese identity can be seen to corroborate this form of paternalism, explaining the chronic "corruption" of officials which was deeply embedded in the structural context of Vietnamese civilization. It is a kind of prepossessing patriarchal male chauvinism epitomized by the "natural" or "sacred" authority of the father over his family. If there is perchance a predominating patterning of a particular Vietnamese "flavor" of paternalistic authoritarian character traditionally operating in social structural interrelationships, preserving itself in a traditional sense of cultural ethos and historical heritage, expressed in terms of ethnic symbolism as the dominant "dragon" male, thenit should be possible to identify and characterize this patterning.</p> <p>Authoritarianism is negatively correlated with achievement motivation. Achievement motivation is in turn correlated with adaptive and successful economic enterprising. Elaboration of political religious symbolism focal in traditional Vietnam are indicative of social patterning, and patternings of socialization, leading to high power motivations for political status and high affiliation motivation for religious status. On the other hand there is evidence of patterning of low achievement motivation in the presence and relative success of the Chinese merchant class, in this class’s derogated and proscribed status within traditional Vietnam, as well as in the absence and official discouragement of independent economic activities in traditional Vietnam among the Vietnamese. Vietnamese rulers and bureaucrats discriminated merchants because "their acquisitiveness seemed grotesque and immoral", as well as "invidious." "Originally this attitude may have been more a consequence than a cause of the general weakness of Vietnamese commerce, but it did reinforce economic stagnation." Vietnamese literature traditionally employed "fool ascription" against the merchant class as a mechanism of "status reduction and social control". "Assigning the role of fool to a certain social type was a collective process of status adjustment, related to conceptions of propriety of conduct, because the fool represents a collective notion of a person or type of conduct believed to be inferior." (Woodside 1983:31) Much more evidence suggests a characteristic paternalistic patterning of traditional Vietnamese culture, marked by "Oedipal" ambivalence in the political religious dialectic between male and female symbolism.</p> <p>In the birth of a new Vietnamese ethnicity, we are witnessing a radical transformation of collective consciousness, a transition process that will evince a unique combination of "mixed-types" between the paternalistic and competitive ends of the continuum. This is part of the more general Modern Migration Experience of Humankind locked as it is in a transitional status between rural "tribe" and urban slum, with all its associated stress disorders of mental illness, crime, suicide, related to the overcrowding, the competition for scarce resources, the congestion and pollution. And this transformation of consciousness from countryside to cityscape involves a radical restructuring of psycho-social relationships. There is a subtle shift from emphasis upon spatial organization to temporal organization.</p> <p>While in India and China proper the movement is in terms of extended families, clans and whole jati-groups—or their representatives—in Vietnam it is in terms of smaller units of primary families, large or small but not so quite so extended or removed. The Vietnamese personality might be living under their Ancestor’s Shadow, but this shadow is much more distant and diffuse—the penumbra of oedipal ambiguity and social marginality is less well defined and more extensive. It is the shadow of a distant Chinese Great Uncle or a second cousin, but not a direct heir of the patri-lineage. The principle dialectic of filial piety and familial amorality is not strict conformity to lineage expectations but the disquisition of more immediate resources between male and female within a marriage relationship. The gain is not so removed success in providing well for the family under one’s wing, and of their eventually providing for you. Division under the same roof is not quite so imperative, but rather it is aggregation in the same vicinity. If the principle of caste is endogamy, then there are, strictly speaking, no castes in Vietnam, but there is much "hypergenation and miscegenation." There is an ideology of parental love, authority and devotion, but often it is a false ideology of empty love social expression disguising infra-familial exploitation, abuse, social and political dependency. This ideology is as genuine as the Vietnamese person himself/herself, sharing the same extremely deep autochthonous roots of culture and character. It is interesting to speculate whether or not this vague structure of Vietnamese society will replicate or preserve itself, at least in form and symbolism if not in function and purpose, in the stratification and crystallization within the little Saigons of the phoenix people, to what extent it may diverge, or not.</p> <p>Within a very short period of time the United States government evacuated some 130,000 Vietnamese in anticipation of Communist victory. These were real "refugees" in the sense of being political "émigré’s", if Kelly’s definition of "refugees" as being people who do not want to leave and who planned to return is correct. But the existential motivations which led so many more "refugees" to make such a momentous one way existential decision to risk their lives, as well as the lives of their families, by escaping on small boats upon the open seas are not so clear.</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> <img SRC="line5.gif" WIDTH="575" HEIGHT="11"></p> <p> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a NAME="fourteen">SECTION 3:ii</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">THE LONG, DARK PASSAGE TO FREEDOM</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p>Whether "refugee" or otherwise, the whole migration experience can be looked upon as a transformation process, what Van Gennep referred to as a "rite of passage." It was a transition period marked by three succesive phases—"separation", "liminal" and "aggregation"—and usually involving some more-or-less fixed change in structural relationships of status or power. The passage of the migration experience is marked by the three phases of "emigration", leaving one country, "migration," moving between countries, and "immigration", entering another country, each corresponding to the characteristic phase of the rite of passage, separation, liminality and aggregation, respectively. In addition each phase can be broken down into three sub-phases marked as well by separation, margin and aggregation, with the last of the preceding sub-phase overlapping with the beginning of the next phase.</p> <p>1-1, 1-2, 1-3 1=separation</p> <p>2-1-, 2-2-, 2-3 2=liminality</p> <p>3-1, 3-2, 3-3 3-aggregation</p> <p>The periods of overlap will be the most intense and ambivalent, involving simultaneously feelings of separation and aggregation. The overall effect is a "blurring" of the sub-phases to produce an overall separation and liminality.</p> <p>If anything distinguishes the "First Wave" refugees from the subsequent "waves" of boat people, it is perhaps an infectious sense of urgency to flee from something larger than life and even death, something desperate and insane. After almost thirty years in a perpetual emergency state of mobilization for war, the phoenix people learned their lessons well. A residuum of the insanity of war, survival in an insane social setting explains the readiness with which so many took to the open seas in shallow draft boats, leaving behind so much, families, friends, people, possessions, country, at such great and unknown risks—of life itself for whole families. The existential dilemmas confronting these people to make such a desperate decision must have been enormous.</p> <p>A set of common denominators comes through in relation to the homeland of the phoenix people. Many had positively valued relationship with the former South Vietnamese Society, for a variety of reasons. All have a negative attitude towards the new Communist Vietnamese Society. With the change of social structure many of the phoenix people became "downwardly mobile" losing many of their former social prerogatives, status, power and privileges. They also suffered deep meaning loss, a profound existential anomie—"lack of purpose, identity, or ethical values in a person or in a society; disorganization, rootlessness, etc." to be found at the root of mental disturbances and social disorders. But there can also be a delight in disorder, a perverse sense of order fostered in a state of chaos, an obsession with desperation, a compulsion with deprivation—human being’s are extremely adaptable creatures.</p> <p>An act of collective desperation, the quest was made at tremendous sacrifice, overcoming normally insurmountable obstacles, in the hope of meaningful, existential salvation which can be summarized in one metaphor "Freedom". "The risks are terrible; probabaly half of those who left in small boats have been drowned. Nevertheless, for thousands of Vietnamese, the prospect of death at sea is less terrible than the prospect of life under communism."</p> <p>"Every kind of vessel, ranging from small fishing boats to large cargo vessels, was used to ferry the refugees away from Vietnam. For many, the journey by sea was the beginning of a new nightmare. (Perrin 1980:141-2) Many planned and attempted unsuccessfully escape for years. Many had not even thought of leaving until the opportunity suddenly presented itself. Many were captured and imprisoned. Some left with their whole family on board airplanes with legitimate passports to "freedom". Many bribes and extortion payments in hard currency were made without guarantees and at high risks. The common denominator among all emigrants was the availability of the opportunity for leaving, and a final existential decision to do so. This choice was the first "line of departure" for the separation phase. Almost all refugees site fear of the "VC" persecution. Then there was the first liminal sub-phase of secret nighttime rendezvous, sleepless nights and nocturnal watches, hungry days in hiding, anticipation of capture, victimization, exposure. They are then refugees in their own country, strangers among their own countrymen, and the normal routines of everyday life suddenly proceed without them. Passing through the security networks, transferring onto larger, more seaworthy vessels, and making it out to the open sea, is the critical "point of no return," at which the lonely individual looks back to the receding coast line, with mixed feelings of sadness of loss and happiness of successful escape, of separation from home ties, turning their backs upon Vietnam forever, entering a vast unknown sea, perhaps forever. Then the only comfort, and discomfort, are those on the same boat.</p> <p>Now began the migration phase, the long dark passage to "freedom." This was the liminal phase of being "Betwixt and between" the two worlds they are leaving and entering—of interminable days and nights afloat, and interminable stays in refugee camps. The normal rules of living were temporarily suspended, communitas and antistructure prevail. (Turner 1974) Normal class distinctions disappeared, an equality of death, sameness of plight, a sense of community, of being on the same boat, reign supreme. No new social order or structure has yet supervened. Having thus forsaken their homeland, they are true refugees who have no longer a home, at the mercy of many elements and many people. Some are fortunate and many are not. Feelings of homelessness, regret, remorse, hopelessness, loneliness, anticipation and expectation, are overwhelming. Migration by boat is not a new experience in the history of humankind—it is the ethnic history of the United States;</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>….Although entire communities were uprooted at the same time, although the whole life of the Old World had been communal, the act of migration was individual….He who turned his back upon the village at the crossroads began a long journey that his mind would forever mark as its most momentous experience. The crossing immediately subjected the emigrant to a succession of shattering shocks and decisively conditioned the life of every man that survived it. This was the initial contact with life as it was to be….(Handlin 1951:37-8)</p> </font> <p>Without adequate food or drink, frequently without fuel for the engine, these little craft filled with people to overcrowding braved exposure to storms and rough seas. Navigation was by intuition or common sense if by anything at all, following freighters or distant glowing upon the nighttime horizon. "They understood the danger they would face at sea and they accepted the risks willingly and courageously. Thousands of people died from hunger and thirst on the ocean, and hundreds of boats sank, along with their human cargo." (Montero 1979:xix) If they made land, chances were good that they then, at the end of their voyage, would be victimized by "pirates" who commonly robbed and raped and left the survivors hopelessly adrift again. They might sight many ships before one might take mercy and rescue them, fearful of interminably compromising their own itinerary. "In the slow-elapsing crossing, the boat became a circumscribed universe of its own, with its own harsh little way of life determined by the absence. Down to mid-century the vessels were pitifully small; three hundred tons was a good size. Yet into these tiny craft were crammed anywhere from four hundred to a thousand passengers." (Handlin 1951:49)</p> <p>"For those who survived the boat journeys—and thousands didn’t—the major problem was finding somewhere to land." Landing primarily in Malaysia, Thailand or Indonesia, these boats sometimes made it as far as Java, Japan or Australia. The exodus peaked by 1979, flooding the refugee camps. Malaysia, the most inundated, threatened harsh measures. "We cannot find the logic of those countries who claim these people to be refugees and yet will categorize….There is no pint in calling them refugees and treating them as normal immigrants." (Home Minister of Malaysia)</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>….The exodus of the Vietnamese Boat people also continued, despite a growing tendency by passing ships not to help the Vietnamese fleeing their country by boat. In one incident in 1984, 68 refugees died of starvation, thirst, or disease aboard a 39-foot fishing boat that drifted in the So. China Sea for 32 days, apparently ignored by at least 40 passing ships. Sixteen survivors eventually were rescued off the Philippines. (<u>The World Almanac and World Book of Facts</u> 1985)</p> </font> <p>Entering a refugee camp marked the beginning of the middle, liminal phase of the Migration passage. All of the Phoenix People were refugees in that they all faced inevitable internment of some form, whether in prison, reeducation camps or "New Economic Zones" if they remained, or in resettlement or refugee camps if they took flight. This phase was most marked by communitas—"I never forget it, with its joys and sorrows, its hopes and expectations, frustrations, its friendships and warm atmosphere. We were deprived of everything materially but spiritually we were happy, living among our fellow countrymen."—and by anti-structure—"The social life on the island was confused, because many people had no family….Because of these troubles, there were many behavioral problems on the island. Thievery was rife, and many young girls sold their bodies for money to spend….Many were forced into prostitution by the hoodlums who roamed the island." Furthermore, internment was quite indefinite—adding to the sense of despair—from several months to several years. Diseases were prevalent in overcrowded, substandard conditions. "Because of the lack of food, the hot climate, and especially the combination of rain an the sun that poured down on us, many of the refugees suffered from diseases, --skin trouble, diarrhea, influenza, particularly…." Confusion and communitas go hand-in-hand to create a tremendous emotional state of ambivalence, especially at the second critical "point of departure" from the camps. The camp experience remains as an enduring and unforgettable legacy of the migration experience—"we had much trouble and suffering... it was a hard winter that I just passed." The dehumanization it inevitably entailed has remained a permanent mark upon the "refugee" escutcheon.</p> <p>From the moment of receiving news of departure from the refugee camp, the refugee enters the "immigration" phase of the long passage, of "reaggregating" in a new homeland, emerging with a new, permanently transformed identity, status and structural interrelationships. No longer traditional Vietnamese, they become foreign immigrants, "ethnic" Vietnamese. "The farewell moment at the jetty was always dramatically sad for people who were leaving the last intact Vietnamese community they would ever live in. A few more days….they would no longer be completely Vietnamese." "Re-settlement" is not an easy transition, itself marked by ambivalence, culture shock, radical "frame reevaluation of basic values which are no longer congruent with new life-ways. A delayed "separation anxiety" and stress from the migration experience gradually overshadows their new existence as they "settle in". The life ahead of them remains enormously overwhelming, as the past washes back upon them as well. New and old experiences of stressful life events intermix and overflow.</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>Every migrant enters something of a hate-love relationship with his new country. He loves the country for the novelty, the freedoms, the prosperity it brings him; but he cannot forgive it, ever, for not yielding to him what he lost in coming. Migration is an act of acquisition and loss, and overwhelming drama that exacts a high degree of courage. ....being a migrant means working hard at the least congenial work; living with changing relationships as family members respond differently to new influences around them; increasing guilt at having abandoned older family members; and the immense burden of learning a new language. (Hawthorne 1982:291)</p> </font> <p>The immigration phase itself never really ends, it blends into the beginning of a whole new "passage" which takes generations to complete and in a sense is really never complete. Milton Gordon (1964) framed this transition process "assimilation" with its own stages of transition. Whether its form is "Anglo-Conformity" or "Melting Pot" or "Cultural Pluralism" or "Sub-cultures" it is always written in the dominant cultural idiom of American middle-class value culture, in reference to "mainstreaming" perceived "out-groupings". As other studies of racial and cultural minorities have shown, intermarriage will be the final barrier to full scale assimilation of the Vietnamese into American Society. (Gordon 1964; Montero 1978b; 1979:62-3)</p> <p>The distinctive feature of the American "refugee re-settlement" program was conceived within this assimilationist framework, its "sponsorship" program had the effect of "shot-gunning" across "all of the 50 states, as well as the District of Columbia, Guam, the Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico." Its official rationale was to minimize the destructive socio-economic impact of this anomalous group, and to minimize social visibility by a low profile in order to prevent discrimination and prejudicial backlash by the host society. America was still hung-over from the Vietnam conflict. "The refugees were an embarrassing reminder of a frustrating war which had divided this country and in which thousands of Americans had died." (Perrin 1980:151) America was in the midst of severe economic depression, "the worst since the 1930’s." Many Americans feared the refugees would take unfairly already scarce jobs, and increase the tax burden of welfare. Americans have long had a predilection for anti-Asian racism. The sponsorship program was conceived in the best of naïve intentions of accomplishing in a single year what normally took generations to achieve—full fledged socio-economic assimilation into core American Culture, avoiding "ghettoization" in ethnic enclaves which might prove "intractable" and "self-perpetuating’ "problems." The unreality of this program was to avoid the unavoidable. Both refugee and sponsor alike paid heavily for this largely unnecessary unreality. (Mathews 1982; Liu 1979) Though forcing a direct confrontation of basic attitudes and values that may otherwise have been avoided, it put the refugee through an unnecessary period of prolonged transition of "helpless" dependency and uncertainty. Y and large the program was a way of the Federal government to side-step primary responsibility for bringing the refugees here in the first place, washing its hands of an existential dilemma, a "problem" for which there was no solution, delegating responsibility onto state, local and private interests. "Even six years later, they remain some Indo-Chinese who still do not understand that the objective of the sponsorship program is still independence." (Mathews 1982:134)</p> <p>"The problem that the American government had hoped to avoid by scattering the refugees across the country began t materialize." (Perrin 1980:151) There occurred a widespread patterning of "Secondary Migration" to "re-aggregation" and "regroupings of fragmented people, families and ethnic culture into growing "little Saigons." "Vietnamese across the country began to pack up and move to areas where they could enjoy the company of their own people. Families that had been split up got back together again. Entire villages regrouped themselves. Vietnamese associations were formed to provide social, recreational, and educational services." (Perrin 1980:150)</p> <p>Many refugees today do not even remember the names of their first sponsor. Many others remember them with fondness and delight, and keep in touch on holidays. Though many found "refuge" by re-settling in the many little Saigons, many others value the first lessons they learned in coming here. "Too many people no good." Pick up any phone directory and thumb to the "Nguyens" and find you local Vietnamese family. The little Saigons are not tightly circumscribed ethnic enclaves as much as they are aggregations or "constellations" about some focal area, diffusing outward in ever-decreasing numbers, with patterns of "resettlement" often as not dictated by the cost of housing and living, the proximity of a Chinese grocery store, or the vicinity of freeways.</p> <p>"The effect of the refugee’s resettlement can readily be seen in the development of an unplanned Asian commercial district…." Newer "refugees" had an advantage over their predecessors of the "First Wave"—They were able to "move into established communities where they can find familiar food, read Vietnamese newspapers, and mix with people whom they understand." They can also find work, a "better deal", avoid getting :ripped off", screens of opportunity, communitas and entertainment, as well as many material items unavailable elsewhere. "Little Saigons" are unavoidably necessary, providing an ethically oriented milieu unavailable in the mainstream of American cultural life. "The lake may be small and dirty, but it’s our own lake. I don’t want to live with Americans."</p> <p>These ethnic communities must be viewed as an addition to and a complement of the American mainstream culture, rather than as just a substitute for American culture. They are a "home away from home" for those most in need of a home, the "homeless refugees". They are survival cultural groupings both existential in their immediacy and ethnic in their aggregation of common, shared purposes and values. These purposes are not of a "group" as such, as some "super-organic entity", except where its representatives articulate with the host society, but rather an existential synergism of common interest, collective interaction and mutual cooperation organizing itself. It is an existential elaboration of a shared "value-culture" with all the alleged spuriousness and genuineness of that distinction. In its focal orientation and elaboration, its ethnic synergism cannot even be remotely approximated in "mainstream" American cultural life. It is an alternative style of living which the double-identity of being and becoming a hyphenated "Vietnamese American" allows for, sharing the best and avoiding the worst of both worlds.