Hello! I've been away for a bit with school and all but I haven't forgotten this blog. Spring has come to Zhuzhou, things are in bloom and it's beginning to get warm. The countdown to the zhongkao has begun and there are signs everywhere telling students how long they have until the big high school entrance/placement exam. In the meantime, I've been fighting off the urge to dream about other things and other places as I figure out where to go from here and remember I have a job to do. I saw something listed for an English and Spanish teacher in Foshan, and I have to keep asking myself if I'd be in China to teach again or if it's less about teaching than it is about travel. I'm thinking of going to western Hunan for the next break I have and seeing Fenghuang and Zhangjiajie. On a more extended break, I might be interested in Henan province and checking out one of the tai chi schools where you can stay and train for a month. But back to spring festival:
Hanoi surprised me. I realize that since I was only in Hanoi when I was in Vietnam my observations are limited but I wasn't expecting it to be as open as it was. One of my guidebooks told me to get a VPN for things like facebook, but no one needed it and facebook wasn't blocked at all. I ran into a number of tourists from America and Europe as well as backpackers with dreads. Aside from pho and banh mi, I honestly didn't know much about Vietnam but listening to some of the people around I sensed that I wasn't alone. When I visited Hoa Lo prison, it was pretty empty throughout. The exhibits related to when it was a French prison holding Vietnamese prisoners were quiet. There was a middle aged American couple ahead of me in one room filled with shackled mannequins and I was surprised and kind of embarrassed when they stopped for a photo with all the fake prisoners. I was completely alone in another exhibit with sensors so that patriotic music followed me everywhere as I read about independence. When I got towards the end where they had things about war with America and John McCain's flight suit on display, I was surprised to suddenly find myself surrounded by people. A video played in one room, with footage very purposefully put together as it alternated between destroyed cities and hungry children and American prisoners smoking and playing cards. In the subtitles, it referred to the prison as "Hanoi Hilton 'Hoa Lo'" with quotation marks as if it were actually the Hilton and "prison" was just a nickname for a comfortable war time stay. The parting words were "Goodbye, uninvited guests. How lucky you were to be in a Vietnamese prison." Those are strange words to leave with as a tourist in a former prison. Aside from that, I never faced any issues related to my being American. If anything, my being American caused people to tell me prices in dollars even when I paid in Vietnamese dong. When I paid for my visa, I also had to come to the airport prepared with USD. When I flew out through airport at the end of my trip, the prices were all listed in USD and I struggled to work through the math so that I could spend the last of my dong.
Having read enough about Vietnam to know about its relation to China (and enough Chinese to see the connection between "YueNan", Vietnam, and "NanYue", an old kingdom that spanned parts of Southern China and Vietnam) I was kind of excited to explore connections and traditions that still seemed strong down south. I also had the great opportunity to see how they do the lunar new year in Hanoi so I got to see the city done up in lights, the flower markets, the fruit trees strapped to the backs of bikes, women and children in bright clothes and ao dai, people paying visits to different temples and the smell of diesel as people poured in (or out) to see family.
Hanoi surprised me. I realize that since I was only in Hanoi when I was in Vietnam my observations are limited but I wasn't expecting it to be as open as it was. One of my guidebooks told me to get a VPN for things like facebook, but no one needed it and facebook wasn't blocked at all. I ran into a number of tourists from America and Europe as well as backpackers with dreads. Aside from pho and banh mi, I honestly didn't know much about Vietnam but listening to some of the people around I sensed that I wasn't alone. When I visited Hoa Lo prison, it was pretty empty throughout. The exhibits related to when it was a French prison holding Vietnamese prisoners were quiet. There was a middle aged American couple ahead of me in one room filled with shackled mannequins and I was surprised and kind of embarrassed when they stopped for a photo with all the fake prisoners. I was completely alone in another exhibit with sensors so that patriotic music followed me everywhere as I read about independence. When I got towards the end where they had things about war with America and John McCain's flight suit on display, I was surprised to suddenly find myself surrounded by people. A video played in one room, with footage very purposefully put together as it alternated between destroyed cities and hungry children and American prisoners smoking and playing cards. In the subtitles, it referred to the prison as "Hanoi Hilton 'Hoa Lo'" with quotation marks as if it were actually the Hilton and "prison" was just a nickname for a comfortable war time stay. The parting words were "Goodbye, uninvited guests. How lucky you were to be in a Vietnamese prison." Those are strange words to leave with as a tourist in a former prison. Aside from that, I never faced any issues related to my being American. If anything, my being American caused people to tell me prices in dollars even when I paid in Vietnamese dong. When I paid for my visa, I also had to come to the airport prepared with USD. When I flew out through airport at the end of my trip, the prices were all listed in USD and I struggled to work through the math so that I could spend the last of my dong.
