SECTION 4:i

NETWORKS OF NEED

SURROGATE FAMILIES AND ADOPTED KINFOLK

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.

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.

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.

Familial groupings are not strictly nuclear or necessarily lineal or consanguineal 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 that 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.

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.

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 were 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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…."

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.

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^th 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.

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.

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.

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.

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!"

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 openness 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.

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.

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.