</p> <p>The appellation "little Saigon" has an insider’s significance for ethnic Vietnamese, and a sense of exclusiveness normally unavailable to outside Americans. My first and most lasting impression of my "little Saigon" was of suddenly stepping into a different cultural reality, tainted with the flavor and tonality of ethnic Vietnamese identity. Others previously unfamiliar with the Vietnamese express the same suddenness of a minor "culture shock," and of being a "foreigner in a foreign country, their country".</p> <p>"The Paris of the Orient", renamed "Ho Chi Minh City," remains for the phoenix people "Saigon," a living memory near and dear to their ethnic hearts, a momento of the "good old days," of a golden past that for many never was, but still is. Crowded, dirty, teeming with life in its most basic forms, for many it was the "modernization" experience par excellence, epitomizing not only the life of South Vietnam, but its existential future. More than a super-organic nucleus, a capital core of a geo-political sphere, it was as well a state of society, a cultural sphere of living, a state of mind, and of existential being for the phoenix people. Its preciousness was its uniqueness, its irreplaceableness and indispensability in the lives of its people. Now referred to as "An old whore with a hang-over", it was once, "just a sleepy Cambodian fishing village," taking root and growing in the colonial era as the "dirtiest, most over crowded slum on earth." It was the embodiment of the phoenix spirit, spreading its germ abroad through the medium of the phoenix people, implanted, rooting, resurrecting the "good old days" in the many little Saigons. If in the future they will prove a harness, carrot or a whip for generations of "assimilating" Vietnamese Americans, nevertheless for the first generation they are a necessary, vital sanctuary, linkage to the lost past, an existential harbor to seek comfort and solace from the stormy vicissitudes of a"refugee" existence.</p> <p>These little Saigons provide an appropriate structure and milieu conducive to the development of ethnic Vietnameseness, within which the refugee can recreate and resurrect on a reduced scale suitable for limited numbers and resources, a life they had lost forever. They are fast growing existential sources of pride, accomplishment, purpose for ethnic being, and expectation for ethnic becoming, in their ethnic future. It is the "refugee’s" way of coming here and making it, of building a new home. Its happiness, and the success it breeds, is a relative thing.</p> <p>More than a half-way house or a temporary way-station on the uphill road to "assimilation," these little Saigons are mini-cities of a mini-state within a state, whose bondaries are more existential and symbolic, behavioral and cognitive, rather than geo-political boderlines—a nuclear conglomeration of symbols representing a state of being for those who share in its experience. Not a rich Merchant city state, or an Industrial city state, or even an authoritative Administrative city state, it is rather a "Regal-ritual" city state embodying its very symbolic function as the elaboration and totem of communal ethnic solidarity of village of the ethnic Vietnamese tribes. Self-created and self-sustaining from within rather than organized or maintained from without, it is the significant self rather than the significant other that defines the boundaries of this ethnicity and existentiality of this state of being.</p> <p>Its boundaries are not "I dare you to cross this line" but rather a long series of existential passageways with many exits and entrances, determined by one’s relative "frame of mind" than by geopolitical map, it is rather "This is ours and I can share it with you if I so please." It is not merely a means to some other end of "assimilation," more than just a spring-board for progressive passing through or sanctuary for helpless, hopeless "refugees" caught in a state of eternal "betwixt and between," but it exists as an end in itself, its existential functioning its own ethnic justification, providing community for those permanently displaced from their normal state of being. It provides a sense of past and future in an existential moment of the present. It is a state constituted by normal people caught in abnormal circumstances, and it represents the best possible compromise. Their new homeland might be in America, but their home will long remain Vietnamese.</p> <p>In conclusion, the appropriate conceptual framework for comprehension of ethnic Vietnameseness is the "Cultural Continuum" of cultural symbolism and structural interrelationships between the extremes of "supra-cultural" context and "cultural sub-groupings" with "Culture" as a reified ethnological ideal ranging somewhere in the relative middle ground. Constellations of symbolism coalesce around some structural node of complex interrelationships, perpetuating themselves, changing, and eventually disintegrating. Individuals plug into these cultural spheres more-or-less and differentially, picking and choosing over time, moving from one structural setting to another whenever advantageous and possible. Shared cultural spheres overlap, coalesce into a grouping, or may come into conflict. People are real, taking up existential space—culture is a duration, a process of time expressed in the space that people create. Shared cultural characteristics endure through time, creating a common structural "ethos." Culture is not out there except in as much as it exists in other people, it is more inside, within oneself, one’s identity and personality as it is defined in social interrelationship. It is impossible to see or know culture directly, to see our own faces without a mirror of reflection or a projected image, to operate upon our own brains to learn our minds. Culture is learned only through sharing with others. Cultural spheres constitute complex models delineating metaphorically and meaningfully complex interrelationships. Social identification and personal individuation form the interdependent dynamics.</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> <img SRC="line5.gif" WIDTH="512" HEIGHT="10"></p> <p> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a NAME="fifteen">SECTION 3: iii</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">LITTLE SAIGON</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">A VIVESECTION</p> <p> </p> <p>My little Saigon, the only with which I am acquainted, has the reputation of being the largest this side of the Atlantic and Pacific, with probably close to 100,000 ethnic Vietnamese, young and old, male and female. This population if younger than older, and steadily growing—wherever one goes, home or business, there are ubiquitous little children running around. Many are newcomers. The sex ratios are more or less equivalent, though there are more older men than women. Most are high school graduates and over a third have been to college, reflecting a predominant prior urban status in Vietnam, as well as successful gains here.</p> <p>Drive into the parking lot of the always crowded "Today Plaza" and one is instantly transported to a foreign country. A shopping center in a business district, the "refugees" have managed to open up over 400 mostly family owned and operated businesses. Officially its impact is viewed as "positive" though not without reservations. Popular skepticism by "non-refugee" neighbors has long been apparent, with many believing that local "resettlement" has been a "drain" on the local economy. Many resent these businesses because they are "ethnic" and cater primarily to the Vietnamese people. Many also believe that these small businesses were successful because they were financed through "special low interest government loans."</p> <p>The parking lots are always crowded with carloads of people. One person told me the Today Plaza will draw between 50,000 and 70,000 people on weekends. A walk around/ drive around survey reveals approximately 85 food stores (+or- 16 grocery stores, + or – 40 restaurants, 4 fish markets, 5 bakeries, 18 delis, 33 cafes, and 2 street vendors selling food),43 clothing stores (12 tailors, 11 fabric stores, 11 sewing machine stores, 1 bridal boutique, 33 clothes stores, 2 shoe stores, 2 dry cleaners, 2 laundry mats),+ or – 85 health related stores (+ or – radiology clinics, 19 pharmacies and/or Chinese medicine stores, + or –21 doctors, + or –30 dentist offices, + or – 2 chiropractors, 4 acupuncture/acupressure clinics, 3 optometrists, and a cosmetic surgery office, 1 psychiatrist office), + or – 40 beauty related stores (16-21 jewelry shops, 17 beauty saloons, 1 flower boutique, 1 craft shop) + or – 43 entertainment/media related stores (1 record shop, 1 music store, 5 electronic stores, 5 book/magazine stores, 19 television/video rental stores, 3 newspapers, 6 photography stores, 4 billiards, 1 store selling poker/game merchandise, 1 video game store) + or – 59 business services (4 travel agencies, 10 insurance companies, 10 law offices, 13 tax offices, 1 immigration service, 6 real estate brokers, 3 printers, 1 loan agency, 1 bank, 1 financial services center, including Western Union, Income tax and passport service, minimal secretarial/administrative services). 3 shipping agencies, 1 motorcycle dealer. There are about 8 or 9 nondescript general merchandise stores, 1 kung fu studio and 1 cabaret/bar. Often it is impossible to judge the store by its front—many different kinds of store feature a range of basically similar kinds of items and services—jewelry, pharmaceuticals, fabrics, general merchandise which includes often toys, decorations, ceramics, lacquer inlay wall plaques, hardware, electronics, video rentals, sewing machines, cosmetics. All of these are relatively small, highly diversified general businesses which appear for the most part to cater to distinctive ethnic needs and tastes of the Vietnamese community, and only incidentally to "visitors". It seems that Food and Health related stores are at the top of the list, most Vietnamese preferring their own distinctively ethnic food and many Vietnamese doctors and medical agents. Next come Business services, perhaps featuring special low rates or better deals—avoiding victimization from other American dealers. Next came clothing and beauty related stores, and if taken together as preeminently female oriented shops, they are in competition with the food stores.</p> <p>An interesting pattern was observed in this regard. Some of the restaurants and many of the cafes would have exclusively male clientele, while in many of the clothing and beauty shops there would be primarily women. Could it be that husbands spent their time eating and socializing while their wives beautify themselves, shop for clothes and buy groceries? This suggests a pattern of a family coming on the weekend to take care of business and to seek some pleasure. The bakeries and deli sell French pastries, birthday cakes and Vietnamese delicacies. Many of the video rental out-lets feature Vietnamese dubbed Chinese movies, a major past time for the Vietnamese at home. Frequently prices are comparatively lower, and often the merchandise seedier. Miscellaneous anything can be found collecting dust in practically any merchandise store. It seems as though these stores frequently run with minimal overhead and do a slow, low volume business. The restaurants, cafes and delis are always crowded, and have their own status hierarchy. Some are hot spots for the younger crowd, who like the darkened, candle-lit evening atmosphere. It seemed as though practically the entire Vietnamese population around my little Saigon circulate through its businesses at least once a week, if not twice, on the average.</p> <p>Most studies and surveys focus upon patterns of employment, government-dependency, educational status and health/mental health, as these are perhaps the most prominent factors of their general adjustment pattern. The reality lying behind any survey or statistical analysis, even the best, must always be suspect, especially in terms of inferences drawn, or not drawn, from the data available, which is always limited and circumspect. The very "objective" appearance of "finite" facts renders them all the more questionable. Earlier surveys after the first few years of their arrival are clearly biased and read over-optimistic inferences into the biased samples, reflecting an official "assimilationist" attitude. Nevertheless, these studies reveal broad patterns and interesting tendencies that cannot be completely ignored.</p> <p>Most studies have documented considerable downward occupational mobility, especially for the "white-collar" professionals, more than half of whom are holding now "blue collar" jobs. "Clearly sales and clerical jobs seem to be the most accessible to the Vietnamese in the United States." Medical and engineering skills were the most directly transferable of the professional fields, managerial skills the least. "Blue collar" skills are more transferable with a modicum of downward mobility in large part arising from a shift in skills fields. There is even a modicum of upward mobility into craft fields by "operatives and in transport". Evidence suggests the first four years of occupational adjustment are the most important, after which occupational mobility slows down, with approximately 75% of any recovery after initial downward shift in status occurring within this period. After this "determination and drive wane, discouragement sets in and the refugee accepts the changes in his life and status." (Stein, <u>IMR</u> Vol. 13 #1) There is then transference of rationalization and expectation on to the next generation. Cultural differences, initial lack of ethnic community, and a troubled economy have been cited as preeminent factors hindering socio-economic mobility of the refugees.</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>"The golden door" opens on streets paved with gold, on a land of opportunity, the promised land. However, while we spotlight the successes, we should not ignore the many human failures. Any migration produces crushed dreams and a waste of human ability and potential. For the refugee, more than the immigrant, the passage has the possibility of ending in failure. The refugee has handicaps in greater number and a greater degree than the immigrant, and he is less able to repair a disrupted career. (Stein, <u>IMR</u> Vol.3 #1)</p> </font> <p>The apparently greater occupational mobility of men versus women may be related to numerous factors, not the least of which are structural biases of both American and Vietnamese culture against the economic achievement of women. Early "wave" surveys reported a phenomenal increase in employment rates of both men and women, for both sexes over 95% by 1977. This is highly questionable considering subsequent indicators of employment patterns.</p> <p>Occupational mobility is strongly correlated with English proficiency, which is fairly obvious to most Vietnamese. There is not surprisingly a high rate of underemployment by the refugees. There is strong correlation between employment rates and educational attainment, and length of local residency. Less than 44% of the adults (1984) are employed either full or part-time. Unemployment among adults is over fifty percent and has increased in recent years. Adjustment problems, language barrier, and education are the major reasons cited by the Vietnamese for unemployment. The highest employment rates are for males between 25 and 34 years old, older or younger people have poorer employment ratings. Seventy percent or more are unemployed or only work part time, though much employment goes unreported, because such reporting may adversely affect public-dependency status. Unemployment benefits are negligible. The traditional female role of the responsible housewife and mother, "pregnant, barefoot and in the kitchen" is another considerable factor in unemployment.</p> <p>Around my little Saigon, the so called "high-tech" electronics/engineering industry are important employers of Vietnamese workers, in positions requiring minimal language proficiency, finding these workers to be "hardworking, conscientious, and loyal"—"who could perform repetitive or highly detailed work with unusual diligence." Desirable jobs are electronics technician, computer technician and salesperson. "The Indo-Chinese are usually employed in electronics, pharmaceutical and computer industries as assembly line workers, technicians and office workers." The "non-refugee" neighbors of the Vietnamese "refugees" evince strongly negative attitudes towards their community, believing they receive unfair preferential treatment by the Federal Government, viewing them as "unfriendly" and evincing other negative "perceptions". The whole surrounding county is predominantly conservative and strongly middle class.</p> <p>Employment opportunity and occupational status is directly related to size and structure of households, which tend to be larger than the American average, with from 5 to 6 persons and more than two adults. More than 85% of new households reported incomes of less than $1,000.00 a month. Older residences report consistently higher earnings, but still the proportions are distressingly low. Though average incomes per household have apparently been increasing, to between $1,500 and $2,000 per month, "a large percentage of Indo-Chinese households are impoverished". This suggests strong income differentials within the ethnic community, between a well-to-do few and many impoverished. Households I have been in tend to be small, crowded and poorly furnished. There is a scarcity of new material items, unlike the average American household, but there are always numerous children playing around. I have been in two bedroom apartments with as many as 11 or 13 people. The size and composition of these households tends to be fluid and ever changing, relatives or even friends coming to stay for awhile, children running in and out, it is more often than not difficult to get even a good estimate. While there may be more mouths to feed, at the same time, if the family is cooperative and corporate like it is supposed to be, then there is a pooling of resources and mutual support which is critical to their adaptational survival and success. Overall, households tend to be large, often taking on adult boarders, with several adults pooling their resources. Most rent, though the number of homes purchased or planning to be purchased is increasing.</p> <p>Needless to say large households and high rates of underemployment is associated closely with public dependency. Most refugees at some time have received some cash assistance, food stamps, medical assistance. As of 1984 around my little Saigon 44% of the households received AFDC in varying amounts depending on family size, 48% received Food Stamps, and 58% received some kind of medical assistance, mostly medicare. "A continual concern among social workers is that refugees with large families are reluctant to discontinue their use of government aid in favor of jobs that don’t offer medical benefits." Needless to say these patterns of economic dependency are negatively correlated with term of residency, educational status, and smallness of household. "Almost half of Indochinese households….have no earned income…."</p> <p>A high percentage live in government housing, and a majority of these go to school. 91% of the unemployed receive government assistance in some measure and kind, and 71% of these go to school. "Because more women live in AFDC households than men, more women probably receive AFDC than men. More women than men also receive Food Stamps and Medical Aid." AFDC is designed to support poor families with dependent children, especially single mothers. Because of this it has been severely criticized for stimulating the manufacture of more babies—there is no fraud in another mouth to feed, but there is seven more years guaranteed subsistence income. A mother of three children receives $700 a month plus food stamps, a family of 11 receives a total of $1,500 per month. Many children mean more welfare dependency, but this is weighed heavily against long term interests—most realize welfare is not forever the solution to their basic problems of survival. AFDC has a tendency of splitting mothers and fathers as a strategy for maximization of resources and optimization of opportunities.</p> <p>It is not a matter of pride, but a question of survival. Two thirds of unemployed receive cash assistance, one half receive Food Stamps. Around my little Saigon, welfare benefits are some of the best in the country, quantitatively, if not qualitatively, but, at the same time, the cost of living is also among the highest, and the quality of living is questionable. Many "refugees" moved from Oregon when they suddenly lost their welfare benefits there. Even the best benefits though, are not enough to support a large family at even a minimum subsistence level—many households, per capita, fall well below the poverty line. Consequentially most adults of such households are forced to seek alternative sources of income which goes unreported, "under the table", because any such reported income will adversely affect the amount of welfare received. Most welfare recipients are caught in catch 22 situation, they do not receive even enough to barely subsist on, much less to buy and own a car or enough to "get ahead". They are not allowed to work, nor are they allowed to save enough which may allow them to escape their poverty. On the other hand, why work at a dirty job full time for lousy pay and still bring home less than a welfare check for staying home and having more babies.</p> <p>The high correlation between unemployment and welfare dependency suggests a pattern not of temporary unemployment, but persistent and permanent unemployment, or at least "chronic" underemployment. It also suggests an encouragement of a need for more needy children. It is, after all, their parent’s decision, or indecision, that they should be born into dire poverty. Immediate, versus delayed, gratification produces both babies and welfare dependency, and welfare dependency encourages immediate gratification. The major existential question is how much love is lost on the baby. If the welfare workers can’t be directly blamed, the neither can the parents, for the uncaring diffusion of responsibility for misbegotten children. There is no middle class prognostication, if children are not conceived in genuine love and affection, or are born of false consciousness, then money matters not one iota. Instead of thrift and saving and planning for the future, a fixed welfare subsistence income encourages, reinforces in a most behavioral of senses, spending and consumerism for immediate gratification. Parents who want anything for their children, have not option but to subvert the law to seek other, illicit sources of revenue. It is not even a question of money when just a small proportion of America’s families control most of her wealth, it is a question of caring.</p> <p>An interesting pattern is suggested in the correlation of these figures to the emerging educational status of the "refugees." While in general most government dependency is on the decline with longer term of residency, receiving government support for education, in the form of Basic Grant Checks is increasing. Government dependency is positively correlated with increasing age, and age is negatively correlated with educational status. Both occupational status and educational status are directly associated with English proficiency. Over 60% of the adults attend some kind of school, frequently only ESL and adult vocational training. High levels of unemployment, educational attendance, government dependency, combine with a prevalent household organization, certain attitudes and expectations, to reveal a "model" pattern of familial adaptation by Vietnamese refugees. 