Having read enough about Vietnam to know about its relation to China (and enough Chinese to see the connection between "YueNan", Vietnam, and "NanYue", an old kingdom that spanned parts of Southern China and Vietnam) I was kind of excited to explore connections and traditions that still seemed strong down south. I also had the great opportunity to see how they do the lunar new year in Hanoi so I got to see the city done up in lights, the flower markets, the fruit trees strapped to the backs of bikes, women and children in bright clothes and ao dai, people paying visits to different temples and the smell of diesel as people poured in (or out) to see family.
Lights around Hoan Kiem lake
Since coming to China last year, I've been increasingly sensitive about the food from my memories and the food I find in different parts of China. My Asian food fix in college was often at the Thai takeout place around downtown Lugano, where you could get mango sticky rice (something I'd never really tried until I left home) and I thought sticky rice would be easier to get in Hunan. I've since learned it's not really a part of the food here and now when I make it at home I think about what Guangdong shares with its southern neighbors. In Hanoi, sweet rice was more readily available and I couldn't help noticing at some places that the meat they served had that same combination I remember from a number of things I ate back home: a touch of salt, a touch a sugar, soy sauce, rice wine. With the French influence, I also enjoyed banh mi and coffees everywhere. Even if you find coffee in China for 3-10 yuan instead of paying 27 yuan at Starbucks, coffee culture as I know it from Europe or America isn't as strong in China. (Although, Yunnan province which borders Vietnam grows its own coffee.) Some streets in Hanoi were hard to walk around between the parked bikes and the small, low tables and chairs where people drank coffee, ate pho, smoked, and socialized. WiFi was readily available wherever I went because of all the coffee shops too. I was surprised by how cheap it was (20,000 VND, about $1), how strong it was, and the unique variants made from lack of milk or cream. There was coffee with condensed milk and "egg coffee", coffee with egg foam that was unlike any cappuccino I had in Italy (and no one told me I could only drink egg coffees before 11AM, unlike Italian cappuccinos). It was light yellow and a little richer than anything I remembered drinking. I started to feel very at home with all the culinary nostalgia around me and the fact that English was more readily spoken helped.
Tradition ran strong in Hanoi. Where China has a tricky relationship now in regards to modernizing, Confucianism, and old rituals, a lot of places that draw certain elements from Chinese culture seem to follow those things more closely. I paid a visit to the temple of literature where respect for scholarship was strong and students bought charms for exams.There were fresh flowers everywhere and people paid respects to Confucius. It seemed a more popular spot than the Confucian Temple I visited in Beijing out near Yonghegong. I saw small altars everywhere in Hanoi, I imagine they were especially done up for the new year with their traditional offerings of fruit and money. The Heineken seemed like a more recent addition. On New Year's eve, as I walked away from the fireworks and festivities around the lake the streets were lit up with people burning offerings, with cars and bikes trying to get around, and by the stores that stayed open to catch anyone who might want some pho or coffee. People set out tables with whole chickens, completely plucked, neck positioned as if the bird was just sleeping along with fruit. I'd seen Chinese New Year celebrations in Milan, in San Francisco, and in quiet Yuangyang county in Yunnan, the county bordering Vietnam. In San Francisco, I enjoyed big parades with lion and dragon dancers. In Milan, I was jammed into narrow Via Paolo Sarpi as some dragon dancers ran off the street and onto the sidewalk. In Yuanyang, I watched the CCTV gala and the handful of fireworks that people set off at night and throughout the day and one of the guests asked permission to light up a chain of crackers on the guesthouse property. None of them seemed to have the same sort of dignity and purpose quite like what I saw in Hanoi. I thought of everything I'd read about Day of the Dead and of my high school Chinese teacher describing the ghost festival as people paid their respects and wished each other a happy new year. I headed back to the hotel I was staying at, ready to pass out, only to find that the staff was sharing fruit and snacks and cups of wine and invited me to sit with the other guests.
Actually, I enjoyed talking to the hotel staff a lot. They studied English, they studied Chinese, they had questions about me, questions about language learning, and made obvious efforts to improve their language skills and held their families very dear. While talking to them, they often pulled up pictures of their families whom they didn't always see on a regular and passed their phones to me. I wondered if working during the holidays made them especially eager to see them and talk about them. One woman excitedly asked about my Chinese name as she pinned me for Chinese right away, which surprised me. I didn't realize it until around the end of my time in high school, but I was surrounded by a lot of Mandarin speakers and sometimes people approached me with the assumption that my dad wasn't Chinese because "Gee" didn't sound like a Chinese name at all to them. In Dublin, one of the guys in a writers group I joined inquired about the McGees. The woman at the hotel told me about the Chinese name her grandfather gave her and I realized she was another "overseas Chinese". She was extremely warm towards me the whole time I was there.