21% of the households (1984) receive educational assistance, strongly correlated with college attendance and younger males and length of residency. As noted, birth rates are high and so is AFDC among young Vietnamese mothers. Employment is often difficult to find and when found, more often than not temporary and unrewarding. For the young adult male, married or single, it makes more sense to go to school in the hope of improving chances for better employment in the future than to desperately search for employment opportunities which are virtually nonexistent. They will receive assistance for going to school, but nothing for going to work. Many go tot school and work concurrently. A predominating pattern of sexual exploitation of women, in varying degrees and in various ways, suggests itself. The young pregnant mother provides a substratum of basic "screens of opportunity" that allows the male to project himself into socio-economic reality. This statement must be made with extreme caution and moderation, not to step on any hypersensitive toes.</p> <p>So called "exploitation" fits well both with a traditional ethos of a romantic origin mythology of Vietnamese culture and character, as well as with existential exigencies of socio-economic survival and, most likely, ethnicity. The traditional ("average") female should accept her relative status, and even if they may want deep down inside to rebel, both structural and symbolic circumstances make such rebellion highly unlikely, if not impossible. There is of course a corresponding mythology of the loving, self-sacrificing young mother who gives her all for the welfare and security of her immediate household, supposedly buttressed by the bread winning male who deeply loves his wife and children. This mythology frequently becomes a reality, but frequently it doesn’t "materialize" or "work out", especially when there is very little bread to win. I have watched more than one Vietnamese family sacrifice her life for the sake of her family and often less than responsible husband. It is not a question of irresponsibility, after all this is a relative thing. It is more a matter of exigency in the face of survival in the best way one knows how.</p> <p>Such patterns of sex-based exploitation predominates within our own middle American cultural milieu, so it should be seen as nothing too unusual or obvious. It is a young woman who produces the babies, goes shopping for groceries, receives her welfare check and/or Food Stamps, takes care of her children, teaching them to read, write, numbers and Vietnamese language and culture in the afternoons, sitting on the floor in a passageway visiting with her status cohorts, and spends most of her time in the kitchen cooking for everyone under the sun—they are wonderful cooks. It is even a languid existence unless unfortunate circumstances force them to find a menial, temporary, underpaid and overworked and frequently degrading job to supplement their subsistence. The husband, if and when he is a "good man", will go to work, bring home the bread, and then, if he remains good, stays home with the wife and kids, or better, goes to school. If he is less than good, he may have a predilection for running around with male companions, hanging out in midnight café’s eyeing the young waitress, or worse, gamble with his friends, bringing them home on weekends to sit around all day smoking, talking, drinking, gambling, while the wife slaves in the kitchen for them.</p> <p>I know one beautiful young mother who knows French and speaks good, correct English, and was a high school teacher in her homeland. I encouraged her to go to school here to find a decent job to raise well her handsome children, instead she stays home and "helps" her husband who is an ex-high-ranking officer shot up to hell and back in the war, and who practices in his home Chinese medicine and receives his social security checks. The problem of relative responsibility and irresponsibility for disinherited children lies squarely between both mother and father, male and female—it is a shared, and hopefully mutually reciprocal responsibility. Indeed, these people are coping in the best way they know how with circumstances more stressful and tragic than anything you or I can ever imagine, and, no matter how bereft and broken down the household, there is never any love or affection spared upon the children, who are given the most that can be given. But the traditional role of the female is supposed to be unquestioning and automatic, "motherly instincts" run strong in the Vietnamese women, as in most women, while the traditional role of the male is a little more problematic and ambiguous, allowed a little more license and liberty. And emergent, existential ethnicity capitalizes on these traditional expectations to afford group survival. Beyond themselves, the only people really being sold out are their children, and their children do not yet know it. Just how much "emotional blackmail" goes on beneath the stolid, expressionless surface, preoccupied as it is with "saving face" will never be known. But it is certain that in the forging of a new ethnic identity and status for the Vietnamese "refugees" both the female and male egos are on the line, tattered and fragile.</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><img SRC="line5.gif" WIDTH="468" HEIGHT="12"></p> <p> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a NAME="sixteen">SECTION 3:iv</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">THE MAKING OF THE MODERN MANDARIN</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">The strong familial patterning among the "refugees" must be understood in light of certain significant attitudes that are commonly expressed by these people. Almost all of them want to return to their homeland, and many believe that the Communist Regime will eventually collapse so that they can return. This attitude seems to mellow a little bit with length of residency and perhaps is negatively correlated with ascending age. Indicators point to somewhat ambivalent findings that the most successfully adapted here are also the ones who evince the strongest expression of the desire to return. As the prominent ethnic representatives of the phoenix people who articulate directly with the host social structure, it is to their best advantage, and perhaps profit, to fuel the fire and stir the foment which landed them here in the first place, and sometimes for less than purely ideological reasons.</p> <p>Few "refugees" want to become U.S. citizens. Virtually none identify very strongly or even remotely with the "American Way of Life" though they frequently do respect, admire and seek to learn more about it. Few consider themselves American, even hyphenated "Vietnamese-American." Most found America not only different from expectations, often disappointing, but difficult to adjust to as well. The number of cultural differences are great. Most prefer to have their ethnic identity respected rather than be considered "fellow Americans." I earned a great deal of respect for indulging myself wholeheartedly and unreservedly in their ethnic "soul" food and for not minding hopping across their filthy floors in bare feet and for sleeping off a drunk on old dilapidated sofas amidst the smoky, noisy atmosphere from early morning to late at night, but I was never quite forgiven for not learning or knowing how to speak Vietnamese. Many households are scrupulously clean, well kept, and quiet, but there often reigns supreme a "spooky" almost unnatural atmosphere of subsurface tension and discomfort—I could never fit myself in well to such situations, never loosen up, kick my shoes off, lean back and sit a comfortable spell.</p> <p>There is evidence of low "ethnic" self-esteem. Most refugees perceive their own existential plight more negatively than neighboring "non-refugees"—their quality of life ratings are lower. Most believe they deserve better in life than they presently have. Not surprisingly the better the socio-economic status the more optimistic the attitude about the ethnic communities circumstances—indicating higher "ethnic" self-esteem positively correlated with length of residence and occupational success. "Eight out of ten refugees believe that America should have done more to help them settle in this country."</p> <p>Many still strongly believe that the U.S. government is responsible "for making good things happen to them", though this attitude is on the decline. While faith in working hard and in family effort is gradually increasing, "Faith in education or God has decreased slightly". They express a common difficulty in making ends meet, though as a whole they believe their lot in life is gradually improving. Preoccupation with problems of unemployment, language barriers, racial prejudice, housing costs, inflation, financial worries, traffic and transportation problems, as well as with crime rates, is on the increase. "Too much freedom, racial prejudice, and an unfavorable economy created problems often mentioned by the refugees." The assimilationist policy has always been one of the immediate employment as rapidly as possible, an emphasis which often compromises the future status and quality of life of the refugee. "Despite a high rate of unemployment, many Indo-Chinese do not consider getting a job as something good that could happen to them and their family, and this response suggests that many refugees may be working toward reaching goals other then immediate employment." Perhaps a new kind of ethnic status petty cash can’t buy. Many of the worries they are commonly concerned with are rooted in a common existential ethnicity. The preoccupation of this new emerging ethnicity is with the significant self in relation to the significant other.</p> <p>Sense of familial attachment is extremely strong and deeply rooted. Finding a good job and reuniting with their families in Vietnam are equally most important to these "refugees". Almost all refugees have immediate kin remaining in Vietnam. They all fear going back to Vietnam because of Communist persecution, and they all fear for the lives and welfare of their family under the Communist claw. These feelings of imminent persecution of themselves and their loved ones combines with a sense of disorientation, of loss in coming here, of difficult and minimal gains, and of "overwhelming homesickness and feeling of displacement" and loneliness, to produce the most important characteristic of the ethnic attitude of the Vietnamese "refugee"—a deep seated sense of <u>insecurity</u>, expressed in hyper sensitive feelings of a need for security. This general, "social" "psycho-social" or "ethnic" feeling of insecurity, a particular Vietnamese brand of refugee "anomie" is reflective of their whole plight and flight as "refugees" with all its connotations of "homelessness",with its mixed bag of motivations and its continuing, never ending liminality of transition "to nowhere" of only gradually subsiding "betwixt and betweeness." Their expression of insecurity is not only the insecurity of their kith and kin back home under the shadow of the Communist storm cloud. Though "the passage of time has an impact on nostalgia and old attachments, living form day to day forces the refugee to adjust to the new environment." (Rutledge 1983) Essentially the Vietnamese "refugee" still regards Vietnam as his/her home in deep-seated emotional attachment and identification.</p> <p>It is worthwhile to speculate whether this may not also be an expression of deep-seated, rationalized, repressed guilt for deciding to become refugees, coupled with losses for which they themselves were partially, existentially at least, responsible. This guilt itself may be connected to a pervasive feeling or fear of social persecution that is internalized but repressed. Thus their preoccupation with crime and worry over police protection. "….The refugee’s prefer that the Americans provide them with police protection first, followed by jobs and housing third….The refugee’s desire for police protection may reflect a deeper feeling of fear and insecurity. Many anxieties are combined during resettlement; the fear of not being able to adjust, of not being accepted, of not being able to make a decent living, and of never being able to return to their homeland."</p> <p><font SIZE="2">The picture presented of refugee occupational adjustment is not a very hopeful one, but it must be remembered that the refugee embarked on his journey because of other values. Occupational and economic factors are paramount in the immigrant’s decision making process but are only secondary importance for the refugee. Because the refugee flees as a result of persecution or a fear of persecution, the ability of the country of resettlement to protect him is more important than the occupational opportunities it offers the refugee. (Stein <u>IMR</u> Vol. 13 #1)</p> </font> <p>Feelings of guilt and persecution may also be tied emotionally to basic infra-familial ties of dependency—to emotional dependency on a significant other. Culturally sanctioned ties of familial interdependency, of "filial piety" which are strongly reinforced socially and through socialization patterns. Of course it is all too easy to project all of this, in order to cope and survive existentially, upon and to blame the communists, for their feelings as well as their plight. Though perfectly well legitimated by a past record of events, this does not in and of itself explain the need for projection of underlying feelings of hate and persecution. The significant other, for the ethnic Vietnamese "significant self" is not only the "successful American" but more "Ho Chi Minh", and it is a strongly ambivalent and negative other in relation to the positive significance of the ethnic Vietnamese "refugee" self.</p> <p>Thus the Vietnamese "refugee" not only wants or wishes to return home "some day" but frequently, even if unconsciously or in a day dream fantasy, plots and plans to return home eventually, to recoup losses, to resurrect a destroyed life, to "rectify" their names. Assimilation becomes a moot issue, placed on the back burner. The high costs of assimilation are not infrequently simply too much to bear. "The refugee, an involuntary migrant, had a satisfactory and often prominent position at home, and a commitment to the old society. He flees out of necessity and fear, but often with little thought about the demands migration will place on him. Indeed, many refugees harbor the hope that their fears will be unfounded, or that conditions at home will change, and that their flight will be temporary." (Rutledge 1983) Indeed the emergence of existential Vietnamese ethnicity is a conscious and conscientious strategy not only to preserve traditional language and culture and to perpetuate a conservative ideological status quo, but it is actually a systematic attempt to resist and retard the forces of assimilation—not a piece of foreign meat for the melting pot but a separate cooking pot. "There exists within the Vietnamese community….a conscious strategy of resistance to linguistic assimilation. This strategy is above all a positive action. It consists in valorizing the transmission of the Vietnamese language, as a privileged vehicle for culture. It also takes the form of a collective awareness of the dangers inherent in the linguistic assimilation of second generation immigrants."</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>"….These activities were connected with a well defined vision of Vietnamese society….the Vietnamese of the diaspora are part of a mother country, whose nucleus lies in Vietnam. They must hence retain their Vietnamese identity, while becoming citizens of their countries of residence and trying to adapt to local conditions. They must resist economic alienation--….an unrestrained desire for making money—because it would impair their basic personality....Even when it is not so explicit, the socio-political message conveyed by linguistic and cultural activities is never altogether absent. We have seen how Vietnamese language instruction seeks to transmit to children a well defined image of their country of origin. One should also remember about the use of political symbols (flags, songs) during public cultural manifestations, such as the celebration of Tet. (Dorais, Pilon-Le, Nguyen Huy 1985)</p> </font> <p>The refugees in time not only transfer their hopes for success in the future upon the next generation, but as well their fears of failure linked to a lost past. He paternalistic sense of traditional Vietnamese identity in ethnic culture and character comes into direct confrontation with "modern" values of "assimilation". Children are spoon fed to the South Vietnamese National Anthem. On the whole, because of this weak but active resistance, assimilation is forecasted to be a gradual process, never to be wholly completed. I attended with a friend an 11 year memorial of the fall of South Vietnam. We waited patiently until nightfall for the ceremonial to begin. Candles were passed out to the crowd (there was not enough seating) and little paper South Vietnamese flags. The slogan on the stage read emphatically "No Diplomatic Relations with Communist Hanoi." It opened with a flag ceremony of a "colored guard" of South Vietnamese "marines" dressed in camouflaged utilities and wearing green berets. It was a well lighted stage. It was followed by a prayer administered by a priest, and then a series of speeches railing against the communists. Afterwards I participated in a "Freedom march" up and down the boulevard—shouted slogans rippling down the thick strand of people "Communists get out of Vietnam," "Communists get out of America," "Down with Communist Hanoi," "No diplomatic Relations with Hanoi.". Candles were lit, flags were waving, the crowd being harangued up the streets by ushers with loud mouthed megaphones. I do not know what was more intense, the sense of infectious euphoric excitement or the loud screaming noise. I marched silently and said nothing, at my friend’s elbow. This ceremonial blended political and religious symbolism, serving both as a political rally and a religious ceremonial. It was well planned, organized, and executed by a smart, middle class looking cadre whose intentions were quite deliberate and clear. Its participants were the average ethnic Vietnamese "refugee", young and old, first and second generation, male and female.</p> <p>There is an essential paradox of this strong ambivalence of attitude reflected on the one hand by the almost universal rationale for flight in the first place as being to find "Freedom" and yet one of their major criticisms, almost in the same breath, of the United States and of their adjustment problems to the United States, is "too much Freedom." "Too much Freedom" is reflected in their preeminent desire for enhanced "Police protection". I know Vietnamese parents who have lost a lot of sleep at night worrying about their children not "listening" to them. Punishment, often severe restriction and harsh physical abuse, will be doled out in ample measure for failure of a obedience. As one Vietnamese student explained to me about the adjustment problems of Vietnamese youth "They are like birds in a cage who have suddenly been let free, and who do not know how to deal with freedom." "paternalistic authority, parental obedience, filial piety, and "familial a-moralism" run strong in traditional Vietnamese culture and character and is struggling however tenaciously and tenuously for survival in ethnic Vietnamese identity. It seems as if too much of anything, even "Freedom" can be not a good thing. There is in all of this a fundamental lack of responsibility, or a "reneging" of responsibility, a "renegade" irresponsibility, in a general diffusion and rationalization, especially a responsibility towards one’s children, and for the significant ethnic "others" who should not be made to bear the guilt, persecution and hate of one’s own personal losses. But irresponsibility is the heart of social anomie and the beginning of psycho-social pathology, and anyway, responsibility, like the culture it was born in, is a relative thing.</p> <p>There are many implications for this prevailing patterning. Most essentially high achievement motivation associated with the American assimilationist success ethic may only be of secondary consideration in the cultural ethos of the emerging ethnic character of "refugee" Vietnamese identity. Socio-economic, political and religious security presumes more importance than enhanced status, reflecting deeply rooted insecurities and need for security typically expressed through inordinately strong familial interdependencies. It is a "paternalistic" character-cultural orientation not well adapted to a "competitive" capitalistic market place. This explains high rates of government dependency—the sense of security dependency offers is more valuable than the opportunity and risks of the open market place. This character orientation is closely tied with ethnicity, reinforced by the dominant representatives of ethnic Vietnamese identity, is positively correlated with ascending age, and negatively correlated with length of residency.</p> <p>I met one older Vietnamese male in a restaurant, who was drunk, with his older cohorts, who presumed upon my friend’s kindness, telling him a lie that he was from the same village and remembered his father and family, in order to sit down at our table and talk with us. He ordered food for us, demanding me to eat and drink. In the process he treated the young, courteous female waitress like utter dirt, commanding her to immediately serve us, threatening her. It was a tremendously embarrassing situation, for which my kind friend apologized afterward, saying he did not know the man and that he had lied to him about his village. In such a way does a common existential plight become forcefully translated into a self-fulfilling, highly symbolic, mythology and ideology of ethnicity.</p> <p>This attitudinal complex modifies or mellows with time of residency and success of socio-economic adjustment. Assimilation, however partial and incomplete and gradual and resisted, seems "unavoidable", socio-cultural and character adjustment tied to socio-economic adjustment. "Given the time, the refugee’s sense of well being and hope for the future improves." But such "improvements" are always conditional, foremost upon a willingness to adjust. Possible superior rewards, socially and economically, offered within their new homeland, proves "the dynamic element needed" to attract many towards assimilation, which becomes a feed-back process of limited dimension, new found success breed new contacts, friendships, new desires and pressures for further conformity and assimilation. "Successful occupational and economic adjustment promotes a willingness to assimilate and increases the refugee’s capacity to overcome obstacles to social adjustment. The higher the occupational status the refugee attains the greater the contact with the dominant culture and the greater the pressure to acculturate." (Rutledge 1983)</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>….Conversely, studies show those making a poor adjustment also acculturate poorly and have fewer American friends and a limited knowledge of English. Some of the least acculturated refugees, the housewives and the aged, are those who have the least contact, through employment or school, with the dominant culture. Among some poorly adjusted refugees, who end up doing menial work surrounded by other refugees or by other non-English speakers, live in ethnic communities, and have little contact with the dominant culture, there is evidence of poor mental health, dependency and other signs of maladjustment. In some cases, refugees have been exploited by their employers, been virtual captives or slaves, owning to their inability to speak the language. (Rutledge 1983)</p> </font> <p>The kind of decisions commonly made in terms of existential purposes and expectations associated with a common ethnicity will be reflective of a "mixed type" ethnic character orientation along the "paternalistic competitive continuum", evinced by marked ambivalence. Though there is an overall tendency for polarization of symbolism about the two types, resulting in a fundamental schism and conflict of values within Vietnamese ethnicity. This mixed type will be conditional to immediate contexts, within one sub-structural context, say working relations, or family, a "paternalistic" mode will prevail, while among friends, in the market place, a competitive form of stoical transaction will occur.</p> <p>There is a common predilection, ethnically sanctioned, of choosing as a form of social insurance of security in the future, specific fields within education which have the best "ethnic" guarantee of future security. Professions and career fields chosen are neither the highest paying, most adventuresome, or the most intrinsically, personally rewarding, but the most "secure", stable and the best guarantee of steady employment. Within the modern milieu these are seen to be electronics, computer and bureaucratic fields. Preferred jobs are those offering maximal security, possibly benefits, but not necessarily the highest paying. "The Indo-Chinese are usually employed in electronics, pharmaceutical and computer industries, as assembly line workers, technicians and office workers." Their "loyalty" is not soon quitting a "dead-end" job for the chance to find a better one, but when a better one comes along, and they always have an eye out, even if not their own, then they will unhesitatingly pursue it "with hard work and diligence."</p> <p>But this characterization of ethnic Vietnamese identity must be tempered by an understanding that this is an existential orientation in relation to a great deal of successful compartmentalization between a growing "Americaness" and a shrinking traditional Vietnamese identity, that reduces the level of anxiety and ambivalence of being caught between two worlds. To voice a strong desire to return to Vietnam no longer necessarily conflicts with an achieved status and relative independence and security as ethnic Vietnamese. The urgency and immediacy of their existential plight gradually wanes, subsiding below the level of consciousness, receding beyond the common horizon of "refugee." Rationalization then becomes a primary ego-defense mechanism for an insecure unconscious psyche, crystallizing into ethnic rationality. They have learned to adopt elaborate coping mechanisms which are part of the existential ethos of their ethnicity which assists their adaptation by striking a compromise, carving out a separate niche for themselves which takes a distinctive, elaborate form of ethnic consciousness. In becoming mediators between two worlds, they also function as ethnic boundary markers and reinforcements.</p> <p>Only time confers a sense of security, stability, of healing old wounds, and it takes time to fashion an ethnic consciousness, to carve out an identity and a domain between two realities, capturing the best of both worlds and as much as possible excluding the worst. It is never a perfect or completed model, always an improvised compromise. The phoenix people in my little Saigon have for ten years been in the process of fashioning a new ethnic identity for themselves, in part "refugee", in part "Vietnamese-American" and in part "Traditional Vietnamese". With time things have a way of falling into place or remaining permanently out of place.</p> <p>The future has become a projection of what is for the "refugee" in his/her existential plight a reflection of the past, the golden dream of tomorrow become the golden years of the past. The ideals and aspirations of the ancestors become the purposes and expectations of the second-generation descendants that is in the process of self-fulfillment in the present plight of the emerging, existential ethnicity. With increasing sense of security and of power there develops a relative sense of independence defined in relation to American identity. The most successfully adjusted function as culture brokers and mediators between emerging ethnic "boundaries" serving both as a focal representatives of the existential predicament of their people as well as the symbolic ethnic embodiment of successful adaptation. Though a perception of the ascriptive status of "refugee" is a distorted label, distorted by the existential dilemmas of their plight and flight. The corruption of Vietnamese identity is purely socio-economic in the neverending quest for a guarantee of familial security, but politically and religiously the Vietnamese have always remained quite "pure". For their phoenix people their plight is not so much an economic one as it is a political religious blight of communism. Economic deprivation is only a proof of insecurity entangled with socio-economic status.</p> <p>Relative feelings of insecurity and the need for security are derived from and translate into feelings of relative powerlessness at being unable to control changes in one’s life, and the subsequent need for power manifests itself in a preoccupation with political religious forms of symbolism. This feeling of all pervasive powerlessness and undercutting sense of loneliness and homelessness is closely associated with refugee status.</p> <p>Ethnicity, "symbols of cultural boundary," is defined as "conglomeration of religious and political symbols that embody the cognitive and emotive cultural boundaries of a group". Political and religious symbolism, "vehicles for the conception and dramatization of group heritage", are said to exist in a dialectical relationship, "and are transformed and synthesized when used to conceptualize and dramatize group identity." (Pandian 1982:7-8) There is suggestion that these symbols have associations with the male and female principle. It has been suggested that political religious status of the Vietnamese "refugee" has been disrupted and divorced from its original context, reflecting and reinforcing a sexual status differential and disruption. "Those young men who are heads of households appeared….to constitute the group most consistently manifesting feelings of uselessness, futility, homesickness and depression. These men, who previously active and productive, now find themselves in a passive, inactive position. Their distress may well begin to erode the strength of the family and ultimately impose stress upon the youngsters. Fortunately for the children, the young mothers appeared busy and cheerful." (Looney May 20 1975:a2-3) It is possible that the political symbolism and the structure they embodied were the most fractured, and that males were the more stressed by the refugee plight. Political religious status, as it is expressed symbolically and structurally reinforced, has become disintegrated in the ethnic consciousness of these refugees, resulting in a kind of "ethnic identity crisis". (Grable 1983:15) Relative status is shared social identity. It has been suggested that the refugee’s preoccupation with symbols of security is bound up with this fractured political religious status. Traditionally political religious symbolism of "Vietnameseness" have been well rooted, well integrated, relatively undifferentiated and synthetic in character. Political movements are richly infused with religious iconography, religious ideologies have always had political motivations and aspirations. There are no clear boundaries between sacred and profane, ideal and reality, human deeds and words. The legitimation of "truth" was always held in its practical alleviation of human suffering. There was no strong need to separate thought from actions, ideology from political ruse, rationale from behavior. Political and religious, the two sets of aims and symbolism were part of a single, rather narrow continuum of thought and action.</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>At the time of the Buddhist struggle in 1966 the Buddhist leaders claimed "ninety percent of the Vietnamese are Buddhists….the people are never Communists," while the NFL leaders claimed by contrast, "The struggle of the religious believers in Vietnam is not separate from the struggle for national liberation." The two statements were mutually contradictory, and an American might have concluded that one or both of their proponents was telling an untruth. But neither the Buddhists nor the NFL leaders were actually "lying," as an American might have been under similar circumstances. Both groups were "rectifying the names" of the Vietnamese to accord with what was no longer the "will of Heaven" but "the laws of History" or "the spirit of the times". They were announcing a project and making themselves comprehensible to their countrymen, for whom all knowledge, even the most neutral observation, is put to use. (Francis Fitzgerald 1972:27-8)</p> </font> <p>In the emerging ethnicity of the phoenix people, there has occurred a gradual rectification of names, attempting to synthesize a disintegrated political religious cultural character. This synthesis has become embodied in education of a future generation. Education has taken on focal interest as the primary theme of symbolic synthesis between the old and the new, political and religious. The creating of a Vietnamese ethnicity has become the "making of the modern mandarin". As a primary adaptive, ethnic strategy of symbolic resynthesis, of "frame reevaluation" restructuring their political religious symbolism, it is to be seen in a positive light. But it has had some negative consequences ad well, not the least have been the total disregard of first amendment human right in gluing pages together of a library book of Ho Chih Minh’s poetry, crossing out, blotting out, cutting out, scratching out unacceptable words, or rationalization for basic cheating by claiming a teacher was too lazy, to change the test, by suggesting that the way to improve American culture is by restricting the freedom and liberties of its young people, by justifying the assassination of a college professor by rationalizing that he was a "communist." Independence, and learning how to live with freedom, can become tricky, even with the best of intentions.</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> <img SRC="line5.gif" WIDTH="468" HEIGHT="12"></p> <p> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a NAME="seventeen">CHAPTER IV</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">LOTUS LOVE UNDER</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">THE PHOENIX WING</a></p> <font SIZE="2"> <p> </p> </font> <p>Once upon a time, in a far away land, lived a hundred small children born from a Dragon King and a Fairy Queen, among a confluence of historical streams, sharing a common consensus of beliefs and values, with a collective consciousness and social conscience, and so the story is told, and retold. This is a self-reflective story about a delicate but tough people, a very old yarn retold in a new way; another variation upon an ancient theme, cognizant of the simple fact that many have retold the same old story before, and demonstrating the basic truth that each time the story is told, it is a little different than before. This version merely has an "existential" twist of fate.</p> <p>Discussing the story of the phoenix people is a little like peeling away the layers of an onion to get at its core, reaching into the center of what it means to be "Vietnamese." In the process of doing so, social space becomes stereotypically sanctioned, social time typologically telescoped, in mythological manner. It is to speak primarily of ethnohistorical dynamics and their mechanisms and recurrent processes, and of ethnocultural dialectics and their "configurations" and repetitive patternings, and of synergism and symbolism, just as the story of these people has always been portrayed, but with a reflexive difference of viewing at a distance only an ephemeral reflection of the present, a momentary image at the interface of mythos and reality. In this process of delineating people-space and people-time a mythological transformation is eventually constructed, a dialectical synthesis of contrapuntal elements, such that history becomes culture, and then, the story is magically transformed into living, breathing people.</p> <p>This is the story of a young woman, actually only a little girl at heart, who, once upon a time, followed a very simple dream, the romantic dream of a man, a husband, not so uncommon a dream shared by many young women all over the world. She followed him at risk of everything, even her life, to find a new home in a new homeland. As I have come to know her, I have nicknamed her Lotus, though this is not her real name, because like the lotus flower that blossoms so splendidly in the dirtiest of water, Lotus is a flower of Vietnamese womanhood who has bloomed in the direst of social circumstances. But the plight of Lotus, and the plight of her phoenix people, has not yet ended. Today there are many young mothers in the world who share a similar plight as Lotus. But if the story of Lotus and her phoenix people has been written in such sad tragedy, there is also a great deal of common dignity to be shared, a kind of dignity born only through human suffering.</p> <p>To write a personal phenomenology of my "ethnographic field experience" is unprecedented—not that it probably hadn’t been done before, but that it is a new phenomenon to my own experience. This is not ethnocentric vanity, but only plain honesty. One definition of "phenomena" is "the appearance or observed features of something experienced as distinguished from reality or the thing in itself." (<u>Webster’s Dict.</u> 1983) From this "phenomenology" is derived as "1. The science dealing with phenomena as distinct from the science of being (ontology). 2. The branch of a science that classifies and describes its phenomena without any attempt at explanation." I will use "phenomenology" here as a key metaphor for talking about and comprehending my own personal experiences and involvement in relationship to Lotus and her phoenix people, without purporting to be an emic description or evaluation of the existential being of these people. He relationship itself, between self and other, subject and object, etic and emic, knower and known, observer and observed, is the focus of this phenomenology, such that ethnographer as self and the other as observed people merge and become a unity, a "group" in communion. The organizational metaphor of this grouping is "mutual commitment" which is emergent and unavoidable in on going human involvement. All connotations of "phenomenology" as "science: must be dispelled, rather it is merely "a-scientific," being instead what I prefer to call "humanological." It involves not a professional commitment to scientific reality, but rather a humanological commitment in the sense of one human being relating to another as a human being, during which the prioritization of values skews, focus blurs, lines between self and other subject as knower and object as known, disappear beneath the magnifying glass and the macroscopic process of knowing and being known becomes a process of touching and being touched, spiritually and well as physically.</p> <p>Claiming to be neither strictly "etic" or "emic" necessarily means coming under fire and attack from both sides of the fence. Grey bearded gurus and professional gatekeepers alike have explained to me that I lack the authority to write an objective "etic" description of any kind, the only kind that counts in their $80,000.00 a year rulebook. On the other hand many Vietnamese have attempted to explain to me in their broken English that I cannot possibly know about them unless I learn their language, supposedly an easy thing to do.</p> <p>The limitations of a personal, humanological phenomenology are the limitations of myself. I lack the professional resources, the cooperation, the officiousness and the training to conduct a "valid" field study. On the other hand, I lacked the time, energy, native intelligence, sociability and interest to acquire Vietnamese as a second language in a span of a year’s allotment of "ethnographic research." Of course I lack the professionalism to do an etic analysis, and because I lack the Vietnamese language I cannot hope to "emically" understand the Vietnamese. But I also have the facility and savvy of turning my personal weaknesses into my own advantageous strengths. On the one hand having limited professional access to "information" forced me to adopt a diversified strategy of gleaning within my own narrow means every possible bit of information, shred of evidence, relevant idea, and of collecting all of this into some quasi-formal organization best suited to my own personal style. It also forced me to adopt an "encounter" approach, versus a "set piece" strategy, in which I more readily availed myself to unplanned, hence unexpected events versus applying some a priori structure to my experiences. Thus things happened more-or-less spontaneously forcing me to immediately sort the relevant from the irrelevant without any prior criteria. Not knowing the language always prevented me from "emically" comprehending what was going on with others around me, but it has an advantage often hidden in its obviousness of forcing me to understand and evaluate others on the basis of what they are doing in relation to me, and what I was doing in relation to them, or not doing, instead of what they were just trying to say to me. Sometimes actions speak louder than words, and words have a way of obfuscating behavior, and sometimes inaction is louder than action. Not knowing the language did not prevent me from relating humanologically, and probably more genuinely, naturally and honestly, with them. Lotus was my key informant and interpreter, in her uneducated, broken pidgin English, and I have no doubt she was usually telling me what she wanted me to know, or though I wanted to know. Even in this there was a modicum of strength, for it allowed to learn openly a side of Lotus and of myself, of self-deception and honesty, that reliance on words tend to obscure.</p> <p>There is a modicum of power in doing ethnography, and a whole lot of hypocrisy, and false power and ethnocentrism underlying "participant observation" soon becomes recognized by those being observed, and this is the turning point beyond which real ethnographic process proceeds with genuine human commitment, and false ethnography retreats to the ivory tower. And ethnography, as a synthesizing process, a synergism, is much like the synergism of the process of living itself. Both have a beginning, a time for living, and an ending. Disengagement is as traumatic as engagement in ethnographic existence.</p> <p>The values to be reinforced and lessons to be learned from engagement and disengagement in ethnographic process are the values and lessons of human existence itself. Human commitment, as long as it is human, is not necessarily a dirty word, that trust and respect to be earned through promise of commitment is more important than even money, or the many things opportunities and pleasures money can buy, or the lack of money, and the suffering that fatefully ensues, and finally and most importantly, the value of human sharing and reciprocity, of any and all human resources, material or otherwise, according to the dictum "From each according to his/her means, to each according to his/her needs." Equality becomes a relative matter.</p> <p>Ethnography, as a phenomenological process, needs no extrinsic justification, for most essentially it is an end in and of itself. If it is genuine existential engagement in human cultural reality, it unavoidably involves facing, questioning and confronting our own unquestioned ethnocentrism, of right or wrong, good or bad, ugliness or beauty, better or worse, and those of others. Piercing through the obfuscating clouds of ethnocentrism, whether simple ignorance or sophisticated prejudice, pops the bubble of the Grand Illusion of our Modern prides and prejudice, and clarifies human social reality to pin point sharpness. In our modern age of national nuclear arsenals poised on the verge of Armageddon, there can be no higher or more noble ideal.</p> <p>Ethnography provides, in and of itself, a whole new, alternative framework for human existence. Its processes of engagement and disengagement in the pursuit of phenomenological and humanological involvement with other human beings through existential commitment, constitutes a rite of passage, an integration of existential being and becoming, a "coming of age" upon a transcendental plain of shared existence. And through it, we grow in existential, ethnographic power.</p> <p>There is also more than a little self-reflectivity and reflexivity in the ethnographic process, coming through recognition of our own ethnocentrism of which we were previously quite ignorant, of apperceptive self-enlightenment. Looking back upon the growth experience of the ethnographic process itself, we see ourselves at the ethnocentric center of the whole, and realize how much the predicament and plight of others is a reflection of our own existential predicament and plight. In sharing with others our strengths and weaknesses, they share with us their own.</p> <p>This point takes me back to some of the fundamental doctrines of the Eastern religious philosophies, that the craving of the self that gives rise to suffering through projection and identification threatened by "changes in the factors to which it is attached, whether this be the factors of that person, other persons, or other objects and activities in the world", must be eliminated by "non-attachment" of the self to those cravings which give rise to suffering in the first place. The root cause of attachment of self to existential experience is ignorance—"without this false ego-self, which is only a creation of ignorance, there would be no looking to the past, bemoaning what has been lost, and no looking to the future lamenting over what has not yet come about. Without this ego-self life could be lived in the full richness of the present moment, without distinction, division, or attachment. Consequently, once this ignorance is removed, life would be found complete and perfect just as it is." (Koller 1970:134)</p> <p>In our ethnographic recognition of the ultimate reflexivity of human existential reality, and through our self reflective transcendence of our own ethnocentrism, we are brought suddenly to the edge of the <u>mise en abyme</u>—the great groundless non-being which paradoxically is the ground of being—"without the production of some scheme, some "icon" there can be no glimpse of the abyss, no vertigo of the underlying nothingness…." (Miller 1976) Then in our realization that the game of life is an illusion of our own prophetic manufacture, and that our comprehension of its makings is mythological, there is only the existential alternative of not choosing and living at the edge of the abyss, on the margins of existence, laughing ridiculously at the center stage fools who play the game so credibly, or else choose to continue play acting, or not, in acknowledgment that there is, after all, only one game, while still transformed through the wisdom of the "Veil of Maya". But all our laughter and comedy are only sardonic and empty echo—an echoing of the tragedy of the illusion of life, in the deepest most tragic suffering in existence is also the most profound and sublime meaning. The paradox of existence is that no matter what choice we shall make, even non-choice, it will always, inevitably be a tragic choice. Through the ethnographic process our being is transformed, through tragic-comic in its dramatic illusion, it is finally tragic. But the ethnographic transformation experience confers as well a self-revitalized power of transcendent "non-being".</p> <p>The mythology of ethnographic experience is three-fold. In its transformational process of engagement-disengagement, being non-being, existence itself becomes its mythology in the form of existentiality. The key metaphors of this mythology are self/other and subject/object. In the human existential reality that the ethnographic process is attempting to synthetically resurrect the mythology is of the form of ethnicity, composed by a dialectic between becoming and being expressed by the key metaphors of "purpose" and "expectation". Finally, in the human process of ethnographic realization, of human engagement, involvement and commitment, there is the mythology of ethics, whose dialectic between nature and values are expressed symbolically in key metaphors of relativity, equality and respect. All these mythologies of existential ethnography are composed by respective dialectical meta-themes that are expressed synthetically in the form of symbolism that are metaphorical in function and meta-logical in meaning. In the expression of the mythologies, elaborate sequences of symbolisms are formed which are related by correlation, by homology, by analogy—by a sympathetic principle of "like attracts like". Ethnographic description, the end product of the synthesis of these mythological themes, becomes in essence an elaborate complex, or chains of symbolism.