One man though, really stands out in my memory as being especially representative of my time in Hanoi. He checked me in on my first night and went home for two days before he had to go back to work. He patiently answered all my questions as I asked him about Vietnamese holidays, the hotel's altar, and the various tourists who came through the hotel. He wore a European style suit and sang Vietnamese pop songs, he spoke French with one of the guests (He was a regular and stayed there for months at a time, the staff treated him like family and he told me with a thumbs down that he didn't care Donald Trump and followed with, "But I have much respect for the democratic party and that Bernie Sanders. A very honest man."), he showed me pictures of his daughter and his beautiful wife in her new ao dai in what looked like a more rural part of Vietnam. Conservative, but worldly. I asked him about the flowering tree in the hotel lobby, covered in Christmas lights and wishes and he told me one reason he didn't think Tet (the Vietnamese new year) should be mixed with the Western calendar was because the trees didn't bloom in January, they bloomed for Tet. We talked about French tourists who came in groups and were surprised to find Vietnamese people spoke French. We talked about Chinese tourists who also came in groups and sometimes struggled to communicate. He talked about loopholes in a law that was supposed to give incentive to international businesses to operate in Vietnam (they could work for a number of years tax free, but what often happened is that once the tax free period was up the businesses packed up and moved out). We also talked about Vietnamese families who went abroad and never came back, or if they did their children and grandchildren came back speaking French, English, or Czech instead of Vietnamese (He surprised me by saying that as a Chinese-American, I should probably learn to speak Chinese). He seemed traditional, but aware of the world in a way that fascinated me. I tested the limits a little and mentioned that at times, the food in Hanoi reminded me of southern Chinese food. He smiled, and didn't say much to me afterwards except to see if I wanted to leave my bag with him when I left for lunch. I sensed my mistake and felt it sorely, since I'd enjoyed all his observations and insights.
One man though, really stands out in my memory as being especially representative of my time in Hanoi. He checked me in on my first night and went home for two days before he had to go back to work. He patiently answered all my questions as I asked him about Vietnamese holidays, the hotel's altar, and the various tourists who came through the hotel. He wore a European style suit and sang Vietnamese pop songs, he spoke French with one of the guests (He was a regular and stayed there for months at a time, the staff treated him like family and he told me with a thumbs down that he didn't care Donald Trump and followed with, "But I have much respect for the democratic party and that Bernie Sanders. A very honest man."), he showed me pictures of his daughter and his beautiful wife in her new ao dai in what looked like a more rural part of Vietnam. Conservative, but worldly. I asked him about the flowering tree in the hotel lobby, covered in Christmas lights and wishes and he told me one reason he didn't think Tet (the Vietnamese new year) should be mixed with the Western calendar was because the trees didn't bloom in January, they bloomed for Tet. We talked about French tourists who came in groups and were surprised to find Vietnamese people spoke French. We talked about Chinese tourists who also came in groups and sometimes struggled to communicate. He talked about loopholes in a law that was supposed to give incentive to international businesses to operate in Vietnam (they could work for a number of years tax free, but what often happened is that once the tax free period was up the businesses packed up and moved out). We also talked about Vietnamese families who went abroad and never came back, or if they did their children and grandchildren came back speaking French, English, or Czech instead of Vietnamese (He surprised me by saying that as a Chinese-American, I should probably learn to speak Chinese). He seemed traditional, but aware of the world in a way that fascinated me. I tested the limits a little and mentioned that at times, the food in Hanoi reminded me of southern Chinese food. He smiled, and didn't say much to me afterwards except to see if I wanted to leave my bag with him when I left for lunch. I sensed my mistake and felt it sorely, since I'd enjoyed all his observations and insights.
Night time show as people wait for midnight and the fireworks during Tet.
While I was in Hanoi, I was also lucky enough to catch up with a friend from last year and talk about teaching, how great the coffee was, and all that Hanoi had to offer before she ran off for vacation. She recommended teaching English there and I've been thinking about that since there was a lot I liked about the city, but I also know that I signed up for China because I wanted to go and see China. Despite the frustrations and the fact that the novelty of teaching has worn off by now, I still feel like there's so much of China I haven't begun to see. I've started thinking of how much time it might take to travel along one of the paths of the Tea Horse Road for one (which would probably take me close if not into Vietnam) and then there's Zhejiang province out the other direction as well. A lot of the Chinese in Milan are supposed to be from that part of China and it was important to the Southern Song dynasty, and by extension possibly important my family's history (I really need to get on top of learning Chinese so I can read some of those documents).
In total, I spent about a week in Hanoi just relaxing and drinking and enjoying the festivities before heading out towards Osaka where I feared I'd have to bundle up again after enjoying mild temperatures and a steady supply of strong coffee. But part of getting to know and enjoy a place is looking for what it is rather than what it's not and Osaka would have its own charms.
In total, I spent about a week in Hanoi just relaxing and drinking and enjoying the festivities before heading out towards Osaka where I feared I'd have to bundle up again after enjoying mild temperatures and a steady supply of strong coffee. But part of getting to know and enjoy a place is looking for what it is rather than what it's not and Osaka would have its own charms.
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