</p> <p>In the interrelationship of this synthetic reality our identities are formed by attachment to a particular structural order of symbolic referents which define "things" which are meaningful in our existence. The interrelatedness of these structures form values that are elaborated to form more-or-less coherent value systems on both the individual and cultural levels of articulation. These value systems become expressed conceptually in highly idiographic and ideological idioms that form models for our behavior and help us to organize and "prioritize" our behavior. Value systems which conforms statistically with the average become normal, those which are extremely different become labeled culturally as "abnormal" or "deviant" depending upon cultural standards.</p> <p>Engaging in interrelationship with other people whose value systems are quite different, ethnographically in terms of another person of another cultural orientation, brings a dialectical conflict and resolution of differences, either through "frame elicitation," compartmentalizing our experiences into a tidy package through which we can systematically exclude differences and include similarities through projection and reflection. This is a process of "concretization," "reification", "rationalization", "hypostatization", and involves oversimplification of our conceptual reality in order to tolerate and deal with behavioral differences. On the other hand we can opt for "frame reevaluation" which involves an internal and external restructuring and reorganization of our interrelationships of values. Values become defined only through differentials of meaning between dichotomous contrasts. Altering the meaning, or "significance" through changing the differential relationships results in reevaluation of our existence—instead of compartmentalizing and concretizing reality we synthesize and generalize reality. Instead of simplification through systematic exclusion of differences, we complicate through synthetic integration of differences. Frame elicitation leads us into the maze-way of ethnocentrism. Frame evaluation leads us towards transcendental self-enlightenment.</p> <p>If the process underlying ethnicity as the existential emergence of "frame elicitation" then the governor of the process is the past, and the center of the process is ethnocentrism—it becomes a process of "replication of uniformity" through conformity and imitation. If the process is one of "frame reevaluation" then, like the ethnographic process, it becomes one of "reorganization of diversity" through what are known as "revitalization" movements. Frame elicitation and frame reevaluation exist in a dialectical relationship—"Society (<u>societas</u>) seems to be a process rather than a thing—a dialectical process with successive phases of structure and communitas. There would seem to be—if one can use such a controversial term—a human "need" to participate in both modalities." (Turner 1969:203)</p> <p>In the great human drama, individual human beings are actors who have their "exits and entrances" and one man, "in his time, plays many parts". In this theater cultures are streams of existential sub-groupings, scenes and acts of the play, which emerge, converge, diverge and disappear, continually appearing and reappearing in always altered form.</p> <p>The mythology of ethics and ethos underlying the human process of ethnographic realization is an existential ethics and ethos, but not necessarily existentialist. Human reality is not inherently meaningless—indeed it is inescapably meaningful in its grand mythological illusion of its essentially tragic character, and recognition of the illusion is the only escape from this tragedy. The great tragedy is that all things are temporary and must end. Death is the great equalizer which makes all things even and undifferentiated in the process of perpetual change—Nature, the great circle of the web of life in which everything is enmeshed in a never ending network of interrelationships. Nature is universal in that it is all encompassing—nothing is expected or excluded from its great law. Nature is the <u>Tao</u>:</p> <p>The ethical principles of Taoism are to preserve human life from threats to its existence, and to make life "great" by improvement of its quality. From the Tao of Nature all multiplicity, variability, diversity and differences between "things" proceed. The Tao makes all things equal in their essential ground of non-being, and yet all things too are different in their expressive being—this infinite diversity is the process of creativity of Nature, of ephemeral, ever emergent changes in relations between "things". Streams of change within Nature are differential and variable, to understand this is to recognize the metaphor of relativity, of universal relationship, intrinsic in Nature and guiding our sympathetic comprehension of Nature.</p> <p>To recognize relativity in Nature is to acknowledge the relativity of the metaphor of human "values" in existentiality. Nature and "values" form a mythological dialectic of existential ethos. Values have been defined as the attachment of meaning, of human significance, to symbols with primary referents derived ultimately from Nature. Values are relative, and to recognize this relativity of values is to recognize that ethics is inextricable from ethos—the habits, conditionings, characteristics, attributed to a group, its focal patterning. There is no such thing as an a-priori, noumenal, independent "Law of Ethics" with an upper case "E". There are many "little ethics" which are ephemeral and emergent, defined by the succession of choices and commitments people make over time in relation to one another.</p> <p>Ethics and ethos are rooted in human nature and thus in human needs—needs of survival and success in the preservation of life and in its qualitative, evaluative fulfillment, no matter how tragic. To recognize the great ground of being of Nature in its many human forms and manifestations, is to evince respect in the choices made in relation to nature—in accordance with the principles of sympathy with nature and harmony. Respect means trust in interrelationship, earned through ethical commitment and ethos of behavior over time as the basis of respect. Trust implies an ethical attunement, a sympathetic interrelationship to the immediate reality. Relativism, naturalness, trust, respect, equality, evaluation, sympathy, these are the humanological elements of existential ethics and ethos. At the heart of ethnography is a basis "naturalness" which is honesty in its complete, unconditional form, the basis of ethics and ethos in the encounter of existentiality. The basis of honesty is sympathetic integrity with nature.</p> <p>From these considerations of existential ethnography proceeds consideration of a model for a kind of ethnographic existentiality. An alternative framework for human cultural life. Some of its boundaries are fairly discernible, in its preservation and perpetuation of all life, and upon its creative fulfillment, in its naturalness and honesty transcending ethnocentrism, in its relativity in all sense of the word, and, foremost, in its pacifism. It entails frame reevaluation of our modern global context, and reevaluation of some basic values, even entailing a revolutionary restructuring of our modern version of "progressive" civilization based upon a utilitarian utopia of the pleasure principle, even if it means sharing the wealth, instead of a super city "on the hill" a global working class mega-ghetto or world wide lower middle-class super slum held together by social welfare programming. Better this than global climax and nuclear holocaust.</p> <p>This is an ethnographic description about the existential emergence of the new ethnic reality of my phoenix people, sometimes labeled some what deridingly as the "boat people," of an ethnic sense of being Vietnamese, as opposed to the ethnohistorical or ethnocultural sense of traditional Vietnamese identity. While it is irrefutably important to comprehend the historical and cultural context from which these people came, it is equally important to consider the new existential patterns and processes which are emerging in response to a changed context, and to comprehend ethnographically how past and present, forever sundered, are nonetheless reasonably well reintegrated in makeshift, ad-hoc fashion, preserving a sense of existential continuity, and providing, especially a sense of purpose for a new future. Now, in the synthesis of a new ethnic culture from often inimical elements and contexts, the phoenix people are managing to accomplish in somewhat haphazard fashion what all the king’s horses and all the king’s men could not do.</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> <img SRC="line5.gif" WIDTH="468" HEIGHT="12"></p> <p> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a NAME="eighteen">SECTION 4:i</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">NETWORKS OF NEED</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">SURROGATE FAMILIES AND ADOPTED KINFOLK</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p>Patterns among the Vietnamese "refugees" in my little Saigon suggests themselves. The abundance of ethnic restaurants and the frequency with which they are patronized suggests that there is much gratification from eating accustomed cuisine in strange settings that tend to produce overwhelming stresses. Lotus told me that when she separated from her husband she ate almost everyday at her favorite restaurant. Eating is a fine coping mechanism for the alleviation of stress. Patterns of feasting, food exchange and sharing are very prominent and important among my "refugee" friends. Many moved to my little Saigon because of the fine moderate weather—too much cold, wet, snow or too much dry heat has a way of aggravating already stressful circumstances beyond the tolerance level and the psychological breaking point. I have watched whole families shut down operation in fits of "colds", fevers, and "illnesses" during cold and rainy spells. Many of my friends have been in repeated automobile accidents, most of them minor fender benders. Stress, lying unconsciously beneath the surface or "hidden" away in the background, has a pernicious way of creeping back into control at the worst possible moments—generating confusion where a clear head and alert senses are most called for. There is no wonder that navigating heavy traffic is a major obsession.</p> <p>All of this, up until here and now, has been a lengthy way of providing a context and a pretext for the ethnological comprehension of my own phenomenological encounter with my dear Lotus and her particular network of Phoenix people. Through her, I gained access to numerous households and friendship with several families. Lotus was my "ethnographic ego" at the heart of an extended network of relationships between different individuals and families which, from my limited vantage point, seemed for most intents and purposes open ended. It is likely that every individual and family which came within the radius of the Network of Lotus had their own extensive and open ended network, and it is possible that in such manner the network extended throughout the whole of the Vietnamese ethnic community of my little Saigon and beyond to other little Saigons.</p> <p>While there is evidence of some "class" differentiation and crystallizing social stratification within the ethnic community, such boundary lines were quite unnoticeable to myself. Lotus herself could be seen as the focal point for a set of overlapping and overlaying networks with different "circles" of friendships. These circles form relatively closed ended feedback loops, or chains within the larger network, each chain mediating on a different level of resource articulation and of significance for Lotus. These networks are formed by, and form, systems of exchange and sharing of basic resources, human, material or nonmaterial. It seemed that compared to many families and individuals, the extent of Lotus'’ network was quite actually limited in scope, as I have observed her, in her own existential plight, consciously, deliberately estrange herself from certain contacts and friendships. Individuals operate both as individuals in chains of individual concerns, and as members of families in familial chains of exchange. Through these networks, delineated over time and constantly shifting in structural interrelationships, with altering social and spatial status of individuals or of familial groupings, are exchanged basic resources which are important to Vietnamese ethnicity and survival and which are in continuous movement. These resources include "surrogate family dependency", friendship, sex, money, food, videotapes, certain material items like cooking utensils, toys, tools or whatever may be deemed urgently necessarily by one and immediately unneeded by another, as well as exchanges of human skills and labor, fixing a car, moving furniture during relocation, or exchange of information, or the borrowing of a car, or baby sitting or going grocery shopping for some one or doing little errands. Much of these exchange seems to be as need arises, and immediately non-reciprocal—in many exchanges only the promise or unspoken trust of future reciprocation is given in return.</p> <p>Familial groupings are not strictly "nuclear" or necessarily lineal or consanguinal kinship units, but because so many of the Vietnamese refugee households are composed of "broken families". It seems that many interpersonal relationships function as a form of "surrogate kinship" which seem to partially substitute for relationships broken in the transition. Most of these surrogate kin are "extended family" relationships, and it becomes an extremely important matter of debate, argument and conflict over the appropriate title of reference, whether old man or young man, or uncle, or brother or sister. Families were adopted by individuals, and individuals become adopted by a family. These titles are a basis of respect when addressing a person, and if used impolitely or haphazardly can result in much embarrassment and broken friendship.</p> <p>All of the families that I came into contact with were very poor, and most were fairly large, and most were receiving AFDC. The most important family in relationship to Lotus was the #5 family, so called because the father was the fifth child of his line and therefore nicknamed #5. This is a very big family, with more than eight children. Lotus, when I first met her, did not even know their names, but called them all #5, the wife was Mrs. #5 and the children were ranked male/female and age. It took me a full nine months to learn all of their names. Nonetheless Lotus had adopted herself into the #5 family calling Mr. #5 brother and Mrs. #5 sister.</p> <p>These networks may be arranged into any kind of rational order or scheme of classification. There seemed to be "neighbor" networks by proximity and mutual compatibility or animosity. Then there were personal friendship networks which seemed defined on the basis of shared needs, common status, shared experiences such as the refugee camp or the boat voyage, and which are not so tied by proximity—people frequently traveling long distances to keep in touch. Then there are extended family networks which are ambiguous in the sense that on one hand, they involve almost automatic, unquestioned reciprocities, and on the other hand would be subject to fracture. In terms of sharing and exchange Lotus was closer to the #5 family than her own sister’s young family even though on an emotional plane Lotus’s happiness was deeply dependent upon her sister’s attention or inattention, as, seems to be the case, her sister’s happiness was also, to some immeasurable extent, tied to Lotus. There might not be a shred of support forthcoming from a familial network, or there might be all the support in the world, but whatever the case, the power of blood is always there to be invoked.</p> <p>After visiting a few households it soon became readily apparent a common pattern of interior decoration and/or furniture arrangement. The living areas that are the centers of familial activity are always the living room and kitchen. Always between the two, in relationship to the lay out of the floor plans, was a family altar one high upon a wall, above a doorway. Even families ostensibly Catholic or Protestant, like the #5 family, still regularly practiced ancestor worship. There would usually be a picture, had painted from a photography or a set of old photographs of relatives, deceased or distant. There are joss sticks periodically burned, and may little flowers, as often as not cheap plastic ones. Candles are burned and tin foil is used as a backing to reflect the light. I made for Mr. #5 a blow up of an old photograph of a grandmother, framed it, and he hung it above the arch of the living room passageway with a little foil Christmas tree star with a single blinking Christmas tree light. In these households there are always at least two comfortable old sofas, often very dirty and dilapidated, and a small coffee table. There is usually a kitchen table, an old card table or something simple. There is generally a paucity of furniture throughout the household, especially comfortable chairs. Sofas that fold down into beds are in every household to deal with unexpected visitors such as myself. There is a premium on bunk beds for spacing of children. I made Lotus a bunk bed to take her three young boys so that they could sleep in a separate room and separate beds from Lotus. The kitchen was always functioning except when everyone was sound asleep in the wee hours of the morning. In the living room there is always a nice big color television set, the pride and joy of every household, alongside of a video recorder.</p> <p>Chinese movies dubbed into Vietnamese or locally produced Vietnamese movies, or ones from Paris, are mostly shown on the VCR. There is a great network in trading these, frequently bootlegged tapes. One evening I wanted to see a Vietnamese music tape, and so Lotus ended up calling five houses to track down the tape she had loaned someone only to find on the sixth call that it was at her next door neighbor’s apartment. Most of the furniture is second hand and often broken down, as if it had been found at a junk-yard or stolen from a good will truck. Things broken down would be repaired in jerry-rig fashion by whatever was available to repair it with. There is not such thing as color coordination or "interior decoration", though pictures hung on walls are much esteemed or any little, often junky, decorations that happens to come their way. Households are primarily utilitarian and functional for many people of all age groups. Many households have a small garden, primarily of the leafy kind of vegetables which they harvest like mowing a lawn with a pair of scissors to square away any meal. Even apartments with access to a little square of earth will plant these vegetables, and I have seen whole backyards turned into extensive gardening industry complete with arbors for hanging squash or melons and paddies filled with water with small gold fish or carp swimming around the vegetables. Many of these vegetables we either regard as weeds or herbs, but the Vietnamese will eat them like rabbits eating lettuce. People normally tramp through the household and kids will crawl over everything and anything they can reach if someone isn’t paying attention.</p> <p>Most households I have been in received AFDC, but also most had industrial quality sewing machines, one, two or three, of different kinds to perform different, special stitching operations. These households regularly did a great deal of sweated work, sewing pre-cut pieces according to a pattern, fastening buttons and labels, in quantities of fifty or a hundred. The amount earned from such work depends on several factors, the type of sewing machine, the number of workers and amount of time and industry invested, and most importantly, the skill and experience and motivation of the individual sewer and of the coordination of the workers to work as a family unit. Doing this sweated work seems to be a primary mode of adaptation for the Vietnamese, combining privacy with a relatively flexible regimen and few social contacts. The amount earned will range between $300 to over a $1,000 a month. Lotus borrowed money from #5 and bought a machine so that she and #5’s family could pool their resources and labor between them, three machines, #5 and Mrs. #5 and the oldest daughter Rose, and Lotus in order to increase productivity. Lotus would teach the #5 family how to sew. I gave Lotus $300 to help pay Mr. #5 back for the machine, which cost about $500, and made her a platform to absorb the noise and vibrations of the heavy duty motor so it would not disturb her disturbed neighbors below her, as well as stand up shelves to help her organize her work. I purchased her one of those cheap 48 inch florescent shop lights to hang above the machine, as did everyone else I met. I figured out that Lotus would make about $2.00 per hour if she was "hard working and diligent". Her Old Uncle, another huge household in a two bedroom apartment, had three machines between him and his wife and earned about $1,000 per month. But they worked all of the time, hardly ever pulling themselves away from their "repetitive, highly detailed" and monotonous tasks. I believe some of these people would put in up to twelve or more hours per day, most days of the month, in order to earn enough to live on.</p> <p>There seems to be a ceiling on the maximum amount that can be earned from such a family operation without diversifying one’s strategy or cutting somehow the cost of overhead—primarily the middleman (or woman) who regularly picked up finished loads in large plastic bags, and delivered pre-cut new assignments. It seems these people are the ones who make most profit from this production, doing little work themselves, and paying little for the labor. Then the stores that sell them would sell these finished garments at probably enormous profit margins. I could never figure out if the stores that marketed this produce were the clothing shops of little Saigon or not. The middle people who made the schedules, set the deadlines, made the pickups and deliveries were ostensibly Vietnamese. This is clearly a form of exploitation, for people like Lotus, #5 and Old Uncle get the short end of a long stick, but it is a form of exploitation which they willingly and sacrificingly engage in, just like illegal aliens doing hard labor for virtually nothing, because it is better than nothing at all and it is free, untaxed income which goes unreported to the welfare agencies. There is also a burn out factor involved—it is clearly a dead end—a routine chore beautiful young woman like Lotus would surely avoid if at all possible. Lotus adopted what was for me a healthy attitude—she worked only when she felt like it, did no more than she felt like, did it intermittently between her Chinese movies and her children, and sometimes missed the deadline. Good for her.</p> <p>One of the most important commodities of exchange in these networks is money—large bills and small frequently passed from one hand to hand out of the corner of an eye. It would boggle my mind to know how they kept up with who owed whom what. As long as one kept one’s own record straight, "no problem". Lotus told me she only loaned money but never borrowed, and I asked her why. I received no good answer. She did borrow money though to relocate from her one bedroom slum apartment to a larger, and cheaper two bedroom slum apartment, a step closer on the road to assimilation. #5 borrowed from Lotus a grand, and sold some gold, another interesting ethnic commodity, in order to buy a brand new used "family" station wagon with a diesel engine. It was his male ego on which he gave inordinate care and concern. His wife sewed a wonderful long cover out of old sheets and scrap cloth and which fit beautifully over it in multiple colors and designs. It seems as though there was a system to this cash flow. Lotus operated at a deficit. Not that she necessarily ever lost money by someone skipping out on repayment, to do so would be to become discredited in many people’s eyes, but by not creating a precedent of credit by previous borrowing and repayment, whenever she needed a lump sum of money to make an important move, it was never available. It seemed as though this no-interest loan game is one to be played consistently or not at all.</p> <p>Mr. #5 is a prime example of someone who knew how to maximize his assets and optimize his opportunities. He managed a family corporation, one that was open most of the time and extended in every manageable direction. He even managed to bring me into his sphere of exchange. He was continuously borrowing from numerous people, often only to pay back other previous loans to people demanding a repayment. The point is that he, unlike Lotus, always had liquid assets, a lump sum of cash, flowing through his hands and pockets, which allowed him to find and make good deals and to get ahead. He also took on boarders who helped with the rent, young single males who were trying to make it here, with families still in Vietnam. One man especially, I shall call him Nephew Ho because with his gotee and bald head he looked to me like a young version of old Ho Chih Minh. I have become especially fond of Nephew Ho, who considered Mr. #5 his uncle. This boarding arrangement was one of mutual advantage, no exploitation involved at all, and there is a close, surrogate familial relationship between Nephew Ho and the #5 family. Such a pattern of boarding is seen to be a basic and common strategy for refugee households to pull themselves above the poverty line. "Those households with unrelated singles living in them did significantly better than the same type of household without such attached singles…."</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>"….the manner by which a refugee household is getting ahead in the United States is by increasing the number of its occupants who are working and bringing in earned income….the steady almost monotonic increase in the percent of households with two or more jobs is a most significant feature, one with great meaning for the future of the Southeast Asian refugee population in the United States. It is the number of jobs per household rather than the character of the individual jobs themselves which make the major difference in understanding the degree of economic self-sufficiency gained by the refugees. This difference is achieved by the willingness, cooperation and diligence of a variety of household members who seek out jobs, any kind of job. (Whitmore 1985)</p> </font> <p>Mr. #5’s financial scheming crystallized within a few months into a kind of quasi-formal organization of a credit circle. It is supposed to last for a year, with twelve names put into a kitty (mine was included by Lotus, though I didn’t know it) Each name is the equivalent of $100 per month for a year. Lotus was investing $200 a month in this operation, including her and my name. Mr. #5 was putting in $300 per month between himself, his wife and oldest daughter. On a certain day each month people who wanted some amount would bid, picking a number anywhere between one and 24 to see who would win what from the kitty. It seems as though the closest number wins. Lotus spent several hours trying to explain the whole scheme to me, especially the bidding, which seemed to me like some kind of chance mechanism, but between her broken pidgin English and my hard head, I could not make heads or tails of it.</p> <p>All of Mr. #5’s friends and families who were within his main network, as well as some of Lotus’s friends, entered into the pool. Others would enter smaller amounts for shorter periods. No one who won the money one month could win it the next. Mr. #5 was in charge of the whole operation which was run at his home. It seems to me that the advantages and profits it afforded him were two fold-it perpetuated a stable exchange network over the span of a year, which would give him ample opportunity to do more wheeling and dealing, and it as well afforded him each month a lump sum of cash which he could utilize for the short term in his money schemes, as long as he could refill the kitty by the time of the bidding which fell on the 15<sup>th</sup> of the month. I do not know whether or not he actually took advantage of this operation this way, but it is very possible. He took risks in borrowing and loaning, constantly sticking his neck out on the basis of no more than good faith, and yet such operating has paid off for him.</p> <p>This credit circle, Lotus told me, happened frequently in Vietnam, and has been documented in China as well. It seems to require more than anything a trustworthy and stable network of families and friends who put their money where their mouth is. It is to everyone’s advantage because it is essentially a way of saving money, when welfare does not allow one to save more than $1,000 or $1,500 in order to make a major investment, like the purchase of a car, or moving. There is more than a ritual involved in its operation and design, with the names and numbers at bidding time. I asked Lotus what happens if I decide to withdraw my name, she only smiled and said that she would put in somebody else’s.</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>Professor Maurice Freedman has pointed out that the rural Chinese were constantly involved in a network of debt and money lending, though the sums of money involved might be a matter of only two or three Chinese dollars. He quotes extensive evidence for this from the Rev. J. MacGowan, a missionary working in Fukien province and elsewhere early in this century, who concludes by saying: "The whole Chinese Empire may be said to be in a perpetual state of borrowing and lending." Moreover, the Chinese had invented "Money Loan Associations", a system (familiar to students of West Africa) by which a group pays in a monthly subscription and the whole amount is taken out month by month by each member in turn.</p> <p> </p> </font> <p>In the span of a year I have watched the #5 family move, by the struggles of Mr. #5, Mrs. #5 and the corporate efforts of their many children, the oldest of whom is under 17, from a single bedroom slum in the worst area in the country of my little Saigon, to a two bedroom apartment in an outlying community of several hundred families approximately one hour’s driving time by Freeway, to a three bedroom house in a low rent district in front of some railroad tracks. Now he has two boarders both working full time, and he himself is fruitfully occupied, and his wife and daughter are sweating it out full time. They are on the yellow brick road to "economic self sufficiency" or what an assimilationist would want to call "independence". In that span of a year I have had the privilege of sharing with this family many happy times and many tragic moments. As I have come to learn all their names, I have come to learn also some of their meanings. And I believe they have also come to know and respect and, most importantly, to trust me as a human being.</p> <p>They came by small boat two and a half years ago. He was a Boatswain in Vietnam, and Nephew Ho confided in me that his family owned a rubber plantation. He had several wives (maybe) although why he brought only one I will never know. He was shot up in the war, and its stresses still show upon his face. His wife was a daughter of a family as large as her own. She is petite and quite pretty, very soft spoken and retiringly shy, with only a soft smile. She cooks and cleans up her children’s mess and never complains. Their boat was only 39 feet, and held 48 people, basically just two or three large families. They spent seven days on the sea. Now he is ashamed that he neglected to bring enough water. Before landing in Malaysia they were robbed by Thai pirates who wielded only a single revolver. They did their normal tour in the refugee camps in Malaysia and the Philippines, and then found sponsorship in one of the colder states back east. But before too long they were out in sunny California.</p> <p>I met them on a health interview in a slum district, the poorest section of town in which little Saigon is situated. My Vietnamese interpreter apologized to me for their "appalling" condition, and treated Mrs.#5 quite condescendingly. During this interview I first met Lotus, and immediately felt quite sympathetic for her general plight. I asked her if she would like to become my key informant and she, not understanding what I asked, agreed. The #5 family came to feast at her home the next month, including Nephew Ho, and he wanted me to come and visit him in his new apartment. They had in the meantime relocated. I tried to help them find a place at low rent, but it isn’t easy with over 8 children. One is forced to lie and cheat. But how is a family like the #5’s supposed to live—in a tent? Renters and apartment managers can be very rude—"more than 8 children in two bedrooms, that’s not possible! Click!"</p> <p>At first they seemed quite happy with their new home. I would come out with Lotus and her children on weekends. I took many B and W photographs and framed some 8 by 10’s for them. Their first luxury acquisition was a VCR—it ran night and day with Chinese and Vietnamese movies. The family seemed to suffer a kind of familial depression at this time. #5 would want me to sit and drink a beer with him in his new "home", even though he could not talk English and I knew no Vietnamese. The next couple of times the family was in a kind of hysteria, an intensity that was perhaps a residuum of a malingering past. Mr. #5 blew up in the kitchen and cuffed his son open handed across the face. Later that night he cuffed his oldest daughter, both of whom did not listen to him. Lotus and I spent almost the entire night talking and reasoning with Mr. #5. I felt bad about it and did not come to visit for over a month.</p> <p>The next time I came to visit the atmosphere had mellowed. I gave them some nice Christmas presents and it was quite interesting to observe how what I gave them circulated through the household. The whole home formed an internal system, everything moving through it hand to hand, place to place. It was also an almost unbearably dirty household, without any one barely taking the time to sweep up the hardwood floors. The babies would urinate where ever and sometimes afterwards someone would grab a rag from some corner and wipe it up with their feet, disposing of the rag in some other corner. But in the space of time they resided here, I watched the whole house gradually become cleaner and better organized. The floors were swept more often. Dirty rags were washed in their new washing machine. The floors were even mopped everyday. At first I never noticed anyone taking a shower or a bath, but more and more the children’s appearance was cleaner. The wife was keeping herself nicer, dressing up, first had Lotus trim and shape her hair, then even getting a permanent.</p> <p>Then another crisis occurred, this time with Mr. #5. He seemed to go into a deep, personal depression, almost a state of dissociation. This was after he purchases his sewing machines and after he had a one-year-old birthday party for his youngest son. A big ritual feast to which many friends came from far and wide and there was much drinking and talking and smoking and eating. His sadness lasted about a month. He grew intolerant of Lotus’s boys. He would do nothing but take his youngest son to stroll around the house. After this he seemed to become his old self again. His bathtub plumbing was pouring water that couldn’t be shut off, and the floor became waterlogged and destroyed. I eventually spent a long evening chiseling into the tile wall to fix the leak. He self righteous real estate people who managed the place did not lift one single finger or spend a single dime to keep the place up. Mr. #5 wanted only to learn how to do things for himself, but it is amazing how much we take for granted all we know. Several times I had to show him how to light the heaters, and help him repair things. But mostly I got drunk on cans of Budweiser and made a complete ass of myself. But Mr. #5 is a smart player and learns fast things most people don’t know about. The real estate people soon gave him a thirty day notice, because his family was too large, even though they had already been renting there nine months. Within a week he found the three bedroom high rent house in a low rent district.</p> <p>The day I helped him move, I first saw the house, I was completely disappointed. It was the worst kept house I had ever seen, and should have been condemned. I asked Mr. #5 point blank why this house and he told me he had no choice. It is then I learned a lesson from Mr. #5.He has a dream, a dream about his family, about which he worries everyday in the struggle to make a go of it. As he told me that day, his dream was to own his own suburban home in ten years, with the help and support of all his children. Twice he had been in my own home, and in his friend's houses, and this became his foremost dream in life. I hope it comes true for him and his family.</p> <p>I learned something else that day. All his friends turned out to help him move, none excluded. The religious people offered a place for his family to keep them in their tight circle, but his time was up there and he knew he had to move on to bigger and better things in order to realize his dream. He was capable of mobilizing many others' resources for his own advantage. Especially young men who for some reason were attracted to his household. I think it was the food, the family openess and naturalness that attracted so many people, including myself, in spite of the dirtiness, the squalidness, the crowding. There was much love and genuine affection in the family, and all who knew this respected this family.</p> <p>The food presents an interesting pattern of familial feasting. Any visit is an automatic occasion for taking a meal. Small elaborate meals will be eaten frequently throughout the day, and elaborate feasts will be held frequently throughout the weeks and months. Food received focal attention and was a common delight shared by all. There was no end to the round of eating. Lotus would wake me up at 12:00 at night to serve me a dish of little octopuses stuffed inside out on top of the green leafy vegetables and sliced tomatoes, or a dish of cold tripe sliced in a secret sauce. And with the good food beer followed upon beer, hour upon hour, losing track of both. In spite of these feasting patterns, it seemed as though all of the children were perpetually hungry, even ravenous. I would buy them pop sickles or ice cream and it would be gone in a jiffy, or a watermelon or anything could be rapidly absorbed into the family system. I do not think that the children are malnourished, just not over nourished, and between them all and Lotus’s, were frequently left to fend for themselves, contend between themselves, for the best pickings. The littlest children would often come begging for the more delectable tidbits at the adult’s circle, always irresistible. Into this system I perchance introduced the concept of the sunflower seed, which immediately became a long lasting favorite—constant nibbling at the little piles of seeds, shells scattered all over—the pop corn maker.</p> <p>His new home has proven to be a boon instead of a bust. Within a week his family had the place squared away, complete with an extensive garden in the big back yard, all the way around the fence line and house wall itself, forming a perimeter of a huge rectangle three and a half feet thick. There was a great deal of sadness in the move, many friends lost, and many tears silently shed. Lotus and Mrs. #5, who are as close as can be, shed many tears together, even though they were back in one another’s company within two weeks. Everyone seemed against Mr. #5’s decision to move, except Mr. #5 himself. I respected his wished and helped him as much as I could. What will happen within another year, or the next on, no one can guess, but wherever they move, what ever happens, they will always have a big family.</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> <img SRC="line5.gif" WIDTH="468" HEIGHT="12"></p> <p> </p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a NAME="nineteen">SECTION 4: ii</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">PATTERNS OF POVERTY AND PREJUDICE</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">A PROFILE IN STRESS MISMANAGEMENT</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p>Before continuing my somewhat overwrought monologue, I wish to pause for a brief intermission to review some of the patterns that I have been involved with. I have referred to networks of need as patterns of interdependency of basic needs from the bottom to the apex of Abraham Maslow’s "need hierarchy." These networks are open ended and limited only by how much one person is willing or able to give and receive. They have an inherent ceiling, in terms of how many contacts one individual or family can maintain on a basis of trust to transact an exchange and reciprocity. Having a big family in a sense diversifies the number of possible contacts. Families and individuals are nodal in these networks, serving as collection centers, "hoarding" units, and to the extent of their openness, as potential reservoirs for basic resources. As mentioned these resources are as much "intangible" as material or monetary or "help"—including emotional, physical, and cognitive resources, not to mention spiritual reinforcement. When there are many sundered families, there are adopted kinfolk and surrogate family. These diverse networks of need define patternings of interdependency in the face of chronic, unalleviated deprivation and stress. Food, money, video-tapes, information, services, transportation and love are the most important commodities of exchange.</p> <p>Oscar Lewis (Oct. 1966) identifies numerous characteristics of what he describes as the "culture of poverty", as distinct from poverty itself, actually "a subculture of the Western social order."</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>It is both an adaptation and a reaction of the poor to their marginal position in a class stratified, highly individualized, capitalistic society. It represents an effort to cope with feelings of hopelessness and despair that arise from the realization by the members of the marginal communities in these societies of the improbability of their achieving success in terms of the prevailing values and goals. Many of the traits of the culture of poverty can be viewed as local, spontaneous attempts to meet needs not served in the case of the poor by the institutions and agencies of the larger society because the poor are not eligible for such service, cannot afford it, or are ignorant and suspicious.</p> </font> <p>It is not my intention to quibble over relative semantics of the meaning of either "poverty" or of "culture." Oscar Lewis’s formulation has come under much criticism and controversy as a somewhat derogative ascription. I will refer to rather to what I call "patternings of poverty", which are defined by networks of need and patterns of interdependency. Not surprisingly these are structural patternings in the availability and disquisition of basic human resources, and so it makes sense to refer to a "structure of poverty". I refrain from the use of "culture of poverty" because I have not found any necessary universal body of symbolism that are associated and define what is "poverty" as a distinct symbolic complex.</p> <p>To the extent that the networks of need that I observed among the Vietnamese refugees were well rooted within the ethos of traditional Vietnamese culture and character, then it would make sense to refer to traditional Vietnamese culture "as a culture of poverty," but this is patently absurd as Vietnamese culture has a well cultural and symbolic heritage. It may have been a culture adapted to some forms of chronic resource deprivation, and in a limited and very relative sense may have been "an impoverished culture," but by no means was it ever a self-fulfilling, self-perpetuating "culture of poverty."</p> <p>The structure that determined characteristic patternings of poverty like the networks of need and patterns of interdependency, may actually be a kind of "anti-structure." It is a marginal condition of existence, leading to many ritual reversals which eventuate in patterns of crime, prostitution, abuse, etc. which are normally prohibited and proscribed within the normal power structure. It is a condition in which most people who become entrapped cannot escape, do not have the means, the resources, or the competencies, to crawl out of the hole. Whether or not their children do is a moot point—a few will, most won’t. There is more than a little chance and circumstance involved in the perpetuation of this structure of poverty. Values adopted under such conditions or perpetual deprivation are survival values. Poverty is not defined by any particular set of symbolism, but rather a lack of symbolism. The symbolism that is available flood through the media channels or filter down somewhat haphazardly from the normal power structure. There may be cultural sub-groupings of poverty which build themselves around a particular body of symbolism, perhaps like the Hells Angels. But I myself am impoverished, and have been so most of my existence on planet earth, and yet I have granted myself a rather enriched symbolic life. I have had friends who are solid middle class and yet are as culturally deficit and symbolically depraved as any poor, dispossessed person who could ever hope to be.</p> <p>In the reification of the notions of culture and of poverty what we are referring to is actually the labeling and the stereotype of poverty. In this sense of patternings of poverty, and their underlying structure, are socio-cultural by patternings of prejudice, of in-group/out group exclusion. I have come face to face with these patternings in serving as a culture broker for families like #5 and Lotus, in a wide variety of settings, inn hospitals, doctor’s offices, dentist’s offices, in stores, on the streets, in the neighborhood, even in homes. I myself have been subjected to such discrimination and projective prejudice and so feel it under my skin. It is a stereotype that no matter what you do, how well you fix yourself up, how nice you are, or behave, how sincere and struggling you are, it does not matter. Money breeds power, screens of opportunity and unequal advantage. Being poor is being dispossessed forever without any of these things. He stereotype of poverty, with all its connotations of dirtiness, depravity, inherent inferiority, stupidity, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as those caught in its grips begin acting out its own prejudices and discrimination. The low self-esteem, shattered egos, the anomie and social pathology, all go hand-in-hand to reinforce the patternings of prejudice. In dealing with Lotus the most prejudiced I encountered was in her own slum by her own people who were worst off than Lotus—they were fully engaged on prophetically acting out the stereotype of poverty. It tied into racial prejudice and racism. Lotus had an unusually dark complexion and I know deep down it bothers her immensely. One evening she even put a whitening cream on her face to try to look more "beautiful" for me—why, just because my skin is white.</p> <p>The color bar has been skewed to vertical and erased a little bit, but it still exists. I would love to delineate these patterns of poverty and prejudice, which are inseparable and interdependent, if it were in the scope of this work. Let me only say that I reserve my discrimination and prejudice for the few thousand upper class families who control most of humankind’s resources, and of their narrow minded, myopic cadre who threaten all life on earth with extinction. Patterns of poverty and prejudice are a kind of "social race" of stereotypes of inherent social superiority and inferiority. After Lotus did that to and for me I bought her a see through plastic make up pouch and a mirror so that she could organize all her cosmetics that she normally carried around in a plastic shopping bag.</p> <p>If there really is a kind of "culture of poverty" then it is more aptly turned around as a kind of "poverty of culture", something not necessarily related directly to actual structural poverty rather it is a poverty of symbolism, a poverty of sentience, a poverty of being out of sympathetic tune and touch with one self and with others, and hence with existence and reality itself. It is an existential poverty of being that is not necessarily associated with educational attainment. Education amounts to a little more than cultural imperialism for those who are too poor to use it for their own enrichment. It is a kind of proletarian poverty that George Orwell so aptly elucidates in his anti-utopian "<u>1984</u>." It is the poverty of the superficial and the superfluous, the almighty pleasure principle, of immediate gratification and consumerism. It is the poverty of the band-wagon, the fad, the meaningless slogan, the pop song, or the commercial one who can’t get out of one’s head. It is the poverty of the John Wayne movie, of the Boulevard race, the fast-lane rush, the TGIF and Christmas Holidays and Chain Restaurants and Modern Shopping Malls. It is a cultural poverty which afflicts rich and poor alike. The saddest thing I have seen has been to watch a newly arrived refugee family, living in a make-shift shack whose roof was caving in, getting hooked onto the mainline of American television—the almighty opiate of the masses, the "Soma" of the mythology of Modernism.</p> <p>I have mixed feelings about the effects of media imperialism—it goes hand in hand with cultural imperialism and capitalist colonization of the human soul. I have no doubt it has a tremendous impact upon Lotus’s young boys, who rise and shine early every morning to daily round of commercialized cartoons which sell the same toys during the commercials as are featured in the shows, and which apotheosize violent little G.I. Joe’s, Rambos, Capt. America’s and Robots. The impact such commercialism and programming has upon Lotus is more difficult to determine, more subtle and sophisticated. Even before buying a car for herself and her children she wanted to buy a bigger and better color television—"so the kids can watch the cartoons in the morning". The television is constantly on, even if nobody is paying any attention to it. There is no doubt that the Vietnamese refugee learns a great deal about American and Western culture through television, but mostly they learn about their culture of poverty, and the quality of what he/she learns is at best dubious. How they integrate what they see and hear into their own symbolic universe remains another question. The things that are portrayed positively are not necessarily regarded positively by the refugee. On the other hand there is an important adaptive function which the often pirated Vietnamese language video tapes play—they provide screens of projection and mirrors of reflection for the internal, psychic and symbolic conflicts which threaten to overwhelm the individual and family of refugees.</p> <p>Every household I have been in spite of their poverty has a video recorder, and these Chinese and Vietnamese movies are by far the most frequently watched and enjoyed by the whole family—from grandparents who are fascinated with their magic and engrossed in their soap operatic melodrama, to Lotus and Mrs. #5 and daughter Rose who cry for hours as they pour over the "mother movies," to Mr. #5 and other adults who get into the Machismo role and into the traditional Vietnamese theater and music, to the children who delight and reenact the Kung Fu stunts. Serialized versions contain hours of family melodrama. The entrancement of the boob tube, its total engrossing aura of fantasy and reality, as it captures the full bore attention of the average refugees, is always astonishing. It is not wise to either overestimate or underestimate the subliminal, hypnotic and emotional influence television and video has upon the refugee and his/her family. It is undoubtedly the best, easiest, cheapest and quickest escape possible from their existential plight of poverty. But it is a weak escape, ephemeral, transient, temporary, that never provides a solution for their existential problems.</p> <p>In speaking of a structure of poverty and its patterning, there are several recurrent characteristics that are relevant to the impoverishment and plight of Lotus and her young boys. Strongly correlated with chronic poverty are early pregnancy, single mother families, disinherited and unwanted children, abuse patterns, impulse control disorders, low education, low achievement motivation, high levels of prejudice, "stress mismanagement", mental disorder, social disorders, and institutionalization. There is a pervasive mistrust or distrust of human interrelationships and many of the facets of the system, there is thus grand disillusionment that comes from deprivation, desperation and desolation. Poverty is the "sink of death" and slow destruction and gradual, suffering, and inevitable death are its consequences. If there is no such thing as a "culture of poverty" then there is most certainly a psychological complex of poverty and psycho-social interaction with the structure of poverty. And in the final analysis this psychological complex of characteristics relates to human meaning loss, symbolic dissociation and disintegration, and symbolic disorientation, disorganization and disorder of human reality. This is why it is a cultural phenomenon—it is "anti-symbolic" and "anti-cultural."</p> <p>It is tragic for me to feel compelled to frame my personal phenomenology of the existential plight of Lotus and her sons. When one extends oneself in genuine human interrelationship one must bear all the risks, hurt, pain, and sorrow such involvement might, and as often as not, entail. My love for Lotus and empathy and sympathy for her plight extends beyond the bounds of normal, "rational" human understanding, and yet in order to think about it, to express and communicate it, I must manufacture some kind of reified rational framework most suitable to organize my phenomenological experiences. There is a happy side to the suffering of Lotus and her children—for in her existential struggle for survival, for her children’s survival, there is much human dignity and respect in spite of circumstances and human needs and "weaknesses." In this spirit to survive I can only rejoice.</p> <p>I first met Lotus in the health interview with my condescending, class conscious interpreter. The door was wide open and people were coming in and out. Her boys were crawling all over me. It was a single bedroom slum apartment with holes in the walls, bars on the screenless windows, and a filthy carpet that was the only thing Lotus complained about. The slum lord who was doing superficial improvements to the "outside" told me to buy Lotus brushes for her broken down vacuum cleaner, explaining "These people are clever, but the government should never have brought them here, for they do not know how to live in the city." He himself was a first generation German immigrant who came after World War II. On the walls were children’s drawings and many female images. One was a big poster of a big red rose with dewdrops, reading "I love Mom."</p> <p>She kept a hanging plant that had been cultivated to grow along string across the living room, growing in a fish bowl in which a goldfish swam. Lotus and her three young boys slept in two old beds in the same bedroom. On the wall was a broken telephone, and near it, my name and phone number I had given to her when I made the appointment for the interview. She told us that she had killed in one week thirty rats in her kitchen—I have seen them myself darting beneath the furniture. Her pride was a king size refrigerator she had just bought—a Cadillac of refrigerators. There was a great deal of transference and "cathexis" during the interview (were me and the interpreter really authority symbols who had come to help her in her plight?) She cried for her sister who did not love her. She cried for having been "abandoned" by her husband for two years nowhere to be found. She was quite obviously severely depressed—sleeping most of the day, unable to sleep many nights. I was more genuinely moved by her condition than any other household I interviewed. I propositioned her to become my key informant so that she could help me in my field study and I could provide some kind of support for her.</p> <p>I enrolled her in Adult Education ESL class and every morning at 8:00 I would drive down and pick her and her kids and take her to class while I baby sat the children. I would take them to a park and play with them. Baby-sitting was at first an overwhelming experience. The first week the middle boy, four years old, wandered off from the playground and got lost, throwing me and the park authorities into a panic. He was found in a near by open field. Gradually as the weeks passed I got the handle of how to deal with them—packing picnic lunches, making lemonade so that I would not have to drop change at every coke machine they spotted. I learned the lay out of all the nearby parks—the better ones and the lousy ones, and I learned about all the neat toys kids are up to nowadays. The kids had to be literally shown how to play in the playground—the swings, slides, see-saws and how to make castles in the sand. Adults take so much for granted. I elaborated a myth about a dragon in the nearby lake who liked to eat little boys, and of tigers and monkey children hiding in the cypress trees. The boys would go on about these things for hours. I would pick up Lotus at noon and then take them for lunch or shopping before returning them home. Lotus gradually introduced me to the homes of her Old Uncle, her Young Uncle, her Sister, and some of her friends.</p> <p>I would visit her some days. Often she would not want to go to school. She frequently went to her doctor, who was her "good friend" who prescribed for her medicine for her ailments, headaches, stomach aches, body aches, which no one could diagnose. She had her head x-rayed three times and yet there was nothing organically "wrong". This is a common pattern of expression of depression and general somatization of symptoms of stress among the refugees, which I will explain briefly. I believed many of them suffered from disorder, especially Lotus and Mr. #5.</p> <p>One Sunday I came to her home early, to find that someone had beaten her up. There were bruises all over her head and body, and she was feeling pretty down. I took them to the beach to walk along the shore and pier. She was obsessed with the fish the fisherman were catching, especially a sizable shark some Vietnamese had caught with a hook and chain. She told me that two women neighbors had beaten her up when she complained to them about their children. She accepted it stoically and with self pity, though her eyes were red with tears. I took her shopping at a Vietnamese grocery store and she cooked me egg-rolls while I drew big eagle tattoos on her son’s bare backs and arms with a felt tip marker and moustaches on their faces.</p> <p>I would bring her to visit at my house with my mother. She instantly started calling her "Mom" and the children "Grandma." She would make egg rolls and cook for her. We began visiting the #5 family in their new residence, her Old Uncle, Sister and Young Uncle. Her sister and her husband, with their new born child, had a fight in their home with the husband’s sister and brother over allowing Lotus to visit her Sister. Lotus put up her Sister’s family in her small apartment for a month until they fund a new place to live.</p> <p>I day I visited them to crack steamed crab in lemon sauce and pepper on newspaper on the floor. The door was wide open, and when I turned around I noticed all the neighbors were staring and glowering at me from across the way. I have seen those neighbors regularly go "fishing" bringing home buckets of the small rock crabs and mussels that line the rocks of the jetty. They would crack them and eat them in front of their apartment. I once saw a little girl with a live little rock crab in her hand she was ready to devour. Those people were unemployed, and took on young teenage boarders—there were maybe twelve in a single bedroom slum apartment. They would sit around all day in dilapidated stools in front of their apartment, at night they would drink and make noise. I wondered whether some of those crabs and mussels they were eating might not have been contaminated with some kind of lead or mercury poisoning. I gave them a beautiful photograph of their happy little children but it did no good. They hated me, Lotus, her sister, "Clear Water," and probably everyone else. When I left that afternoon to go home there were seven or eight teenage boys standing around outside Lotus’s door all giving me very deadly stares. I walked past them and said hello.</p> <p>The next time I visited Lotus I brought her Young Aunt who wanted to solicit her wonderful Vietnamese vegetables she cultivated in her back yard. The young boys across the way were saying very ugly things to Lotus and her Sister and Young Aunt, and dropped their pants at them. I became very upset and went across and confronted them. They were surprised and backed down. They were after all so short and scrawny looking. In the meantime Lotus’s sister called the police One boy would not shut up and continued menacing us, yelling ugly things at Lotus. He had no shirt on and had a dragon tattooed on his shoulder and breast—a nice looking tattoo. Ha had a stick in his pants. Lotus’s friend Sam issued from her bedroom, a first for me, and grabbed a kitchen knife and both were swearing and threatening each other. The boy backed down. Samuel told me never to come to visit Lotus anymore. The police-woman came and we filed a report. Later this young boy, who was quite irrational when I tried to talk to him, was jailed for breaking into a car. These boys were part of a gang that eventually was implicated with the murder of a Vietnamese mother in the area—they blew off her head with a .45.</p> <p>The next time I took Lotus to visit the #5 family Samuel was lying on her bed. He told me " I thought I told you never to see Lotus again." I told him that I didn’t do things that other people wanted me to just because they don’t like it. I took Lotus to visit #5 and brought her home. I reasoned Lotus and Sam had a thing going with each other, I didn’t want to interfere—though Lotus never ever mentioned it to me and would always act like nothing ever happened. One day I was in the area doing the health survey with my blind friend who acted as an interpreter in Spanish and he needed to go to the bathroom. I took him to Lotus’s apartment and surprised her and a man she was with whom I never saw before. They were on her bed together, and she came out wearing a nightgown and he was only wearing shorts. I have seen three or four different men with Lotus and never fully understood the relationship she had with them. When I would visit her she would frequently be solicited by telephone by some strange man. Her relationship with Samuel was the most enigmatic. He was not the children’s father, but there was an extraordinarily strong emotional bond between Lotus and the youngest two-year-old child and between this child and Samuel. Later "Clear Water" told me that Lotus and Sam had been living together. He would buy the children token presents occasionally, especially the youngest, whom I didn’t care for because I thought him a spoiled little brat. He seemed to do next to nothing to help Lotus, except to occasionally loan her his car, always conditionally. She would use this car to visit me unexpectedly. She would deny there was anything between her and Sam and more and more started come on to me sexually.</p> <p>From the beginning I sought to define our friendship on a rather cool and distant basis. She could not deal with this and continually resisted. My sexual rejection of her was a tremendous blow to her female ego and affected her very deeply. I felt sorry for her and in the emotional transference of our relationship grew more and more attracted to her. It was definitely not a "love at first sight" overnight occurrence. Our relationship developed slowly over many months. The last time I took her to her ESL class she felt my sexual rejection of her. I was preoccupied with my summer school classes and other things, and she flew into a state of disassociation. She took her youngest "baby" and cuddled him into her arms and took off walking down the street. I took the other two children home to a neighbor and brought Mrs. #5 and myself to try to get her into the car—she was totally unresponsive, even to the traffic on the street—she resisted all our efforts, crying, clutching her child, saying that nobody loved her. We finally managed to get her in the car and drive her home. Later that afternoon at her friends she wanted me to tell her I loved her. I told her I liked her and cared for her and her kids but if she ever pulled that nonsense on me again I would never see her again. She really frightened me that day.</p> <p>I ended it with her for over a month when I realized that she and Samuel had been living together. I decided it was better to break it off. She kept calling me though and because I wanted to continue my field study, I decided to see her again. I would not go to ther apartment though, and would only pick her and her kids up in the street and take them places. At Christmas time I bought her a silk Ao Dai, a traditional Vietnamese women’s dress worn mostly for special occasions. Twice I took her in it to different Church congregations with the #5 family. It was her female pride with big hand-embroidered roses on it, very beautiful. The relationship again reached a breaking point as I could no longer driving down into her slum neighborhood and picking her up and dropping her off without being able even to visit her in her own apartment because of many people’s petty prejudices. I myself fell into a darkness and did not want to do anything more.</p> <p>Lotus decided she wanted to relocate, which I had wanted her to do from the first time I met her. Mr. #5 found a nice two bedroom apartment for her near his place, effectively isolated from the cultural sphere of little Saigon. He helped move her in and it cost over $1,000 to get moved in. The rent was less than she was paying for her one bedroom slum pad and it was twice as spacious. I bought, built and gave to her many things to fill up her apartment. I would go to visit her a couple of times a week, take her shopping for groceries or whatever, take her to my home or little Saigon, have dinner with her, take her children to the park. Samuel was still seeing her—we clearly did not like each other.</p> <p>It seemed as though Lotus was wanting a commitment from me to live with her and to eventually marry her which I was unwilling to give her because from the beginning I realized she and Sam had a relationship going between them and because it did not fit my role as a student ethnographer. I did not like Sam because I felt he was using Lotus without helping her in any way. Mr. #5 warned me that Lotus was seeing "too many boyfriends" and did not like Sam even when he knew him in the ghetto. Sam ignored the two older boys, often hitting them, and lavished total attention upon the youngest. Lotus was more and more pressuring me to live with her—we had several falling outs—but there was a strange, sympathetic attraction between us. When my school ended I stayed with her for two weeks until one morning Child Abuse Authorities came to question her. I did not want to be implicated in accusations I had nothing to do with. If someone had been abusing the children no one told me and it was difficult to judge. Anyway I did not want to jeopardize her welfare privileges by staying with her, and I had to finish this thesis that I was working on. Needless to say within two weeks the relationship between Lotus and myself had ended—Sam was still hanging around, lurking behind stage. I still knew nothing about him although he seemed to know everything about me. I told her I did not want to see her anymore, and threw her into great sadness even with Samuel around—the best man won.</p> <p>I still do not understand fully the life of Lotus, though I have speculated over it many times. Her mother was Chinese who was a business woman in Chinese medicine. Her father had long since been dead. Her mother fled from the North in 1954—they were Catholics. She was well to so—they had four "homes"—two in resort cities, Phung Tau on the coast and Dalat in the mild highlands, and one in Saigon and one in Lotus’s home town. Lotus as a child was spoiled by her well to do mother. She regularly traveled between their "homes."</p> <p>Lotus had only a sixth grade education in war torn Vietnam. The signs of the war, and its symptoms of stress are still apparent with Lotus, such as the startle response from any loud, sudden unexpected noise. One night I was with her she suddenly became completely dissociated from immediate reality--strangely confusing me as well, as if I was suddenly transported into the "twilight zone", a very scary feeling—and she was in another place and time. Lotus was very concrete in her thinking, and very egocentric. She could not do any arithmetic division and only the most simple multiplication. Yet she was not unintelligent—she only lacked the education to give her intelligence symbolic expression, and thus she was well rooted to traditional Vietnamese ethos. She could not even fill out a job application form, much less deal with a complex job.</p> <p>In her existential frustrations she could sometimes be very severe with her children in a way only Vietnamese parents can, and yet she was always and ever a good and loving mother—giving her children anything and everything. I am passing no moral judgment upon her actions, or human needs and "frailties" in the plight of her poverty. She came by boat with her young husband, they spent thirty days at sea adrift. Two children she brought along died of deprivation and exposure. She can barely talk of these experiences. She wants most only a husband who will love her unconditionally, for me an impossible task, and a home for her children. This is something apparently beyond Sam’s means to provide for her, or beyond my own means. Her husband she describes as weak, with a proclivity to gambling with his friends. There are two sides to the story of any divorce. It was not a divorce, a permanent, informal separation. Sam and Lotus were not married, only living together in a little slum apartment.</p> <p>Lotus was not necessarily even promiscuous—if she had sexual relationships with different men it was more an exchange of needs, emotional, even material, or in kind—to borrow a car, a little spending cash, a little sexual pleasure, whatever. But there is always the label and the prejudices that go along with it. Such patterns of poverty are not uncommon—one man visiting many women, one woman having many men. It is a means of diversifying and maximizing access to basic human resources in a situation of chronic, across the board deprivation. Lotus certainly was never a hooker. Our much vaunted ideals of romantic true love and of monogamous matrimony are quite ethnocentric and unrealistic within a context of structural poverty.</p> <p>What bothers me more is that Lotus regularly and deliberately deceived me—telling me only as much as she wanted me to know, or what she thought I wanted to know. She would always tell me I did not know her and she had things to tell me when she learned to speak English better. She believed that as long as I could not prove her deceit, even though all the behavioral evidence contradicted things she told me, then I had to give her the benefit of a doubt, to believe in her, in her good intentions more than her actions or words, and to trust her, in whatever she did, in the most fundamental and unconditional of ways. She had a fundamental distrust of "secondary institutions", she believed the electric company was trying to bilk her on her fees. When I finally called her bluff and broke up with her, she rationalized what was happening to protect her destroyed female ego.</p> <p>Trust itself is a relative thing, different for a Vietnamese person than it is for an American. We in the West have a preconceived ideal of an "absolute truth" which is supposed to guide all our ethical behavior. People of the East see truth and falsehood in more relative terms, conditional to extenuating circumstances. Lotus would punish her children not for lying or doing "wrong" but "for not listening", not "obeying" and especially for getting caught doing something wrong. Consequently, doing something wrong for them was not intrinsically bad, but only wrong if they are discovered. Therefore any little rule is entirely flexible and conditional, to be bent to prevailing circumstances, to be tested to the limit of tolerance. Lotus would not immediately punish her children, but only inconsistently when what they were "doing wrong" went beyond her tolerance, and then punishment would flow strong.</p> <p>In coordination of human interrelationships, in mediating these networks of human needs, each individual, and each family is involved in capitalizing for personal profit within the rules of the system—any information to assist this coordination is of utmost value. A Vietnamese person will tell you only what he/she wants you to know, or thinks you want to know. This is rationalized as respect and politeness—but it has its roots in a social obsession in controlling, monitoring and manipulating the flow of critical information which may or may not affect one’s position within the chains of interdependency. It is very basic to the socialization process and subconscious. It explains this strong proclivity to gamble. Mr. #5 will gamble for 24 hours straight. There is much money exchanged on such occassions. Children at the youngest age are ritualized into gambling. The object of gambling is information control—to control the cards in one’s hand, to figure out the cards in other’s hands, and to remember what is already being played and what must remain in the deck. Bluffing and being bluffed become critical plays in social interrelationships. Everyone is doing it, but as long as no one calls the bluff, nothing is wrong. Calling the bluff can be both the crime and the strategy for success. In Kung Fu, so avidly watched, Kung Fu is a sympathetic power, a force that comes through secret knowledge of a special technique, a skill that confers power in the give and take of social interrelationships.</p> <p>Kung Fu bouts are interminably long and complicated—the blows delivered are emotional blows to the ego—and they frequently resolve with one person withdrawing or conceding defeat. The fighting is more a dance of dialectical harmony than direct conflict—the person who has the stronger Kung Fu is in greater harmony with its power and eventually overcomes the "counterpart" who is in weaker harmony. As a form of competition it is more indirect, played by mutual rules. One can bluff as much as one remains within a formal network of mutual politeness, respect, and harmony. This brings to mind a difference between Kung Fu fighting and the Western gunfight. Unlike Kung Fu which is a relative power, the gun is absolute power, the winner is faster, the loser dies. This is the difference between the notion of Western "independence" and Eastern "interdependence". Independence is a fundamental emotional dichotomy between self and other, between yes and no, truth and falsehood—it is one single gunfight or a series of gunfights for absolute emotional independence—a final, unequivocal declaration of identity. Interdependence is a Kung Fu battle in which competing egos are locked in perpetual battle, delivering many small emotional blows—an exchange of relative power, a give and take without clear finish.</p> <p>A common American stereotype of a Vietnamese is that they cannot be trusted, or they are deceitful. Vietnamese rationalize it as a form of politeness behavior wishing to avoid direct confrontation. Americans prize being direct, assertion of independent power. Vietnamese put a premium on indirection, ruse, tact, interdependent power. Vietnamese on the other hand commonly believe Americans cannot be trusted—cannot be "depended" upon consistently. This mutual mistrust bespeaks a fundamental difference of value orientations between the ethos of being Vietnamese and the ethos of being American. It eventually undermined the relationship between Lotus and myself—neither of us were wrong, neither were right in our rationalizations of the relationship. Time and again I have watched the functioning of extreme interdependency among her kids. They are inextricably tied up in each others needs and gratification. There is a continual struggle and competition between them. What one gets, the others need. They are so entangled in each other and are rarely self-satisfied or happy. They are of course exceptional children in that they are starved for parental guidance, love and attention which Lotus alone, in her plight, is unable to fully care for. And yet it never once dawns on any one of them to separate themselves from the other, to create their own space, their own peace. As soon as one of them starts to do so, the others soon become intruding and violating the peace. Identification is familial, not personal, and interdependent, not dependent.</p> <p>By Western standards Lotus might be characterized as an extremely "dependent" personality, though by Vietnamese standards she might just be a normal Vietnamese female caught up in abnormal circumstances. She slept in the same bed as her mother, sister, and her girlfriend until she was well into her teens. There was near complete identification between her and her mother—her mother took care unconditionally of her every need. Now her mother is dead, her sister has declared her independence, and her closet girlfriend remains in Vietnam. Both her and her sister feel tremendously sympathetic about the death of their mother. Now her sister has a husband to tend to her every need, but Lotus’s husband forsook her and now Lotus is bereft any family at all. Lotus only wants unconditional love and acceptance, in spite of her "frailties" and because of her "needs" which is more than myself or Sam or her Husband or anyone else can give to her. Her young Sister’s future is still in the making; in a tragic way Lotus epithet has already been written.</p> <p>Lotus’s strong dependencies are rooted in the structure of her past, her poverty, her plight, her cultural character, but they also give rise to strong symbolic and psycho-social needs and dependencies. Dependency itself is no absolute reification, it is rather a relative understanding of human needs rooted in the structure and symbolic expression of human interrelationships. Independence and interdependence form a dialectical continuum in which the one is always measured against the other.</p> <p>In my conceptualization of the plight of Lotus, early on I discovered a frame-work that is rooted in a psychiatric interpretation of human behavior. This is a form of "culture shock" which heavily afflicts the Vietnamese refugees in distinctive patterns. Lotus suffers from this complex quite severely, as do many of the other Vietnamese I have met. For the most part they suffer in their own privacy, in the comfort of their own "homes" wherever they may be for a homeless refugee. This is the general somatization of "delayed" stress disorder and of "adjustment disorders" that is the principle diagnostic symptoms of "neurasthenia and depressive neurosis." The general clinical picture is one of psychological, symbolic failure to adjust adequately to dramatic and often traumatic social changes and disruptions, by a continuous, unmitigated piling up and compounding of repeated and various psycho-social stresses, in turn hindering effective implementation of effective psycho-social coping mechanisms and adaptive behavioral repertories, often in turn inducing further stress causing events. The net result is a vicious cycle of chronic, unnecessary suffering, sometimes culminating in untimely death.</p> <p>Many people suffering from this disorder will have chronic physical symptoms and go to the doctor complaining of really felt stomach and chest pains, aching joints and back pains, headaches and dizziness, loss of memory or hallucinations, and the physician will be at a complete loss to diagnose the origins of the complaints—finding no physiological explanation—the doctors frequently suspect them of malingering, hypochondria and ignorance, and thus fail to provide the proper medical care. Patients, frightened by an impersonalness of a world they hardly understand, much less trust, are discouraged from seeking the kind of therapy they really need.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The <u>DSM III</u> lists diagnostic criteria for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder as the prior existence of a recognizable stressor, re-experiencing the trauma, a delayed impairment of involvement and responsiveness to the external world, exaggerated startle responses, sleep disturbances, guilt of surviving when others have not, or about behavior required for survival, difficulty concentrating, avoidance patterns, and "intensification of symptoms by exposure to events that symbolize or resemble the traumatic event". This disorder is usually delayed until anytime after six months of the original experience, and may be postponed indefinitely until the conditions become ripe for its development, and can recur unpredictably for as long as the person survives, happening anytime when induced subconsciously by environmental stimuli symbolically related to the original trauma. In this it represents a peculiar form of "sympathetic magic" when "like causes like".</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This "dis-ease" leads to further impairment of adjustment to change—a gradual decline in social and psychological adaptive functioning resulting in minimal or "a-social" patterns of involvement and hence leading into such intense arenas as psychotic schizophrenia and anti-social criminality.</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Impairment may either be mild or affect nearly every aspect of life. Phobic avoidance of situations or activities resembling or symbolizing the original trauma may result in occupational or recreational impairment. "Psychic numbing" may interfere with personal relationships, such as marriage or family life. Emotional lability, depression and guilt may result in self-defeating behavior or suicidal actions. (<u>DSM III</u> 1980)</p> </font> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This disorder is closely associated to the "adjustment disorder" defined as "maladaptive reaction to an identifiable psycho-stressor," as indicated by "impairment of social or occupational functioning" or "symptoms that are in excess of a normal and expectable reaction to the stressor." The difference is that the former involves an abnormal reaction to an unusually traumatic event, and in this sense is to be considered primary, while the latter involves only an exaggerated but temporary reaction to not uncommon psycho-social stressors—a secondary response of "culture shock." But the former also implies the latter in its delayed onset, and chronic impairment of adaptive functioning, and subsequently involves further adjustment disorders on a vicious spiral of reciprocating impairment of "normal" adaptive functioning. There is significant correlation and casual interconnection between these disorders and "anxiety disorders," neurasthenic depression, hysteria, somatoform disorders like simple conversion reactions, and hypochondria, with fictitious disorders, malingering, and dissociative disorders like fugue, multiple personality, depersonalization, psychotic syndromes like schizophrenia and catatonia, and impulse control disorders like gambling, fits of violence, wife or children battering, and even organic mental disorders like "senility."</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">The point is that traumatic or abnormally severe stressors in the environment opens the door way to mental illness in general, through the sudden and severe fracturing of basic symbolism by which a person and his culture organize and conceptualize about reality. Once the door is opened, the dark passageway to "insanity" leads down a corridor of many alternative possibilities for "symptomatic" symbolic expression. Descriptive labels and categories may fall into a neat diagnostic framework, but especially deviant and idiosyncratic individual behavior and symbolism cross-cuts any neat organization of symptoms in a "polythematic" manner. An individual may suffer a plethora of differential symptoms, perhaps sort of "distinctive features" of a particular complex of culture and character, which only loosely and most generally fits any strict diagnostic pattern or stereotypical label.</p> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">This does not imply psycho-genic causes as a model for explaining phenomena of group deviance, deviant groups or of groups of deviants (i.e. "sub-cultures," "underclasses," "out groups," or "mentally ill") Most of the originating psycho-social stresses are rooted in chronic frustration of environmental limitations, internal symbolic contradictions, abrasive circumstances of unalleviated deprivation, catch 22’s of bureaucratic red tape and hypocritical double standards, the deceit between the said and the done, double binds, deprivation or over stimulation of the senses, over crowding, trauma, and the drama of dehumanization. There is as much correlation between low socio-economic status, social alienation and anomie social mobility and out-group labeling and identification. There is really a cybernetic process between psycho-genic disorder and socio-genic stress which is mediated by the presence of contradictory, inimical symbols or the absence of integrated, synthesizing symbolism.</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Illness is inseparable from the networks of meanings within which it is experienced and treated. These meanings—often changing, usually ambiguous, frequently tacit—sometimes are determined principally by the nature of the illness itself and its consequences for the sick person and family....Illness, thereby, becomes a polysemic symbol, one whose referents are affect and motivation as much as cognitive and social relations; it is part of an idiosyncratic meaning system that belongs to a broader, more visible cultural meaning system, which because it is shared, is also easier (though rarely easy) to interpret. ((Kleinman 1981)</p> </font> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Typical symptoms characteristic to such a disorder in a Vietnamese cultural milieu, is quite different from the patterning of mental disorder predominating in other cultures. In Oriental medical theory mind and body are not strictly dichotomized—harmony rather than domination of nature is sought. Psychological and physiological problems and answers are undifferentiated, resulting in a strong avoidance reaction to labels of "mental illness" with subsequent social withdrawal, avoidance patterning, and somatization of symptoms of stress. Vietnamese characteristically "hide their emotions". I spent many a sleepless nights with Lotus silently crying, tears straining down her stoic face, expressionless, contemplating suicide and the losses of her family. "I want to visit my mother," "I want to return home," "I want to see Mom."</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Chinese philosophy emphasizes harmonious interpersonal relationships, interdependence and mutual moral obligation or loyalty for achieving a state of psycho-social homeostasis or peaceful coexistence with family and fellow beings. This seems to have conditioned Chinese persons to seek the cause of their stresses or adjustment difficulties in their relationships with others rather than to look inward. (Lin 1983)</p> </font> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY">  There are three distinct sets of psycho-social stresses identifiable in the Vietnamese refugee experience: the Vietnam conflict, the migration experience itself, and the "culture shock" of having to assimilate functionally at least into American mainstream society. The result of these three sets of stresses piling upon one another has been a psychic numbing, a living death and incapacity to feel, and cultural desymbolization, a disintegration and increasing confusion and ambiguity of culturally relevant symbolism and hence an incapacitation of effective communication, coordination or transmission of culture. In large part of the "refugee" immigrants are lacking in a well integrated "cultural base line" upon which to draw relevant symbolism in their survival—ethnization is the development of a new complex of such "survival" symbolism.</p> <p>The past catches up with the refugee right on the verge of settling into a new way of life. There is a need to accommodate to a new alien host environment in the face of psycho-social impairment. They have to participate in routines foreign to their native ways, requiring a different prioritization of values and hence "frame reevaluation"—punctuality, geographical mobility, familial separation and new individual values of independence, assertiveness and verbal competence in a foreign language. They usually enter at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder with few if any resources or screens of opportunity, soon finding their false expectations and illusions of quick success and immediate reward crushed beneath the alienation and apathy of the harsher realities of American "modern way of living"—the capitalist economic imperative of survive or sink. They suffer almost overwhelming sense of desperation, desolation ad disillusionment, which becomes deep depression. During the very period in which it is most critical to be flexible and adaptive, ready to catch any and all opportunities, they find themselves instead in a state of motionless depression, a kind of lithargic lack of motivation to achieve much of anything, with an overwhelming desire to return home.</p> <p>The family in Vietnam was perhaps the bulwark of Vietnamese culture and character. It provided the psycho-social identity, security and support from stress. It is also the primary Vietnamese mechanism of adaptation. It offers a screen of opportunities to pull economic and human resources for common goals, mutual advantage and cooperative sharing, and served as the primary mechanism for reconciliation and resolution of stress and psychic conflict.</p> <p>The first generation Vietnamese-American family has been thrice blighted by three plagues of psycho-social stress—not only the individual but the very fabric of his/her culture suffers from stress related disorders. I have witnessed cases of familial depression, hysteria, psycho-somatization, etc. The family fabric was disintegrated and virtually destroyed by total warfare and forced internal migration. In emigrating abroad, many families were further sundered—leaving behind, probably forever, many loved ones; siblings, children, parents, spouses, kin and friends. The remnants of surviving "refugee" families thread-bare, are then overwhelmed by the stresses of adjustment, survival acculturation and enculturation into a different and often irreconcilable way of life.</p> <font SIZE="2"> <p>For those families that stayed together, life has not been without problems: Prolonged closeness often created friction, compulsory intimacy may generate personal irritations, exposure of the younger generation to the American culture frequently becomes a source of conflict and incessant expectations of mutual dependency may become hateful obligations and a common origin of emotional illnesses. (Nguyen 1975)</p> <p> </font> Infra-familial discord and disharmony arises in a social network stressing nuclear families, familial separation, and personal dependence. The stresses of urban living, of a continuous stream of petty, everyday hassles, of having to make enormous expenditures of time, energy and money just to keep up with an increasing cost of living. These "minor" stresses compound and confound to produce situations of intense personal and interpersonal aggravation, frustration, intolerance, provocation and aggression, infra-familially among people who traditionally lived very closely together.</p> <p>In sum, the automatic necessity of coping with immediate existential problematics of survival, causes a delay and eventual magnification of stress related symptoms which becomes expressed eventually through somatization and depression. A long train of episodes compounds stress until even the bulwark of Vietnamese culture—adaptive, symbolic coping mechanisms—filial piety, breaks down, psychological disorder blends into familial disorder and social discord. Whole families are stressed out—persecutory guilt trips are laid on one another as family members blame each other for their plight and inability to resolve only vaguely understood, mostly unconscious, problems. The iceberg is stress, and the inability to manage stress or its suspected causes, due to the breakdown of the traditional coping mechanism—the family—in a radically altered social setting. Stress becomes a "social dis-ease" as well as a psychiatric disorder, and has its own little vicious circle.</p> <p>Self-destruction, whether overt or covert in form, is one final consequence of a long vicious cycle of unresolved stress and psycho-social conflict. The net outcome is maladaptive to the point of self-destruction. Somatization of symptoms of stress related psychic disorders might be looked at as a form of nonverbal "body" language—a distorted form of unconscious communication designed to affect some form of adaptive, symbolic transformation that is unachievable and inexpressible in a conscious form. Emotions and "feelings" which need to "come out", which are normally channeled through cerebral, cognition, self-reflection or "insight oriented talking therapy" will eventually emerge in somatic, physical, underground fashion. After all, the emotions, embodied in complex symbolism, are the strings tying together mind and body. In this sense even stress related disorders and its consequences can be viewed as a kind of symbolic and cultural coping mechanism gone awry.</p> <p>In conclusion of my overextended story, I wish to mention only in passing that my interpretation of the plight of Lotus and of her phoenix people in general is inescapably ethnocentric, as hard as I may try to transcend the symbolic boundaries of my own consciousness, I am always brought back to earth in the limitations of my own ego. It is possible that an emic, Vietnamese interpretation exists for this same plight, one perhaps symbolically embodied in the epic by Nguyen Du <u>The Tale of Kieu</u>, a tragic love story.</p> <p>Female and male are interdependent symbolisms in a mythological dialectic lying at the heart of human culture. Neither is complete without the other, and only together can there be a synthesis. Deceiving themselves, they deceive one another, thus is the story always told. Man and Woman stand together as the beginning and ending of the great circle of human nature. Within human nature is the great ground of universal sympathy.</p> <font FACE="Arial"> <font FACE="Times,Times New Roman" SIZE="2"> <p> </p> <hr> <p><a name="Copyright">Blanket Copyright</a>, Hugh M. Lewis, © 2005. Use of this text governed by fair use policy--permission to make copies of this text is granted for purposes of research and non-profit instruction only.</p> <p>Last Updated: 08/25/06 </p> <hr> <p> </p> </font> <p> </p> </font> <p> </p> <p align="center"> <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"> s="na";c="na";j="na";f=""+escape(document.referrer) </script> <script language="javascript1.2" type="text/javascript"> s=screen.width;v=navigator.appName if (v != "Netscape") {c=screen.colorDepth} else {c=screen.pixelDepth} j=navigator.javaEnabled() </script> <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"> function pr(n) {document.write(n,"\n");} NS2Ch=0 if (navigator.appName == "Netscape" && navigator.appVersion.charAt(0) == "2") {NS2Ch=1} if (NS2Ch == 0) { r="&size="+s+"&colors="+c+"&referer="+f+"&java="+j+"" pr("<A HREF=\"http://www.TheCounter.com\" TARGET=\"_top\"><IMG"+ " BORDER=0 SRC=\"http://c1.thecounter.com/id=515383"+r+"\"><\/A>")} </script> <NOSCRIPT> <a HREF="http://www.TheCounter.com" TARGET="_top"><img SRC="http://c1.thecounter.com/id=515383" ALT="TC" BORDER="0" width="88" height="31"></a> </NOSCRIPT>  </body>